You Never Truly Realize How Much Can Change In A Year

We were riding along in the blue Ford Escape. It was dark out, but not that late yet. A few of us were buzzed from good craft beer. But the real buzz came from being together again.

She reached out and turned on the radio. “Whistle” by Flo Rida was playing on KISS FM. I think it was a remix.

She turned it up and started singing loudly, “This was so popular last year. This time last year, I remember.” I laughed because that song is anything but popular now. That notion got me thinking though — how much had changed in a year. This silly song has been replaced by newer and more relevant ones. But so much else has changed right along with the radio’s music selects.

Seemingly overnight, let alone in the last year, my four best girlfriends became separated by state lines and various time zones.

We’ve started new jobs, new beginnings. Made new friends, began new relationships. Learned things about ourselves, and have hopefully grown in doing so.

When you sit and really think about that, the idea can overtake you. Make you forget that even though a lot has changed, the important things haven’t. The things that actually matter when you put it all down on paper. The things that are truly significant at the end of the day. That’s what you need to focus on. Not all that has changed, but rather, all that hasn’t.

Listening to that song and hearing her say, “This was so popular a year ago” was jarring. We used to all sing that song a year ago. Standing in a shitty bar booth covered in chewed up pieces of gum and black Sharpie graffiti. Holding dollar draft beers and screaming the lyrics at the top of our lungs.

Here we are, an entire year later, unsure of the next time we’ll all be in the same place. But the one thing that was sure in that moment: we were all still together. Maybe not in distance, but in sisterhood. We were all still close friends, all still singing the lyrics to that same song.

A year has passed, and a lot has changed. When life is passing quickly and everything feels different, you have to bring yourself back to reality and focus on the things that haven’t changed. The lyrics haven’t changed. Neither have we, really. Not to each other at least. I love them just as much as I did a year ago, sitting in that blue Ford Escape.