Wherever They Are

I was watching a Law & Order: SVU marathon last week and they played an episode that originally aired my senior year of high school. I'm not embarrassed to say (though maybe I should be) that this was an episode I still know by heart. I can recite the dialogue of entire scenes. I remember the conversations I had with my  friends the next day at school, when we talked about how close Olivia and Elliot had come to admitting feelings for each other. We were giddy, because after months and months of Socratic seminars and AP test prep we needed something to be giddy about.

Needless to say, I watched the episode again. I own it, but I watched it--not because it was either that or Cheer Perfection, but because sitting there in my sweats with my cup of tea, watching a show I loved when I was eighteen, made me feel the kind of happiness and safety that you only feel when your problems are no bigger than studying for a biology test. It was the satisfaction of another finished day, the excitement that you would wake up the next morning, walk to school as the sun was rising, and chat with your two best friends in front of the locker you all shared and had decorated with pictures of Johnny Depp and Patrick Dempsey.

Since moving away to college I have told people who asked that my high school years were heavy and demoralizing. But that attitude does a disservice to the things about those years that I wouldn't have changed for anything. I had amazing teachers. I had friends who were so witty and funny and supportive and interesting that they made my image of a perfect friend look like a mere passing acquaintance. Yes, much of my high school life was miserable. Yes, in this misery I pushed away the friends who loved me so completely that seeing me in pain was worse than not seeing me at all. And I understood. And I will never stop regretting how I acted.

But so much more of my high school life was a string of moments that were, simply put, profoundly beautiful. The time my friend Jessica and I pulled an all-nighter to film and edit The Lion King: An Existentialist Musical, a creative project our English class. The year my friends and I had a Valentine's Day party at my house and told stories until we fell asleep all piled together on the futon. The romantic comedy we created and made a soundtrack for, burning copies and listening to it so many times that each of us knew the next song before it even started. In these moments I found bliss and stability.

In the years since leaving for college I have lost touch with all but a few of my high school friends. I don't expect them to read this. I don't even expect that I cross their minds. But I want them to know that I will remember them always as the best part of me, and that apart from my family they are the only ones who have ever known me as "Liv." Nicknames are powerful things. They give you a sense of belonging and reassure you that no matter what, someone always knows you as something beyond your name. I love my friends for knowing me--truly knowing me--and for being exactly what I needed exactly when I needed it. For being my home.

And if we're ever all in the same place again, I have an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit that's calling our names.