Three’s A Charm

I often hear people say, “When I meet that special someone.” Even if you aren’t in a rush, that’s what you think about. For whatever reason, so many of us are wired to mainstream our thoughts into a romantic tunnel. We’re all looking for that special someone, and we just tend to think about it.

What we don’t tend to think about is all the other important people who will impact our lives in the meantime. I don’t know why, but we just don’t think about those people on the day to day. We may appreciate them, but we don’t think about meeting them consciously. You don’t say, “when I meet my next close friend” the way you talk about meeting your next romantic partner. You just don’t think about it.

And when you’re busy not thinking about it, you meet someone who will change you forever.

You would think that being in completely different stages of life would create barriers and walls between people, an inability to connect. At surface level, the only thing we had in common was our place of work. Our boss once described us to a tee: “One is pregnant, one just got married and one is…desperate to get married.”

You’d think we would have nothing in common or nothing to talk about. When you’re at these various stages, you want different things and dream different dreams. What is important to you may not be very important to someone 5 years older than you.

But that’s just it – despite these different ages and junctures, I’ve never had the ability to relate more to two people in my entire life. Whether it was a series of questions, welcomed advice or simply telling funny anecdotes, it was easy to talk and easy to listen.

At the end of the day, one of us would cook a nice chicken, complete with side dishes. One of us would pick up a pre-cooked chicken from Whole Foods. And one of us would probably drive through KFC for dinner. There was no escaping the differences, but we didn’t need to. On the contrary, we found our differences, and each other, extremely fascinating.

And we protected one another. We shared our qualms and talked each other off ledges. We knew when to keep quiet and when to push back. It was like there was an unwritten code or language, and we just innately knew it.

These girls have taught me a plethora of things, from homemade cornbread recipes to truthful life lessons. But the thing they’ve taught me most is that sometimes people just connect. There’s really no explanation for it – in fact, there are plenty of reasons why it’s strange and unlikely. Despite those, you just mesh.

I can’t decide if we were destined to be best friends, or if we just got really lucky. But if Charlotte York was right, and our girlfriends are our soul mates, then I have certainly met mine.