An ode to the cliched girls’ night

During finals week there was no better inspiration than fantasizing about my perfect summer. Yet one week into mine I had yet to sleep in, desperately searching for a job I quickly realized would take up most of my time, my boyfriend I hadn’t seen in three months was grounded and we realized we actually had parents again, and I had a really bad splinter. The splinter seems insignificant but it just really wouldn’t come out. They weren’t the worst problems to have, but they were enough to make my aura less than summery.

Then one afternoon after a nice workout in the Colorado sunshine I felt myself start to cheer up, and just like the cliched Drake quote that I used to caption the selfie I sent to my boyfriend, I realized that “problems hit the gym, they all work out.” I got in the shower, sang Partition into the shampoo bottle, and realized that cliches become so for a reason – and that I was in desperate need of one of the biggest of all: a girls’ night.

When my friends walked in the door I was dancing with a piece of cold pizza, paying it much more attention than any guy in a club would ever get from me. From the food onward the cliches just kept rolling, and I couldn’t have been more grateful for the comfortable roles we fell into as my four friends and I settled on my couch and just talked.

There was something therapeutic to the familiar names of the people I went to high school being passed around as we talked about who changed in college, who was dating who, and who had started hooking up since we came home. I was able to think about how I had changed, and how I fit into this strange town where people I thought were ghosts had now come to life.

Sometimes we were all talking over each other, yelling, laughing, trying to figure out if that one girl’s boobs were real or not – while at other times we sat in an appreciative silence while our friend told us the details of her breakup. We compared how different our lives were with one of us in Colorado, one in California, one in Alabama, one in Montana, and one in Iowa; then we realized how we’re all the same and will still lose it laughing at a video of a woman in a Chewbacca mask.

We wrapped it up the only way we knew how: making snacks and putting on a weird Netflix movie with Victoria Justice where the only good part was the hot doorman. I was home, happy, and most importantly I was surrounded by friends – and I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

A girls’ night somehow allows for us to talk about the hard stuff – the real stuff- but then turn around and completely ignore how hard life can be and enjoy the simplicity of having fun with your friends. The people might be different for everyone, but the joy of being with friends who laugh at the same tweets and stupid jokes always feels the same. Whether you’re dancing like no one is watching, singing, eating, drinking, laughing, or crying: a night with close friends means a night of no judgment or pressure to impress anybody.

It’s called a girls’ night instead of a movie night or a wine night because it really is about the people there and just being with one another. That’s something I think every night, and every day for that matter, could use a little more of.

Thank you to my friends for existing and to girls’ nights for bringing us together.