It’s November 2009, and I’ve just published my first post on my very own personal blog. I’ve recently turned 23 and would often joke over the life of that blog that I was living out my teenaged rebellion a handful of years too late.
I was rather lost in the way you can only be in your early 20’s. 23-year-old Mari was just a baby, really, something I can confidently declare now in my late 30’s, but she certainly felt the pressure of adulthood. Of growing up and figuring things out and having a plan. “The whole picture will slowly become clear, for you the reader, as much as for myself. I have no idea where this is going. I have no idea where I'm going,” I wrote.
I started that blog with a high school friend that I reconnected with, via Facebook of course, that very year. We spent a lot of those early days of our rekindled friendship talking about who and what we wanted to be, longing for the built in ways that high school had allowed us creative outlets and avenues for expression. We were both living at home, working mind-numbing jobs, and I suppose at that point, we were fondly remembering the back of the yearbook classroom or practicing in the hallways for debate tournaments, or perhaps the very sincere belief that a summer makeover could change everything.
And so, we started a blog, one we planned in a cloth-bound journal while sitting at a picnic table at a park we drove by on the prettiest day of the whole year while on a spur of the moment roadtrip.
I’m spending a lot of time here, describing to you these moments and this friend, but it turns out they are both only sort of the point, as that blog no longer exists and neither does that friendship.
For a while, though, I used that space to pour out my feelings in such an earnest way that I am both so proud of that girl and deeply mortified by her words. I try not to be. I try to extend her grace, as I did ultimately find a creative outlet there. I made friends in the comment section and through other communities dedicated to all of us 20-somethings caught in the whirlwind of personal blogging.
I met my best friend Nicole.
I imagine that if you ask her about this same time in her life, she’ll also express some feelings about being a baby, a little lost, and a bit of a mess. In fact, in her first blog post, she shares, “on Sunday I graduated from college with a degree I don’t really know what to do with, as well as a lot of debt, a strong desire to travel, and a complete lack of direction.”
That’s the meet-cute: the luck of finding ourselves sharing similar virtual and emotional spaces. We were two young women with no idea where we were going, a complete lack of direction. We were primed to become deeply embedded in each other’s lives.
The earliest messages I still have from Nicole are very on brand for our friendship. There’s one where she sent me a blog post to read over for her. She asked for a volunteer to do this in a general chatroom, and I jumped at the chance. “This is my in,” I thought, confident I wanted to be friends with someone so cool.
There is a brief exchange in February of 2011 about a trip Nicole is planning to New York for her birthday. I make plans to go, even committing to selling “a non-vital organ to finance it.” I can’t remember why, exactly, I didn’t make it. I do still have all of my organs.
By April of 2011, we launched what would become Snark Squad, a blog first dedicated to recapping the books we read as children, and then later where we took on more media to analyze and critique and laugh at. There is no way for me to emphasize enough how much consuming media and creating things together was foundational to our friendship. I learned so much because of and with Nicole, about life, about my own politics, about language and community, and almost all of those things were funneled through media and pop culture. We were constantly becoming the newest versions of ourselves via the conversation we were perpetually having across a screen.
In August of 2011, I met Nicole in person for the first time in Chicago, attending a conference we jokingly called bloggy school.
This was the first of many, many trips we would take together. Almost as soon as we became friends, Nicole started inviting me to come travel with her. To visit her family, listen to live music, discover a city she loved, join her on a work trip. It’s amazing to me how easily she extended her hand so that I could adventure right alongside her.
I mean it about feeling like I’ve been in perpetual conversation with her since 2011. We often say good morning and goodnight and check in with a “how are you?” or a “how is your heart?” but these are manufactured beginnings and endings. We are just as likely to jump in with a non-sequitur or send a message at 3am with no explanation given or needed.
A running joke between us is that we are sharing the same few brain cells. (All of our best jokes and observations are workshopped.) The real thing at play here, however, is that it is impossible for me to extricate my own thoughts and sense of self from Nicole’s influence. You cannot be in constant conversation with someone and not have it start to blur the lines of where their thoughts and words begin and where your own end.
