Are You There Friends? It's Me, Lauren (From 43,000 Feet)

 Is this a public service announcement? The digital side of a milk carton—missing persons? Or the end of an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, where people’s faces are strewn across a grainy screen for already panic-stricken late-night TV watchers to question whether or not they stood behind that person at the grocery store?

No, this is more of a cathartic ode to missing friends who are very much still alive, just scattered along the way. It’s another 30-something telling you what they’ve learned about friendship through a semi-cynical (no, I’m a realist, I swear), attemptedly witty, and slightly hopeful lens.

This 33-year-old’s take on friendship is different. I’ve lived through a time when you had to wait until homeroom to talk to your friends, but also could use the one shared computer in your house to send an instant message to someone named JMMSCheer_247 because something monumental happened on the bus.

But now, for some, Instagram is enough to make plans… that you will 10/10 cancel.

While I’m on the subject—did we always cancel plans this much? Did your parents and grandparents bail on everyone they ever knew and loved and all laugh about it together? I don’t think they did. And I think it’s because they actually had things to say—subjects to ruminate over—because they weren’t in constant and incessant contact with one another.

But I digress.

This isn’t new information to those of us in aviation, because I don’t think there’s a person in the industry I’ve talked to about this who hasn’t started nodding their head in agreement before I even got to the “you know?” part of the conversation. They know. They knew before I did.

We all know that as we grow up, our friend groups become smaller because of time, place, and the natural way our lives (hopefully) progress.

I’ve read a number of articles about this, listened to podcasts to subdue my stress over it—telling me I wasn’t the problem and pacifying myself for at least a few hours—until I read another text in the group chat realizing not only do I have no idea what they’re talking about, but that this group chat I’m still in only exists occasionally in an effort to make sure my feelings don’t get hurt (I’m starting to think that maybe I have an ego…).

But through numerous talk-therapy sessions with my highly qualified friends and family—and by “highly qualified,” I mean they know how to balance telling me what I want to hear with what I should hear, and they’re familiar with all the major players in these stories—I concluded that the problem is very, very much me.

And so is my chosen career. I believe that when I look back in time, for many reasons, my life changed when I charged feet first into private aviation.

I change. My priorities change. My likes, dislikes, location, schedule, vocabulary, hobbies, standards, career, goals, wants, needs, the way I drink my coffee, my diet—everything grows, as it should. And yet, here I sit expecting everyone who has ever been my friend to not just keep up with me and stay in contact, but also like the person I’m becoming enough to want to stick around.

But not just stick around—I want you to be interested, care, ask me questions about what I’m doing, where I’m headed, what my plans are, and also, can you invite me to that hangout I probably won’t be able to go to? I like to feel as though someone wants me there. It feels good.

Aviation became an obsession—a healthy one (most days). It challenges me. I’m forever in search of rooms filled with people smarter than I am. I genuinely thirst for knowledge, reading, getting better, and being better. But not better than you—better than myself. And if I just so happen to be better than you, who’s to blame? I’m completely kidding.

If you’re unfamiliar with aviation, here are a few things you should know about the type of people it attracts—and also creates. I say this as someone who was once on the outside and is now deep in the black hole.

Qualities I’d like to preface as neither positive nor negative, but ones that can certainly be perceived as either—or both—maybe even at the same time: Fiercely independent, overly confident, analytical, observant, with an inflated sense of self-importance, charismatic, possessing an almost lustful desire for information and continued learning. We’re the kind of people who can tell you the tail number of an aircraft but forget our best friend’s birthday.

And what it is about these qualities, I can’t quite put my finger on—but there’s an insatiable desire to connect with others who share them. We’re all alike more than we’d ever dare to admit on LinkedIn.

I used to think my friends (all of them) left me behind along the way—that they didn’t care about me, what I was doing, or understand the direction my life was headed and how it changed. My life didn’t mirror theirs, and thus, the disinterest festered; devastation crept in.

Because of this, I started feeling resentful, playing the blame game. I was delusional in thinking I was the only one grasping at the remaining bits of our friendship, celebrating milestones that didn’t resonate with me but mattered to them, caring about their lives I couldn’t comprehend. From my ivory Gulfstream tower, I refused to play my own devil’s advocate—which I so desperately needed to.

