I really like band okay

rest stops on highways

trails by the highway just out of earshot of traffic

schools during breaks

those little beaches right next to ferry docks

your friends living room once everybody but you is asleep

the lighting section of home depot

the stage of a performance venue 

events where a lot of people are all wearing the same hat

Not every friendship is going to be this we-connect-on-every-level-no-one-has-ever-understood-me-this-way sort of soulmate. And that’s ok.

I think it’s important to note that there’s a difference because I never had the latter, what I’ll just call a kindred spirit, until I got to high school. And after that, I wanted all of my friendships to be like that, and when they weren’t I got frustrated, and probably ended up hurting a lot of people in the process when I burnt out or realized that isn’t what I really wanted. 

Kindred or casual, neither is better than the other. Both are good. It’s ok to have kindred spirits and it’s ok to have casual friends–human beings need both. You can’t get to know everyone intimately, it’s impossible and exhausting.

And I just feel like there’s this perception that you have to have a best friend, like you have to choose, and you have to hold onto them for years and years and years, and all of your friends have to be kindred spirits or they’re “acquaintances” and I’ve seen so many people categorize their friends as like … if someone doesn’t know you intimately  and won’t do certain things for you that are associated with kindred spirits they’re not “real/true friends” and I keep seeing this demarcation between “friends” and “best friends” and I think that’s kind of an unhealthy attitude and I don’t really think that’s true.

Sometimes you need someone you can spill your soul to, who peers into all your dark corners, who youdon’t lie to and who you feel gets you in a way no one else has. And that’s good and that’s healing.

Sometimes you just need someone who will geek out with you about a new rock or a new album or who is down for meeting you at a diner at 3 am or whatever and that’s it and there aren’t any expectations for soul-bearing (which is exhausting let me tell u what) and you’re both fine with that. And that’s good and that’s healing.

Listen, life is full of some really amazing things, and you’re going to meet some really amazing people. Sometimes they’ll hold your hand for the whole journey, or a long portion of it, and sometimes, they’ll just grab you and spin you around before letting go. And both are good.

We also have a ton of american urban mythology around famous roadways and sites off the sides of roads

Archetypes like these occur to mark the places in the world where the veil goes thin and humans can have extra-worldly experiences, out of the ordinary way of living

So why wouldn’t transient spaces like rest stops where everyone is just passing through from one place to the next, never stopping for too long, not be a liminal space where spirits frequent, too

Three days later–Sunday–we were traveling back and decided to stop at that church to thank them. We found it thanks to the truck stop, but this time it was the truck stop that was open and the church that was closed. Neither of us remembered it looking so decrepit on the trip down, and granted we saw it first at night in a snowstorm, but you’d think we’d have noticed the boarded-up windows. So we asked in at the truck stop.

The church had been abandoned for ten years. And yet I still had one of their youth group programs under my sun visor, very clearly labeled for the previous week.