When You Know, You Know

I have always been a person that believes in actions over words, showing your love not just stating your love, choosing your family, and earning respect. I believe that everyone needs to have a family to rely on whether it was the one you were born into or one you made for yourself. I have never had a good relationship with any of my family members but since I have chosen to lean into the idea of my chosen family as my family I have felt a lot more at ease. My closest family members are Taylor, Annie, Miah, Ada, and Amareah. I have collected these members starting in the fourth grade with the longest Miah and the newest as of freshman year of college, Amareah.

The one that led to another

In elementary school my best friend was Mulky. We met in our classroom, Mr. Durand. I walked up to her and asked her if she wanted to be best friends with all the courage and worry-free nature that four year olds have. She said yes. We were friends up until a typical immature middle school fall out, but she led me to Miah. Miah came into our school in third grade but I was not friends with her until the fourth grade because we were in different classes and I had a silly rift with her because she and Mulky shared a class together. At nine years old sharing a best friend was extremely taboo and so our childish jealousy kept us from one another until the following year when we were in the same class.

Miah liked me at first because I had “beautiful wavy hair” and she needs to be friends with anyone with beautiful hair, this is how she still explains it today. Miah is a woman after my own heart. She has high cheekbones, beautiful hair she works very hard to keep beautiful. She was attracted to my hair because I also have curly hair, but for a person of European descent, her curls are tighter, bouncier, and made of hair so dark brown it is almost black. While everyone is “short” in elementary school, it’s a funny sight to see us together as our eyelines don’t even come close to meeting, hers meets my chest where mine grazes above her head. We became close very quickly by bonding over our non-traditional family structures. Me having divorced parents since I was a one year old and her parents being young, unmarried, and not together. She invited me into her home and her family. She wasn’t the first sleepover that I attended but she was the first home I slept in that felt like family. I was shy whenever I met new people, especially when I was younger. When we walked into her house after her mom had gathered up all of Miahs friends for a birthday party and big outing at the notorious Grand Slam Family Fun Center we were going inside where her stepfather was.

Mike is the warmest man I have ever met. He greeted everyone with a hug and I made a comment about being sneaky like a ninja that I didn’t think he heard until he declared that I was going to be his ninja. I am nineteen years old and still everytime that I see Mike he asks how his ninja is. I’ve seen Mike age and grow almost just the same as he has seen me. He’s about five foot ten inches, so I’ve grown vertically closer to him as well as emotionally. He’s a very slim man, never really able to put on a lot of muscle. He had a little bit of facial hair when I was young, now he has a full beard and locs in his hair. He has a sharp jaw and tight chin that frame his welcoming smile. Having a hard home life when you’re young creates perspective, this perspective has made Mike want to be everything he didn’t have. I have never said it, but I believe Mike knows he’s another father to me. Miah also has three younger sisters that I’ve had the privilege to see grow up as I’ve grown up with Miah. While I do have a sister, Miah and her sisters always make me feel like one of them. I love Miah because she is someone I can sit in silence with without tension, say anything to without worrying, and always feel at home with.

Middle school isn’t so awful

I met Taylor in the seventh grade. We had eighth grade math (in the seventh grade) and advanced science together. I didn’t talk to Taylor until we had a seating chart switch as we did with every unit in math and I was sat in a group of three of me, Taylor, and Cate Koltes. I had never been close friends with someone like Taylor before. An average height, long blonde hair, golf player, athleisure, PINK brand clothing, and still almost exclusively wears black leggings. Taylor has never been a social person, welcoming, or inviting, as I’ve grown to know her this is just a defense mechanism of her anti-social nature. So, I was pretty sure Taylor didn’t like me because she always had to help me with math problems, sometimes repeatedly explaining the same concept due to my own mental block. Taylor has always loved math and is pursuing a career in engineering to no one’s surprise. It was always a victorious day when she had to ask me for help in math. Eventually I broke her down, in between working on math problems I would crack jokes and she would laugh. She was the friend I turned to in science when the teacher said we could pick our lab partners, thankfully she matched my gaze. A common theme in my chosen family is the non traditional family structures we come from. Taylors parents are divorced too so she understood not being able to hangout because one of us was at our dads house.

Taylor used to make me so mad in freshman year of high school whenever I would joke about our weddings and being eachothers bridesmaids. Taylor is not realistic but pessimistic and so she would always take the stance that “we don’t know where we’re going to be in ten years, if we’re even going to be friends, or where we’re going to be living.” I hate Taylor only in moments like these where she insinuates we may not always be friends together. I am proud to say that Taylor and I are still best friends, despite being eleven hours away at different colleges. Whenever Taylor and I see each other again we always fall back into our old tradition of watching Shark Tank and doing a puzzle together. I couldn’t imagine and wouldn’t dare to do that with anyone else.

