The perfect heartbreak of perfect friendships

You can’t watch the sunset on the last night of vacation forever, you eventually have to pack your shit and go home.

One of the little delicacies of being in LA this summer is seeing a handful of people I feel so close to, but don’t see very often - and this week, a miracle, I saw two friends I met in high school. One I keep in regular contact with—I adore her, she’s one of my wisest most brilliant friends, and the other is someone I’ve seen only twice in the last 17-ish years.

Some backstory: I went to boarding school my Sophomore, Junior, and Senior years of high school - the luck of that fact I’m still struck by. On late summer mornings I can still really easily call up the feeling of walking out of my dorm and marveling that I get to live here and go to school here. I felt cracked in half, heart exploding joy at having the opportunity and I really savored it. I was so happy - SO happy! My biggest fear was having to leave.

I have no digital copies of photos from that time, but here I am, the summer after my Junior year at marine bio research summer camp. I remember when this was taken I was memor…