Fortune cookies tell awesome fortunes

Last night, Beth and I were having a girls night (leaving Erik to his own devices) and decided to order Chinese food. As we were watching High School Musical: Get in the Picture, our food arrived, which we dug in to quite quickly. After we were done eating, we opened our fortunes. I don't remember what hers said (last night was a long time ago, give me a break!), but mine was quite profound. Mine said:

"You don't have to change friends if you understand that friends change."

Wow, right?

It definitely makes me reflect on stuff that has happened in the past few years with people who I was/am friends with.

My 20th and 21st birthday years have both been so different. As I've said before, a few weeks before I turned 20 I stopped drinking, then when I turned 21, I started again. A lot of things happened right after I turned 21. At my birthday party, (which I had planned for myself because I wanted to celebrate with my friends, but ended up being sick with a cold during after I got back from my vegas birthday trip...more on that later) I was forced to drink by my friends, EVEN THOUGH I was not feeling well. Ok, maybe not forced, but I felt like if I was having this party so that people could drink with me to celebrate my "return to the drinking world," I should be drinking. So I did, and that was fun, and my friends were fans of the fact that I could drink again (as one of my rudest friends said when I had stopped: "I liked it better when you were drinking").

But things weren't all fine and dandy for long.

Things that led to the demise of my friendships with people I thought were my friends:
-I went on a cruise in December with my family, where I had a cruisefling with the pianist on the ship. My friends didn't like that I talked a lot about it when I came back.

-I started going out to the bars, mainly with Michelle, who was 24. My friends didn't like that I was hanging out with other people or that I was "drinking all the time to get drunk".

-I text message a lot. Most of the time when we were hanging out it was late at night, and that was the only time my cousin could text me. So, I ended up texting him a lot while my friends and I were hanging out. Not such a good idea.

-My face's natural expression is not happy. So a lot of the time I don't look like I'm having a good time. It's annoying, but I'm not going to smile 24/7 just to make YOU happy. I'll smile if I want to.

-My ability to pick the WRONG people to like.

Over winter break, my friends and I grew apart due to all these things above, not to mention that I was co-stage managing a show at a community theater that had rehearsal pretty much every night.

When spring semester started, I thought we would be going back to normal patterns of hanging out, but it didn't happen. A party that was supposed to be at my place was moved to a neighbor's place - no one told me about the change until most people had gone home. I heard about movie events, parties, game nights after the fact. I couldn't believe it: I was being phased out. I went to one of my friends of the group that I had helped bring together to find out what was happening, and she told me all of those things above had contributed, plus a few others.

Another girl from the group asked me if I still wanted to be friends with them. I couldn't believe she had asked me that. Of course I wanted to be friends with them. I didn't have many other people to hang out with since I had been hanging out with them almost EVERY NIGHT for a year and a half. Just because I was going out to the bars with people who were of age (which most of them were not) did NOT mean I didn't want to hang out with them!

But I had changed. They had changed their views. They didn't like that I was drinking all the time (which, for the record, I wasn't.). Wait, what? Yeah. Now that I was drinking again, they didn't like it. How does that make sense? Oh, right. It doesn't.

Basically, I can't go into this anymore. It's a sucky feeling. But essentially, the fortune is true.

To quote Rockapella: People change. Everyday.
(I thought there were more words to that song that fit this situation, but I guess not. Oh well!)
People change, and when they don't change together it makes it difficult. So how to fix that?

Anyway, I guess the point of this is that the fortune cookie fortune was something good to remember. You don't have to change friends if you understand that friends change.

It happens.