Alcohol and Friends

Introducing my besties, Ada, Caroline, Jenn, Maki, and Steph... We have known each other for over a decade and share so many memories. I am lucky to be able to count on them to be there during my best and worst times (and they have seen plenty of both). We have definitely changed over the years and it gets harder and harder to be able to hang out all of us at once because everyone is doing their own thing. That's one of the things I miss the most about being in high school and college, the carefree days where we would hang out and not make a fuss about what to do when we hang out. But we have to all accept that it will never be the same, unfortunately.

During the past few years, our gatherings generally involve eating and drinking and I think we are all getting over the novelty of getting drunk together because as of late, it has been quite stressful with a teaspoon of drama. It's amazing how alcohol brings people together, well at least from my experience. For example, I was just looking at my last birthday's shenanigans and it involved lots of drinking and eating a delicious meal at The  Little Door. The highlight of the night was the fancy restaurant and drinking a couple of boots of beer at a bar.

My girlfriends are very encouraging and they don't take no for an answer. They are also persuasive and will root you until you accomplish your goal. Apparently, on my 26th birthday, my destiny was to drink as much beer from the infamous boot as possible. We all shared the boot and we don't mind sharing the cooties, we have done plenty of that in our days. Then I noticed, that a group of people sitting next to us became our cheerleaders for the night. I'm not sure if they were rooting us on because we were obnoxiously loud and somehow transformed into a frat group or they were genuinely supportive and encouraging. I'd like to think it's the latter because we were not obnoxious, we were just talking loudly because it was so loud in the bar already ;P

Moving forward, although I miss the good times that binge drinking bring to our long nights of partying, it seems like it is almost time to retire from those activities. Our bodies and emotional states just can't handle the alcohol intake anymore. Or may be each of us is at different stages in life, I for one, am very behind... But I digress, I hope that the bond we have is not just tied to our past memories and our affinity for eating and drinking but we genuinely like each other and are interested in each other's lives and endeavors. I don't know if I'm going through a major hormonal phase, but I've been feeling lonely lately, socially lonely. I hope it's just a temporary bump. I wonder if I'm the only feeling this way...

In the spirit of nostalgia, here is a video of my friends and me during my 26th birthday, we love instigating each other and enjoy having a jolly ol' time with a boot or two filled with beer... So many quotes worth mentioning like, "We are not letting her go to the toilet until she finishes!" or "I sorry" or "You are so close, you are so close!" or chants of "Drink the boot! Drink the boot! Finish the boot! Finish the boot!" LOL