that time i woke up in a tent with my best friends and was still the same person i was yesterday of last year.

It was really quite weird to be expecting to feel any different once the clock struck midnight. Like a new phase of my life would suddenly begin though it had been existing eleven months prior to that. But I was so scared and I could have never told D that he was the only person I wanted with me while it happened. But it made me wonder if five, ten years from now we'd still be in the same position. We were three years before this and then now. I used the word 'cyclical' in that way where all my best vocabulary comes out when I'm high and D's confused but really it's pretty trite and used in econ all the time. Anyway, three years ago we were in the same position: park, my car, late night; hoping that our then-lovers would never leave because then we'd have no text messages (really). And now us as older young adults prank calling our enemies and analyzing every detail of our lives thus far. Would this be us in five years? The lyric "I still hang with my high school friends, some people never change at all, we're still the same compulsive drunks we were when we were small" was on repeat. Ideally we imagined her coming out of a divorce with three kids and him being terminally alone and depressed. And though we would probably be poor and probably drunk or high we'd still be best friends and therefore all right. Then it was after midnight, that ominous time line I'd been afraid of crossing all week. Nothing is relative and that whole game of playing "this time last year we were (insert some stupidly cute couple's activity)" wouldn't work anymore. Instead, it was "this time last year I was drunk and sobbing on D's lap, telling him I was sad and him rubbing my back telling me it was okay to be sad." I grew up after that and realized that most promises are empty, rings are nothing more than pieces of metal and that maybe all I really have are these intoxicated memories with a scrawny boy in a car that always seems to be on the edge of a breakdown. And I'm completely and utterly fine with this.