I guess it’s par for the course that I know a lot of recently married or soon to be married people.  I’m even surprised that I don’t have any 2012 weddings on my calendar yet. (No need to rush yourselves for my sake.)

The first of my high school friends is getting married this fall. I’ll call her by my old nickname for her, Hermit. According to Facebook, quite a few of our former classmates are now married, but among the people I’ve actually kept in touch with over the years, she’s the first.

In high school, Hermit and I hatched a scheme: that we would be hermits together (hence her nickname). Yes, we were aware that the idea of fellow hermits was oxymoronic. We imagined ourselves platonic life partners, living in a cabin in the woods, playing glow in the dark badminton at night.

We made cookies together. There was a period of time I slept over on Friday nights. She listened to my romantic woes (which weren’t really that interesting, considering that they pretty much focused on the same individual for most of high school). We were each other’s senior prom date. For college, she stayed in the city, and I moved up to Boston, but in our freshman year, she came up to see me Presidents’ Day weekend, which coincided with Valentine’s Day. She was my valentine, and it was a pretty rockin’ Valentine’s Day, if I can say so myself.

Still, Hermit predicted that I would be the one to ruin The Plan, that I’d fall in love with someone, end up settling down with him and having a family. She said she’d still have the hermit cabin, and that I could come and stay with her whenever I wanted to get away from the husband and kids. I suppose it made sense at the time to think that I’d be the one to back out; I got into a serious relationship at the end of our first year of college, while she dated around and questioned if she was even capable of loving someone.

But fast forward a couple of years, and Hermit is getting married. We haven’t been in touch as much ever since she moved to California to pursue her PhD; we’re not always visiting New York at the same time. I’m not sure if I can attend her California wedding because my life is so up in the air currently, but since she was having a New York bachelorette party before her PhD starts up again, I came down from Boston.

Buying friends lingerie or sex toys is weird for me. Buying for friends I’ve known for ages is even weirder. Hermit and I were practically children when we first met as high school freshmen. (C’mon!) I felt infinitely better about the “typical” bachelorette gift I got, some whipped cream for the body, when I added something that felt more true to the Hermit spirit, a plastic beverage sipper shaped like a dinosaur, which I found in a supermarket half an hour before the party start time.

“We can still have the Hermit Retreat,” Hermit insisted during the party, over two pies of real New York City pizza (oh, how I missed thee). “I’ll need a place to get away.”

Later, at the bar, Hermit and the Maid of Honor befriended a nearby group of investment bankers, though it might be more accurate to say the guys did the befriending. The most common question posed to us: Why are all your lips blue? Answer: Ring Pops. They also helped some of the members of the bachelorette gang (not me, of course) check items off the bachelorette scavenger hunt (oh, yes, MOH was prepared) including piggyback rides.

“I just want you to be happy,” Hermit yelled over the loud music at one point in the night.

Well, yeah, I want to be happy, too. I’ve said this before and I’m sure I’ll say it again, but it’s hard feeling like your life is in disarray when it looks like everyone else’s life is coming together. Sure, other friends’ lives probably look more stable than they actually are. But lagging behind is something that’s hard to accept when you’ve been an overachiever (or at least feeling like you ought to be one) for a lot of your life.

“I miss you,” Hermit yelled later. “No one else gets the Hermit Retreat.”

I don’t blame them, I guess. It’s the kind of plan that made sense at the time, being jaded teenage girls at a very heavily female school. We were all antiestablishment at the time. My sixteen-year old self would have been severely disappointed in Hermit with her “Bachelorette” sash, pulling out the childhood picture of her fiance from her purse, and in me with my Mardi Gras-style plastic beads (yeah, more of those). Sixteen-year old Hermit would have been disappointed, too, I’m sure.

Twenty six-year old Hermit kept insisting on the Hermit Retreat. I’m hoping that neither of us will need it.

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