muddy bootprints

 my best friend rome and i have a running joke that we can't hang out without one of us forgetting something at the other's house. we'll return the things eventually, but at any given time there's pretty much always at least one thing still stuck in limbo between rutland and burlington or nowadays, westminster and burlington. 

between them working in burlington, us working together, and my old roommate kicking me out overnight every so often, there was a stretch of time where rome and i saw each other pretty much every week at a minimum. even then, when it was easiest to take for granted, i still liked finding whatever it was they'd forget. it was like an easter egg hunt, and when i did find the thing, a work tool or their earbuds or some other easy-to-lose thing, i'd have a little reminder of them to hang onto. those things became reminders that they were there.

now that rome is doing their best to leave the theatre industry and also didn't have a car for a while, those little forgotten things mean even more to me because i see them less frequently. without fail, every time they stay with me i can find some reminder of them after they leave. there's a half-finished pint of cherry garcia in the freezer that we got from the gas station last night. yet again, i forgot to give them the wire cutters they forgot months ago that're still kicking around in my work bag. and next to my shoe rack, right by my fridge, there's a muddy spot on the floor where they left their boots the night before. 

it's only fitting that rome leaves signs they were here every time we hang out. my life as i know it is, in some ways, a sign they were here. rome was the one who got me into the theatre industry, which in turn shaped my life in burlington, gave me a perfect environment to start growing into myself as a queer person, and a largely safe place for the leftist views i'd kept dormant since high school to start reemerging. if i hadn't met them, that first job in the theater at castleton likely would've just been a one-off "i did that in college once" sort of thing. instead, it's become the first job that feels like a good fit for me, the first industry that actually works with whatever's going on in my brain. 

and rome has changed me as a person too. i had to get better at listening, remembering, becoming a better conversationalist when we first met, but in good time we've become inseparable and conversation flows easily almost all the time. even when it doesn't flow nonstop, silence is usually something we both need in the moment. i learned to remember little things, to check in and really work to understand their feelings and to get out of a pattern of overlooking how something that seems insignificant to me could affect someone else. and in time, i learned that rome and i are eerily, uncannily similar in a lot of ways -right down to the layouts of our childhood homes and the fact that we once got ghosted by very similar people within a week of each other-, and in the ways that we aren't similar, we tend to balance each other out. 

i could go on about my friendship with them and how special it is until i discover the character limit for a blogger post. i'll probably write a longer post about it at some point. but all of this is a lot to say that rome has been leaving muddy bootprints and forgotten work tools and half-finished kombucha bottles all over my life for years now, and i still cherish every time they do. i like having a reminder of them hanging around, and it tells me that in good time, i'll see my dear friend again.