About being the oldest friend

First of all, I hope you appreciate me leaving enough time for you to digest my last post. I know it was hard to swallow. I was also giving myself time to actually go out and live life and come back with enough data collected on it to share my wisdom with you. You're welcome.

The days has come, my dear friends. I can finally write this post. I would like to thank my parents for loving each other in the right time, my friends' parents for loving each other in the right time later, and God, of course, for making this possible by loving everyone, everytime.

It all starts with me sitting in my living room - all the my best stories start like this - , waiting for my friends to pick me up. Now. This happens once in a blue moon. The excitement that I feel when I'm not the one driving the squad somewhere is indescribable. Let me try though. A five year old kid, on her birthday, which is also Christmas, on coke. I'm not sure I made myself clear enough - I don't get picked up very much.

This made me think - being the oldest friend in a group of six girls is a bit like having five children. Their minds wander, plans get changed last minute, moods swing rapidly and you always have to have some snacks in your purse. As the oldest friend you become the party planner, the taxi driver, the lunch lady and the GP - often you even have to prescribe medicine which you know you should not, but mother instinct. All you want to do is help them. Being in your mid-twenties is hard, much harder than the whole turning thirty paranoia everyone is loud about. I wish I had a mommy-friend too at that age. That's probably why I enjoy playing this role. It's also a very good practice for the time when I'll actually have children that don't live in a different address with a grown-up man. That would be weird.

Being the oldest friend also means you want to make sure they don't make the same mistakes as you did at their age - or at least don't go through the same pain as you have. Constantly giving advices mean that you become the judge that doesn't play. It's their time to shine, you had yours, game over. Then of course they rarely take them, just as your kids probably also wouldn't. I don't know, maybe you're a better mother than I am. Taking care of your younger friends feels good, but it also feels weird when you see them actually listening to you or to another older friend, taking the advice you've given and moving forward in life. Most of my younger friends are way ahead of me in the life goals our society chose for women. I used to be jealous of that, even though I am very happy for them at the same time, but remember, that was successfully let go of in the last couple of weeks. I'm still zen.

Seeing all these younger girls getting married and having babies instantly makes you feel like the weird-cat-lady-drunk-at-twelve-on-a-sunday-always-on-vacation auntie that just randomly visits from time to time. You just hope you don't smell like an Irish bar when you enter your friend's place to visit her newborn. You try to hide the hickie from two nights ago with a scarf even though it's the middle of the summer and boiling hot inside and outside. You constantly ask your friend if she feels like having a glass of wine with you, because you keep forgetting she's still breastfeeding and babies don't like milky wine. That would be my rapper name. Lil Milky Wine.

I have something to confess - technically I'm not the oldest friend in our group of six. There is one girl that is older than me, but... how should I describe her... if we were in the Hundred Acre Wood, she would be Piglet. Simply the cutest thing you'll ever see. 

Now please allow me to enjoy being picked up and not having to make five stops and three detours myself to satisfy everyone's needs. I'll probably still need to be the navigation system on the passenger seat. After five hundred meters, make a U-turn, and drive me back home.

V