High school sweethearts

Annie is the platonic love of my life. I became friends with Annie in freshman year of high school after I anxiously slid up on her Snapchat story and asked for a TBH (to be honest). We had a mutual friend, a couple classes together but because of her popular reputation for the middle school climate I was intimidated. I had nothing to be scared of. Annie, like Taylor, wore the on-brand clothing that the popular, and usually mean girls wore, so I was steered away from her because of this. Annie does exclusively wear black leggings, unless a special occasion arises, she wears her hair at a medium or long length, depending on when it was last cut, always her natural dark brown, almost black, straight hair. Annie wears sweatshirts and t-shirts, often for whatever school she or her siblings are attending at the time. After the infamous TBH on November ninth of 2018 I began to get to know the girl that would grow so close to me we almost became attached. From the moment I met Annie she has been nothing but the most genuine and beautiful soul I have ever met. Annie comes from a very traditional and strict Hmong family and so it took a year of friendship before we could hangout outside of school. Our friendship started out very innocently, mainly complaining about APUSH (AP US History) and boys. Annie and I became very close during quarantine, right after schools closed our sophomore year. We were both going through terrible break-ups at the same time and we leaned on each other. There were many nights that we stayed up late texting and calling and sending voice messages. During deeper Covid times my mom allowed my sister and I to have people over, in 2021, in our garage where she brought our Xbox and old TV. Just so I could see Annie in person I invited her and her younger-by-ten-years sister Sophia to play Just Dance together. I would have never thought that two sixteen year olds and a six year old could have that much fun together doing something so obscure.

Our friendship progressed once we started connecting on deeper issues, family issues. As I said Annie comes from a traditional family Hmong family. Today, I am the only friend that her mom truly trusts and will say yes to almost anything if she knows that I am going to be there. I have had Annie over at my house many times. However, the best of times were the worst of times. I have grown closest to Annie by talking on the captain’s-bed-converted-into-a-couch in my basement. From all that Annie has told me I may know more about her family than her two younger siblings. Just a month ago Annie came over to my house an hour earlier than our friends were coming over because she needed to talk to someone so badly and she needed to talk to me. Annie came over to my house barely holding herself together when my mother asked her upstairs how school was going and winter break and being home. Once we were safe in my room in the basement and I had cautiously closed all my doors she began to sob telling me how scared she was because of her unsure academic standing at her college. I value vulnerability so much and I love when I am able to be the person people can be that “uncomfortable with.” I’ve ridden in the trunk of Annie’s sister’s boyfriend’s minivan on the way home from the drive-in, Annie has sat on my lap in her crammed Toyota Camry when her mom drove our friend group home. I’ve been in a days-long argument with one of her ex-boyfriends over Instagram direct messages. I’ve put an (unused) tampon under the windshield of a terrible guy’s car with her. I’ve attended a rainy baseball game with her just so she could see the guy she liked play. I’ve made gingerbread houses with her and her younger sister. I’ve had some of my best, and worst moments, with Annie.

Why I believe college was, and will be a great experience

Ada Mae is as beautiful of a person as her name sounds. I met Ada only last year because we were on the same dorm floor. I had a terrible experience with my roommate last year and she was one of the only reasons why I made it through. Ada and her roommate freshman year, Amareah, decided to ask my old roommate and I to sit next to us during our first RA floor meeting on the grass outside of Griggs PQ. I was overwhelmed with packing, my mother, and the heat, but Ada was so refreshing. Ada had blue-green short hair, clear glasses-frames as windows to her deep brown eyes and full eyebrows, and a way about her that made me want to know more. We went to dinner with them that same night. Within the first week of college, although I don’t even like pickles, Ada, Amareah, Elena, Emma, and I had a pickle hallway party. By that I mean we sat in the hallway talking, giggling, and eating pickles. As silly as it may sound, that is one of the moments that made me realize I wanted these people, especially Ada, in my life. We made “family traditions” such as our five o’clock family dinners, Ada and Amareah inviting girls from the floor to their room for tea time, study sunday, and occasional movie nights where Ada would skillfully stack her ottoman on top of the provided dorm desk chair and we sat on her bed watching whatever, sometimes Survivor.

