Kimberlee K.

A while back I bought a razor that came with a stand you could suction cup to the shower wall. I’d already hung a rack for shampoo and body wash, as well as a command strip hook for my loofa, so I figured it would just be another shower decoration.

But it didn’t stick.

No matter how many times I tried. No matter how many articles and tricks I looked up, it never stuck. Sometimes it would fall mere minutes after I walked out of the bathroom, other times it would be a few hours later, jolting me off the couch, or in the middle of the night so I would wake up wondering if there was an intruder.

For whatever reason, it just didn’t stay stuck.

—

A few years ago, at a friends’ birthday party, I ran into a bar bathroom—my voice a little raw from singing “Sweet Caroline” at the top of my lungs—to do my daily Spanish lesson with Duolingo. I was on a 200-day streak and panicked when I got the “emergency” notification from the app letting me know that it was almost midnight, meaning my streak was almost lost.

Even two drinks in—when I’m a little lighter and gigglier and the filter that often tells me not to talk evaporates, making everyone around me my new best friend—I felt embarrassed to be whispering Spanish verbs to a cartoon owl. Every time the door opened I turned the volume down to zero, less nervous about someone judging how long I was in the bathroom than having them hear me trying to correctly conjugate estar in the past tense.

But I didn’t want to lose my streak. And I didn’t want to break my routine. Doing Spanish was a fun part of my day, and I loved watching my little character move forward on the map.

Eventually, however, I did lose my streak. I forgot to do my Spanish one day and then another, and then for a week and then a couple months. When I finally noticed, it stopped me in my tracks, as if trying to figure out when I fell out of the habit. And even though I couldn’t pinpoint it, I figured I could get back into it with no problem.

So I’d start again. Do it for a day or two and then stop. And I’ve repeated this cycle over and over and over, never making it past three or four days.

For whatever reason, I can’t make the habit re-stick.

—

I remember on one of my last days of college, an instructor of mine spoke to us bluntly, telling us to pay attention and soak it all in, because, “believe it or not, you’re going to miss this.”

This, meaning school.

I remember nodding my head respectfully, trying to keep my face quiet, because I couldn’t have disagreed with her more. I was counting down the days until I finished my degree, until I no longer had any homework, until I checked off what felt like a box on my life’s to-do list.

And while now, over ten years later, I still agree with my initial assessment of her comment, I’m beginning to wonder if she didn’t mean the schooling part, but the people. The constant access to familiar faces and acquaintances you can grab lunch with or chat to on the way to the library, to friends and the possibility, each day, of making more.

I think we might all take for granted that access, not realizing until we’re older that it’s increasingly difficult to find.

As time settles us into routines, into families and foundational friends, we find less and less places to meet new people. To rediscover that casualness of a school setting where one day you’re doing trigonometry homework with a boy on the baseball team and the next day you’re paired up in PE with a girl on track to be the valedictorian. Where questions like “how do you know her?” can be answered with something as simple as, “we had English together.”

My social media is filled with people I once had English with. People that are now in different states, living different lives. People I don’t have a lot in common with anymore but I can still remember how easy it was to sit down at our desks and talk about a project, an upcoming dance, or a boy we were talking to on AIM.

These days, it’s hard to make friendships that stick. Friendships that deepen, or even exist outside the circumstances they are born. It’s hard to invite someone into your life, your routine, or figure out how to fit into theirs. It’s hard to let someone all the way in, especially as we get older.

But what I’m learning is that there isn’t always a party at fault—like a mechanical flaw of a suction cup—or a conscious choice to not see each other or lose contact—like breaking a streak on a language learning app. Friendships come in all shapes, sizes, lengths and depths and they can all be meaningful in their own way.

And while it’s incredibly hard when friendships wane, fade, or end, I am learning that if you leave yourself open to it, new ones can always begin. I’m learning that sometimes making friends is as simple as finding new allies in the world. New people to root for, new people to pray for, new people to lean on when times get hard. New people to be inspired by, new people to pop up in our inbox to say, “thinking about you today!” New people to vouch for you and listen to you and see you in a way you haven’t been seen before.

A little friendship can go a long way. Whether it’s a friendly wave from across the room, an unexpected heart to heart, a high spirited, “exactly!!” from a stranger in passing, or a simple, “how are you?” when you haven’t been asked in a while.

I’m thankful for all of my friends and I’m hopeful there’s a handful more I’ve yet to meet. In the meantime, I bought a different razor and I write “practice my Spanish” on my to-do list each week. I’m doing what I can to foster long lasting relationships, and learning what I can from those that end sooner than expected.

And I’m still waiting (and waiting and waiting) to miss being in school, because so far, I haven’t.