My fiancé is not one to mince words, not with me, not with anyone. He has such admirable honesty and a way with words. How many times has he told me something, I hated it, I attempted to disagree, only to, a few hours later, say, “Thank you for telling me exactly what I needed to hear.”

He said, “Why are you mad at them for being exactly who they are?”

That sentence gutted me. Because I knew, instantly, he was right.

And then I was mad. And then I cried about it (a lot). And realized he was unfortunately (fortunately, for my future’s sake) right again.

What I so desperately longed for in friendship was maybe not something they could give me anymore. It certainly wasn’t what our relationship ever was. And without me explicitly telling them what I desired, how could they know?

And even more gut-wrenching—did I want to tell them?

It was me who stopped showing up to lunches, get-togethers, and miscellaneous events throughout the year. Mostly, because of my job, but sometimes, because I flat out didn’t want to.

I stopped replying with rapid fire to every text. I never (or rarely) picked up the phone to call, I quit going out and drinking with them, and I stopped talking about nothing. I want to talk about THINGS! Not just gossip, and the ‘remember whens?’ Tony Soprano would be so proud.

I remembered nights in college, or just after, staying up late in our apartment living rooms, laughing until we cried over nothing at all. Now, I could go weeks without texting anyone, and it felt strange and hollow. That contrast made me realize how far I’d drifted—and how much of it was my own doing.

I was talking to one of my pilots on a trip a few months back and she said, “Lauren, not everyone wants to move the needle. Not everyone wants to change the world. And that’s okay.”

BUT WHY NOT?! I replied.

No, that’s just a joke. But I’ve been thinking about her words since July—that part is real.

So, Lauren, you’re just going to drop your friends along the way because you think you’re better than them? More evolved, traveled, accomplished, worldly? Give me a break. I still order chicken fingers at restaurants and put my foot in my mouth not once, but at least twice most days.

It’s actually the opposite—or what I believe to be the opposite. I’m deciding to be grateful for the time we did spend together, so completely entranced in the minute things that made us friends. The milestones we did share, the memories that no one will ever take away from me, despite my hardest attempt to psychoanalyze each minute of my life. Friends along the way love me—or did, at one point. “Forever” isn’t part of the job description when it comes to friendship. And if it weren’t for them, maybe I would’ve ended up with the wrong crowd, smoking drugs and doing alcohol on the side of the road somewhere. I’m a product of every second I’ve lived through—many of which they were a part of.

And to all of you, I raise a glass! Of NA beer, because I simply cannot drink anymore without wasting away the next 36 hours of my life.

Friendship has been found in a “Hey, are you around this week to help me stare at my living room while we move and make it feel right?” Even though you don’t know if I’ll actually be home… you still asked.

Friendship has been found in a picture of a vegetable found at a market in Spain.

Friends send out the invitation to a group dinner on the airfield at Oshkosh where the cool kids hang out—and have for decades.

Friendship has been found in an hour-long FaceTime after not talking for a month (and not blaming either of us for it—we just haven’t).

It’s showing up to Bingo on a random Wednesday because two minutes ago, I decided I wanted to go because I was home.

I found friendship in those I’ve mentored, created résumés for, and finally met in person at an industry event—though we’d talked a hundred times prior.

Friendship showed up halfway across the world to witness me get engaged. And even more so, they were happy for me. Genuinely. In a “didn’t need to show it in an over-the-top way, because I knew they meant it” kind of way.

In people who understand exactly what I mean when I say everything I’ve just said above.

To those of us who work in aviation, our friends are out there looking for us, too. They’re hiding behind the hotel lobby bar (but not me anymore, remember?).

And if you’re reading this and have friends who are in aviation—don’t give up on us.

Send us the text. Pick up the phone when we call you bored or lonely from the hotel room. Don’t cancel plans with us when we commit. Let us treat you using hotel points on a trip. Be understanding with our ever-changing and unconventional schedules (it’s not like it’s our vacation we’re traveling for).

Our friends are still out there — in hangars, hotel bars, or halfway across the world — waiting for us to look up long enough to find them again.