The Aly

Today is dedicated to my friend G who inspired so much love and joy in the world around her and who could always make you laugh. Become aware and share her story*

It’s been awhile since I’ve had to make a new friend.  The first nineteen years of my life were a piece of cake.  My parents did half the job for me when I was little.  Really, it’s whomever you get plopped in front of when you’re a baby.  Any addition to the group is the sole result of what bus you ride to school.  It’s perfectly formulaic. College involves slightly more effort but not much.  It’s maybe more apparent who you don’t want to be friends with; usually a roommate along the way that you had dirty-dish wars with.  I know I’m not the only one out there that has contemplated piling the dirty dishes in my roommate’s bed.  I made my first friend in college, not surprisingly, when I was lost in my map of the campus looking for the Humanities building at orientation.  She was lost too: instant bonding.  And somehow we travel really well together.  After college there’s generally another “move” and then the real test begins.  How do you make friends when you’re not forced into a living situation or assigned a research partner or lost on a campus with 35,000 people your age?  You get a job and hang out with your co-workers!  To me though, this doesn’t count as a real challenge.  It’s another gift.  I think during a typical application review they strongly consider whether or not you will mesh well at Happy Hour at the pub down the street.  So what happens when you end up in a foreign country, living with your Mom?  Your job consists of you, alone in an apartment on a computer and you take private classes?  It is time to put yourself out there.

Hello Shadow, will you be my friend?

Don’t get me wrong though, my Mom is a very good friend and we are very grown up about doing the dishes.  She is always willing (if not eager) to have yet another cappuccino with me too.  We got out all the time…just not until 3am.  Which, I was kind of craving.  I had had it with all the noisy kids outside my bedroom window, singing and zooming around on their mopeds and then the clackity-clack of the high heels on the marble staircase of the building.  I wanted to make noise!  I wanted to find the club I used to go to here, every night with my roommates 6 years ago, that you could only find in the darkness of night after a few beers.  It was then I fully realized my situation.  I must make a friend.  I had to figure out away to come off as cool and confident not awkward and desperate.  Do I just bump into someone and ask if she will be my friend?  Should I have my Mom set up a play date for me with one of her friends?  My Mom it seems has no problem making friends; within the first week of her living here she had already gathered an entourage of twenty-year-olds to hang out with.  Kudos Mom.  Do I call someone and ask if they’d like to go to dinner with me?  Oh right, the only number I have in my phone is my Mom’s Italian cell number.  Finally, I thought of someone who might want to adopt another friend, an acquaintance from the fashion design sector.

I drank a glass of wine and sat down to engineer the perfect email.  Blah, blah, blah…oh, and by the way, could I tag along with you and your cool fashion friends sometime?  I sent it.  I drank another glass of wine and waited it out.  Within moments I was already dissecting the email.  Did I say too much?  Did I come off as weird?  My Mom assured me that we could go out with her friends if I got denied.

Mom-friend

After the first day without a reply I knew I had blown it.  I remained confident though.  I thought, this ok, it is only my first attempt to make a friend.  I will try again.  Then day two came and I began to revisit my qualities as a human being.  I questioned whether it was possible for me to make another friend in my life, ever.  That night I got a response that made me feel utterly ridiculous and warm and fuzzy at the same time.  It started with, “Alyssa, darling…” and ended with a big, “of course!”  I had made a friend.  I had asked a girl out and she said yes!

One of my new friends

With that test completed, within days I had many new numbers in my phone.  I didn’t think twice about going up to friendly looking people and saying, “hey, we’re both in Florence, let’s hang out some time.”  I can’t walk out of my apartment now without running into someone I know.  Many a night now, I have been that girl clackity-clacking up the marble steps in the middle of the night.

Smile today.

*visit Glenna’s blog >link on the right