lakefront promenade at loyola university chicago
photo credit // gerald farinas
Social column by Gerald Farinas. Opinions are not necessarily those of GoPride.com.
CHICAGO, ILL. -
The late-night line-up of planes over Lake Michigan has this wild, grounding rhythm to it. I love sitting out on the lakefront promenade on the campus of Loyola University Chicago at dusk, just watching those lights sequence themselves into a steady order against the dark sky. Honestly, it makes you wish your personal life followed the same kind of logic. You want a clear flight path, a radar screen, and a guarantee on where everybody is going.
But real life doesn't give us a flight tracker. Lately, it feels like I'm right in the middle of a massive sea change with my inner circle. It is a total shifting of the tides. Some of my oldest, most intimate friendships are quietly fading into the background, while the most unexpected, surprising people are stepping right into the center stage.
We all know the pop culture fantasy of friendship, right? The ultimate golden standard is four women sitting around a kitchen table in Miami, wearing fabulous shoulder pads, dissecting their lives over a late-night plate of cheesecake. They had that total certainty. Blanche Devereaux put it perfectly when she said, "Look, we all make mistakes. But true friends don't judge you for them. They just help you pick up the pieces."
We crave that kind of absolute, unconditional loyalty. But the reality of adulthood is a whole lot more fluid, and honey, navigating the shift is heavy.
There's a real grief when a friendship you thought was a permanent fixture starts to drift. These are the bonds forged in the fires of your youth. But suddenly, the silence between texts stretches for weeks, and the group chat goes completely dead. It doesn't mean the love is gone. It just means the frequency has shifted. People get wrapped up in new seasons, new obligations, or they just turn inward. Learning to let that fade happen without bitterness, while still honoring the history, is a tough pill to swallow.
But the universe has a way of balancing things out, because just as some bonds are stretching, other friendships are drawing closer in the most beautiful, surprising ways.
These are the connections that catch you completely off guard. It's the casual acquaintance or the colleague who suddenly becomes the person you're having these incredibly deep, late-night conversations with. You find this effortless alignment and a profound mutual respect. As Sophia Petrillo so brilliantly put it, "A good friend will always tell you the truth, even when it hurts. But a great friend will hold your hand while you hear it." That's the exact energy that rescues you right when you need a safe harbor. It reminds you that your chosen family isn't a locked room. The circle is still open, and new people can still come in and completely bless your life.
Sophia also dropped another absolute truth bomb that hits different these days: "You know, when you're older, you look back and you realize that the best times were the ones you spent with the people you care about."
It's not about the grand gestures or the history logs. It's about who shows up, who lets you be completely yourself, and who makes you laugh when things are at their worst.
So I sit by the lake and I watch the planes blink out over the water, just accepting the shift. The dynamics are going to keep changing, people are going to move in and out of the spotlight, and the radar is never going to be perfectly clear. But for the ones holding my hand through this current season, whether they've been here for twenty years or twenty minutes, the only real response is to thank them for being a friend.
But real life doesn't give us a flight tracker. Lately, it feels like I'm right in the middle of a massive sea change with my inner circle. It is a total shifting of the tides. Some of my oldest, most intimate friendships are quietly fading into the background, while the most unexpected, surprising people are stepping right into the center stage.
We all know the pop culture fantasy of friendship, right? The ultimate golden standard is four women sitting around a kitchen table in Miami, wearing fabulous shoulder pads, dissecting their lives over a late-night plate of cheesecake. They had that total certainty. Blanche Devereaux put it perfectly when she said, "Look, we all make mistakes. But true friends don't judge you for them. They just help you pick up the pieces."
We crave that kind of absolute, unconditional loyalty. But the reality of adulthood is a whole lot more fluid, and honey, navigating the shift is heavy.
There's a real grief when a friendship you thought was a permanent fixture starts to drift. These are the bonds forged in the fires of your youth. But suddenly, the silence between texts stretches for weeks, and the group chat goes completely dead. It doesn't mean the love is gone. It just means the frequency has shifted. People get wrapped up in new seasons, new obligations, or they just turn inward. Learning to let that fade happen without bitterness, while still honoring the history, is a tough pill to swallow.
But the universe has a way of balancing things out, because just as some bonds are stretching, other friendships are drawing closer in the most beautiful, surprising ways.
These are the connections that catch you completely off guard. It's the casual acquaintance or the colleague who suddenly becomes the person you're having these incredibly deep, late-night conversations with. You find this effortless alignment and a profound mutual respect. As Sophia Petrillo so brilliantly put it, "A good friend will always tell you the truth, even when it hurts. But a great friend will hold your hand while you hear it." That's the exact energy that rescues you right when you need a safe harbor. It reminds you that your chosen family isn't a locked room. The circle is still open, and new people can still come in and completely bless your life.
Sophia also dropped another absolute truth bomb that hits different these days: "You know, when you're older, you look back and you realize that the best times were the ones you spent with the people you care about."
It's not about the grand gestures or the history logs. It's about who shows up, who lets you be completely yourself, and who makes you laugh when things are at their worst.
So I sit by the lake and I watch the planes blink out over the water, just accepting the shift. The dynamics are going to keep changing, people are going to move in and out of the spotlight, and the radar is never going to be perfectly clear. But for the ones holding my hand through this current season, whether they've been here for twenty years or twenty minutes, the only real response is to thank them for being a friend.
