Because the best is already mine.
Sitting here listening to Taylor Swift’s Red album (I’ve always loved her, regardless of the haters. Yea, yea she can sound like a whiner or a complainer whose always got a broken heart but if that’s all you hear that you’ve clearly forgotten your youthful heartbreaks too) on my itunes while my freshly painted lilac nails dry and I can’t help but miss my forever second sister and best friend LaRue. Who is most likely still asleep right now (at 9am on a West Coast Sunday) and very jealous of my now weekly habitual nail painting. This post is to you- and our friendship. I read once that friendships that reach the seven year mark are highly likely to last a lifetime. This year makes seven years for us. So here’s to us and a lifetime of friendship! I can’t help but smile, laugh or shake my head when I think of you.
Seven years ago today, in the middle of our first winterguard season together, I can only assume we would be sore and exhausted from a show day and if Andy was feeling sorry for us or charitable, we would be lucky enough to be in the middle of a massage block right now. If not, we are hopefully past that horrible 45 toss that will forever haunt me in my dreams. Seven years ago, Stephanie became one of the biggest influences in my life. From everything from fashion to cooking ramen to love to music and to finding my passions in life to creating the perfect margarita, I don’t know where I would be without here. How I wish we could have lived with Kendra for a while. What a house that would have been!
Today, I want to say how proud I am to be her friend. And lately, as I yell across a 100 ft hoophouse (an un-heated greenhouse to be technical) and can never, ever hear what chad yells back, my only response is usually “I CAN’T HEAR A WORD YOU’RE SAYING!”
But no one else understands why it’s so funny.
I think of her almost everytime I sit down to write, and how thrilled I am that she has found a path to pursue. A path that I know she will excel at because if there is one thing that everyone will always remember about her, it’s her unique voice that shines through everything she says or writes. I hear it in her text messages and her facebook posts. It’s a passion and opinion that comes solely from her and I can’t wait to see where it takes her.
Sometimes I think back to a night at our old apartment, with her collapsed on her bed and me sitting on the ground outside of our bathroom in the small space of our hallway in between our two rooms upstairs. “What am I going to do?” She asked me desperately. “You have your crafts and Jon has all his business stuff…”
“I don’t know…What do you like to do?”
“Watch tv.” Haha. Isn’t that the truth? I thought, remembering the countless times I had to get up and go upstairs because she was watching The Hills and the characters were being so stupid that I just couldn’t understand it anymore. “Yell at me once you go back to SATC” And I’d retreat upstairs to craft or something.
“Well why don’t you try some different things..” I remember saying to her, thinking about how my path to jewelry wasn’t exactly direct and is still a struggle today even though I love it so, so much. “I don’t know, you like cooking and fashion and music…what about any of those?”
I can’t remember what she actually said but it went something like this: Yea, but I don’t really love them. And I knew what she meant; she was looking for what I still was, what I’m pretty sure I’ve found in this farming/local food world. Something to grab your attention and excitement, something to really do with your life, something that she loved the way she loved colorguard and she really did love colorguard. She loved it so much more than I did and it was something that I really loved about her. Listening to her and Doug talk about it…I loved it. But much like me, she recognized that her life was also going to be about something more.
We continued talking about life and potential dreams for quite a bit longer, but never reached any solid conclusions and I remember wanting so much to help her find her path the way she had helped me find mine. (To this day I am so thankful to all of the people who helped me and supported me from Stephanie to my parents and my sister Laurie (who has always supported every single thing I’ve ever done-you’re the best!) to Chad and all of my studio mates).
And now that it seems like she’s found it, I couldn’t be more thrilled. She’s an inspiration to me to every time I think about writing.
So here’s to drinking daqueritas,
to changing into an outfit of equal cuteness,
to not wearing sweats to Target,
to flavored Red Bulls and Jimmy Johns before rehearsals,
to feather earrings,
to that one time we watched all the High School Musicals (how embarrassing!),
to ‘Twilight Style’ movies,
to fridays
to freezing in our apartment because we couldn’t afford heat
to BFFs and everything in between!
Jack of All Glitter 