Ada and I have a tendency to make unconventional plans and have such a fun time doing them. Ada and I didn’t have an interest in going to frats so when our friends went out we would get into our pajamas, make tea, and sit in the lounge talking about whatever, without there ever being an awkward lull, and watching the late night intoxicated hallway activities of other residents. The best moments I’ve had with Ada are ones where we are sitting and talking and keep feeding off of one another. Ada and I have talked for hours and could continue to do so. Every time I came back from an excursion with the male species she stayed up to “debrief” with me. Doing this in public places became risky when the subject of conversation would walk by. Everytime after spending any amount of time apart we would each have a debrief. Gone for the weekend? Debrief. Winter Break? Debrief. Went on a date? Debrief. Family came up for the day? Debrief. Ada has a way of making even the smallest things fun. Almost every time she gets a package she announces her unboxing. Almost every time she goes thrifting or to Trader Joes or shopping in her moms kitchen there is a subsequent “haul.” I had my suspicions about what some will say that the friends you make in college are for life, my friendship with Ada feels this way.

I met Amareah at the same time and in the same way that I met Ada, they were roommates as I said. Our friendship is different though. We are a great trio but I love spending time individually with Ada or Amareah. Amareah has been through too much for someone that is only twenty years old. Amareah takes a bit more to open up to you, I’m honored to be one of the recipients. Like I said, Amareah and Ada were roommates so I usually hung out with them together. One of the first moments we were hanging out together that made me feel like home, like I had met the people I was meant to meet was in the dorm bathroom, attempting to remove the black hair dye out of her hair in an attempt to dye it red. While this attempt failed and we ended up putting the red over the prominent black. Amareah has kept this up, the black dye growing out and redying red every so often, in the time I’ve known her the black has almost disappeared and been taken over by red. Amareah also had to work a lot so I spent more time in my freshman year alone with Ada than Amareah. Amareah is someone that won’t ask for someone to listen but she will want it and need it, you can tell by looking into her icy blue eyes, captivating, and very telling of what she cannot bring herself to say. I remember there was one day when Amareah and I were studying in one of the Griggs study lounges with the odd blue movable chairs next to a big window that overlooked Griggs “beach.”

Amareah was going through a tough time because she had recently found out she could not live at her mother’s over the summer so she was scrambling working a lot to build up her income to be able to sign a lease in time for the school year to end. Initially one of her close friends, Kaitlyn, who lived in Florida said that she would move back to Minnesota and live with Amareah. Very suddenly and abruptly Kaitlyn changed her mind and tried to convince Amareah to move down to Florida which was then posing a larger problem because then Amareah would have to apply to an entirely different campus/university instead of just applying to be a transfer student from Duluth to the Cities. As Amareah was explaining all of this to me she was becoming exhausted physically, emotionally, and mentally. She didn’t stop herself like she had in the past, she didn’t omit anything she was thinking, she didn’t keep a strong face, she let herself feel. Amareah has never been one to be vulnerable in any way, or really open up. In her opening up to me I was filled with both love and concern. I was there for her, I offered her reassurance. I told her she had to do what was best for her and that if someone was really her friend they would want what is best for her not what is most convenient for them. Even though this moment only lasted about thirty minutes and she may not feel the same way about it as I do.

Any car ride I have even taken with Amareah has been a source of happiness and joy and closeness. We weren’t girls together, we were teenage girls together, driving around blasting music and screaming songs that only we would scream together. Every ride would begin with a disclaimer from Amareah about her driving and a pleading to Carol the Camry to keep us safe and not die on us now. These drives were always accompanied by the appropriately named playlist, “Carol the Camry.” I think part of the reason why Amareah and I connected so well is that we have such an obscure yet similar music taste. I have never met someone who listens to almost all the different artists and kinds of music that I do. I would get so excited everytime she would show me new music or I found music that she hadn’t heard before. I take great pride in introducing her to Liar by Paramore, the second after I heard that song off of the album “This Is Why,” I knew she would love it and I felt an unusual sense of achievement after she confirmed that she did in fact love it as much as I did. Every drive I would secretly wish for it to be longer to make those moments never end. I would mentally manifest for red lights and light traffic so I could have a few more minutes in the car with Amareah and Ada (or whoever else was out on an excursion with us that day). After the rides we came back to campus where Amareah fearlessly conquered the giant snow-ice-hill shortcut that I was never courageous enough to conquer after taking a not-so-elegant fall one time. It was a race everytime we got back to campus to see which route could get to the door first. If Amareah was ever busy for a whole day like having classes and then working after class or on weekends when she would work doubles I would hope that she would be awake enough for Ada and Amareah to have tea time in their dorms. Even if the conversation was empty or just full of Amareah complaining about the customers it was the time and her presence that I valued.

My family

Some people have the privilege of being born with their families while others have the privilege of creating their own. I have known many people in my life, related by blood, and related by love. I love my family because they allow me to be myself, all versions and facets of myself. I think it is a beautiful thing that in only nineteen years of living I have been able to make five connections that I am confident can endure anything life offers as we have already been through so much together, I do not believe that anything could break our connections.