Nostalgia Attack - The Girlfriends

After an extremely stressful month, I spent the weekend alone to decompress, sleep, read, watch "girl movies," and, inevitably, be attacked by a giant case of nostalgia.

Perhaps it was getting in touch with a college friend (via Facebook) who I haven't seen in years and have missed more than I realized. Maybe it was actually talking with her, hearing how her voice hasn't changed, and, for the most part, neither has she. It could be that I spent a crazy summer visiting her "cottage" on the beach, going to a bar that is literally just a few miles down the road from where I now live.

Or maybe it's that I am lonely, and when I am lonely, I miss the 80s something fierce. Which makes no sense at all.

First of all, I am happier with my husband than I have ever been with any man. He's a talker and a listener, and spending time with him is simply easy - we're happy with silence, we're happy with noise, we're just happy with happy. Secondly, there were parts of the 80s that, quite frankly, were not all that great. The broken hearts, the not fitting in, the high school jerks - I could go on.

But. But.
I miss having girlfriends.

My college years especially were filled with girlfriends - girlfriends from high school, new girlfriends at college, girlfriends that I would take into adulthood, and girlfriends that wouldn't make it to the next semester. They were there, they were everywhere. We listened to songs and discussed their "true meaning." We squealed over this guy or that, and shared every intimate detail - a fact that still leaves guys shaking their heads, thinking, wrongly, that girls "don't talk like that." Ha, if they only knew.... We sweat through exams and cried over break-ups, and often provided an anonymous get-away car when on "drive-by" missions with a jilted - or smitten - friend.

Yes, I know - I should be over all that as I march into middle age - good God! But, I'm not. Not by a long shot. And I suppose it's been made worse by not following "the script" - I didn't get married and have babies like I was supposed to, so when my girlfriends did, I was left behind. And now I've moved to a place where I, yet again, don't fit in, and I wonder if I will ever have coffee and a good cry with another woman again.

Naturally this is all helped along by this damn internet, and the fact that I, within seconds, can access the entire music library of the 80s, the soundtrack to my life from 12 to 22. Yeah, it's not good. And it is so good.

For you, my 80s friends: