Ring in the New Year

I got to be a part of something super cool on Jan. 1: the engagement of one of my very best friends!  

Isata is getting married, y’all. You may remember her from my wedding. She was a bridesmaid.

Isata, our friend Sajia and me have all been bestest buddies since high school.  Both of them are in the medical field (a cardiologist and a dentist).  I was too dense to ever learn how to do subtraction in my head correctly, so I became a writer.  

Isata’s and Sajia’s parents also immigrated to the U.S. from Sierra Leone and Bangladesh. Meanwhile, I was born in Holland, but my parent’s U.S. citizenship basically made me an American so yeah, I’m still the odd one out there.

But when it comes to finding the love of your life and both agreeing to honor and cherish each other “forever and ever amen” I’m beyond ecstatic that Isata is joining the club. I told her now, she can be one of the “smug marrieds” like Sajia and me.

There’s no real purpose behind this post. I love my friends but it it’s not like I’ll be documenting Isata’s wedding on my blog in the same way that I gave you all every detail of mine.  The most I can hope to share in the future is what’s going into planning her bachelorette party.  And we all know that takes little to no time to plan. Needs:  alcohol, VERY LOUD RAUNCHY AND INAPPROPRIATE MUSIC, the same freakum dresses that we wore when we were 22, a hotel room and someone’s SnapChat profile.

Being at Isata’s engagement with my best friends and our best men at the start of the year was just more evidence of how f*&king lucky I am to just always have such great people around me, beside me and behind me. Isata and Sajia knew me when I didn’t have kidney disease. Not many people in my life can say that. I’ve been best friends with them for just a little more than half my life. And for an Army brat, that’s saying something.  

I’m turning 30 next week, and call me a late bloomer but I’m finally realizing just how special it is that we’re all still in this together-- “this” being friendship--after all almost two decades, and all the sharp turns and curves of life.  When we lose someone we love, when we get engaged, when one of us needs an organ transplant, or when we need to be wheel-chaired to our hotel rooms after drinking too much. I have been their witnesses and they have been mine. I couldn’t have chosen a better pair.

Also, Isata is the only person I can call when one of my family members throws up multiple times then poops on themselves, and we all wonder if they’re dying or just ate a batch of mozzarella sticks in a suspicious looking bar.