Nicole’s father died last year. I recently heard her talk about the depth of her grief by saying she forgot how to be a person. There is something so deeply true about grief contained in those words. Loss erases the map you’ve made of your own life. It redraws the landscape and often between one moment and the next.
Her words stayed with me. It hits me hard to think about my friend’s grief, the kind I can’t get rid of, or take on for her, or even lessen. But I can do this: I can, as I always have, hold so deeply in my heart who Nicole is. I can hold it there safe while she remembers how to be a person.
Nicole is, forever, the bravest girl I know. She’s the kind of person whose mind you can see working, as she wears it all over her face. (Even now, I can clearly picture her face when I’ve said something wrong, and she’s calculating how to tell me I am in fact wrong.) Nicole is effortlessly funny. I don’t know if it feels that way to her, but the speed of her wit makes it seem that way to others. We often joke about astrology and only buying into it for fun, but my fire sign best friend is very much a fire sign. She’s often moving so fast, a bit of whirlwind, but one I’m happy to walk (a city block) behind (I have short legs) because I know it will never be boring. I say that also knowing that whether we are taking naps on the ground at an outdoor concert, or having ourselves a picnic next to the Eiffel Tower, or sitting on my couch telling Netflix yes, we are still watching, we are never bored with each other.
We do suck at making decisions, though. I can’t remember that we’ve ever had a serious argument, but if we ever do, it will probably be because we can’t decide what to eat. Nicole could tell me tomorrow she wants to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or she wants to build houses, and I wouldn’t doubt her for a second. If she said it with the kind of conviction she gets when she finally has made up her mind, it would only be a matter of time before she was Dr. Nicole or Nicole Esq. or Nicole the Builder. She is so smart and thoughtful. Her energy and thirst for knowledge are infectious. I think she might be the only person in the world who looks up the pronunciation of words, just to make sure, as much as I do. I trust her to keep all my secrets, all my “for the bestie only” thoughts. She dreams in exactly the way I do, the kind of day dreams that are both slightly absurd and far-fetched, but in the most practical ways. (She’s fond of sending Zillow listings for houses we can’t afford, but suggesting very reasonable renovations.) She sees the worst parts of me and interprets them in the most generous light.
I know I’m incredibly lucky to have a best friend like this. We appreciate our friendship, with each other, pretty frequently. Today, I just wanted to appreciate it with you.
Inspired By:
This middle grade novel is the House Salt Book Club pick for January. In a stunning twist of events (as I’m known for my procrastination in the book club), I’ve already finished it. Our main character, Morrigan, is neglected by her family and ostracized her entire life, until she is swept away from that life to compete for admittance to a magical school. The Trials of Morrigan Crow is a charming story with classic coming-of-age themes. Morrigan often feels alienated and left out and spends the whole book wondering what makes her special. She worries about making and keeping friends. In the midst of all this, she meets a boy who extends his hand to her so easily. Every time Morrigan expects Hawthorne to turn away or leave her, he gives her a smile and proposes another adventure. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“Hawthorne was giving his friendship as if it meant nothing. He couldn’t know that it meant everything.”
“It made sense to her now. Jupiter carried himself like a king, like he was surrounded by an invisible bubble that protected him from all the bad things in life. He knew there were people in the world--somewhere out there--who loved him. Who would always love him. No matter what.
That was what he was offering her.”
Currently:
Elsewhere:
BookNet Fest, the event I co-own and organize, will be back in 2023 in Orlando, FL. More details forthcoming, but check out our announcement and pre-registration.
I’ve posted my top 10 and bottom 10 reads for 2022. My Patrons also got my top 11-20. These end of year videos are always some of my favorites to create.
Over on TikTok, I posted a video about Colleen Hoover announcing a coloring book themed after It Ends With Us, her book about a woman in an abusive relationship. The coloring book was cancelled the next day, but the conversation about what constitutes romanticized abuse I think is necessary.