Roomies

I spent most of my college years living in a dorm room.

Space was limited. I had a really small closet and I smushed as many clothes and shoes as I could into every nook of that tiny little closet.

I was blow drying my hair for class one morning and realized that the sweater I wanted to wear wasn’t on its hanger. The hanger hung empty on the closet rod. Where was my periwinkle and white striped cardigan?

It was stylish then. Really.

I kept staring into my closet as I finished drying my hair – dipping down every so often to see if it had fallen onto the floor. I couldn’t see it. When I finished drying my hair, I walked over to my closet to investigate.

I began digging through the disastrous abyss that was my closet floor and didn’t see it anywhere. I stood up in frustration.

Then I saw it.

Just below its empty hanger – smushed between the shirts around it -- was my cardigan. It had fallen off of the hanger and was seemingly suspended in mid-air between two other shirts. It was still in place. Because the shirts around it just wouldn’t let it fall.

As I muddled through my college years as a young adult – trying to figure out who I was, wanted to be, and tripping all over the place, these two girls were the clothes in my proverbial closet of life. They held me up when I could have crumbled and fallen to the floor. They kept my belly firm with our hysterical fits of laughter and jumped up and down with me when Jason made me his girl.

They were friends. The truest kind.

As I sat across from both of them at dinner a few weeks ago for the first time in a long, long time, I soaked up every sweet minute we had together. We’ve all changed and grown in the last 10 years – but as we shared of our blessings and heartaches and life victories and losses, I couldn’t help but see the girls who sat on my bed with me as I cried oceans of college dilemma tears – or laughed with me until our bellies ached.

I get to relive my college years quite often – Jason and I met and fell in love in college, and he and I tell and retell college-life stories over and over. Because our lives are filled with so many sweet, sweet memories from that time.

To Lauren and Lynn - the two beautiful, loving, talented, still make me laugh harder than I’ve ever laughed girls in this picture: Our lasting friendship is among the sweetest of them all.