Friend

In a room full of people, my attention is drawn instantly, inexplicably to the one with the stories. I see it in her eyes, in the way she holds my gaze when she asks what city I come from. We are very different, she and I, but I lean into her story as she does into mine.

I ignore the girl who comes to my dance class, slightly too content with her life that is so similar to mine. I ignore the girl who sits back with a polite smile that tells me she hasn't thought of a different life. At dinner this weekend, I realized how the people I am closest to aren't those who have learned to be content with their lives and pick out the prettiest dinnerware, but those who still struggle some deep unknown internal fight to BE.

Be someone bigger/better/stronger/fuller/greater/quieter/louder. Be more than just what they are. And it is only in this particular being that they somehow are completely present, a little off balance with the awareness of this edge of something more, something waiting.

In thinking back and forth, these are the people I am drawn to. The ones with stories, who have flown through personal storms small or large, only some of which they choose to share with me. But I can tell, when limbs and smiles are curved with the strength of a survivor, when a question draws me in on a secret flight through a high desert wind and it tastes like thirst and pain and growth and just a little bit of knowing, knowing that you and I might have traveled different roads but still, we have traveled. And we remember the journey and how it changed us.