So Saturday was Duvet Day with Marsha and Eni. It was awesome fun, we stuck on some Disney movies, ate lots of junk food, painted our nails. Generally had a 13 year old slumber party in the day! :D
It was really great, and definitly much needed all round from hard work and general lack of girl time.
And it got me thinking. No matter how old we get girls NEED their girls! I think what we dont realise though is that the dynamic changes.
Its no longer about meeting up every single day, shopping all day saturday and spending all of Sunday on the phone. Its much more focussed on the quality time. Setting tmie out of the hectic work schedule, family commitments etc and just enjoy spending time hanging out.
The subject matter for discussions may change, there may be a bottle of wine instead of a bottle of Dr Pepper but the need to gossip and giggle will always remain!
It also changes in terms of who your friends are I think, moving on a little bit, the following observations stem from discussions us three had whilst setting the worlds to rights :)
As teenagers, girls tend to have their close tight knit band of friends, the ones that everything is shared with and....more often than not...where all manner of stress arrises.
"Oh my god?! HOW could she do that?!"
"WHY did she tell you and not me?!"
"I'm not friends with so and so and I'm going to be really upset if you get coffee with her next weekend!"
etcetcetcdramadramadrama
As adults we begin to realise "Hey...this is MY life! I'm old enough (and ugly enough) to make my own desicions, learn from my mistakes and generally get on with it without it being up for a group debate"
We will ask for advice and support when its needed but it wont necessarily be a round robin free for all discussion. And our friends need to not be upset when we choose not to take their advice.
Its like at the end of Friends when they find out Monica and Chandler are moving and Joey says "Arnt we supposed to vote on things like this!?" ...No, because your an adult and whislt friends can and often are the most important thing in your life..they are not the ONLY thing.
I've also personally found that the "growing up" period affects us all differently. We learn different life lessons at different paces. We change and learn about ourselves at differnet times. We make differnet choices that changes our viewpoints. And this can lead to stresses because we're all going through differnet changes....not like puberty when the problems (dispite feeling like we're the only one they affect) are all fairly similar.
The problems arise when it becomes difficult to see where the changes have emerged and not always accept that these might be for the better. Or when you can see changes in yourself but not in others.
Eni had a brilliant quote (paraphrased due to my rubbish memory!) "Being an adult is when you can be happy for your friends, even if it might upset you that things are changing"
For me the best example of that is my friends I went to infant and primary school. We drifted as a group after school but the key thing that brought us all back together was when Karen had the twins.
Friendships are ever changing things and that makes them hard. Sometimes everything happens for a reason though.
