the days of the shared wall.

In four days I will be moving out of my parent's house for the third time. First was for college. Second was for California. Now is for...well...good. (Mom, if you're reading this. I love you, but we both know you are just as excited for me to move out as I am). 


So you can probably imagine my excitement for the big move. It may not be quite as big as my move to California was, as it is only right down the road (less than a mile, by pure coincidence), but it's still a move. A move toward regaining the independence that's very difficult to maintain while living with parentals. While living with the parentals has been great - most of the time, okay, some of the time - it's just not the same as living out on your own. I'm so appreciative of the fact that I could move back in with my parents when I returned from college and from Cali, but it's time to move on. To move forward.


Sadly, I only have four more days of sharing a wall with one of my best friends - my sister. For my entire life - minus college and my short lived time in Cali - I shared either a room or a wall with my sister. For some, this may not seem like a big deal, but for me, it's enough to bring a tear or two to my eye and create what Ashley calls a "Full House Moment" (By definition, a "Full House Moment" represents any scenario that is reminiscent of a time when Danny Tanner would sit down with DJ, Steph, and/or Michelle and engage in an incredibly awkward conversation about some altruistic life lesson resulting in a TV moment that Ashley can't bare to watch due to its extreme level of wholesome corniness). 


Living in such close proximity to my sister - we shared a room until I was 18 - has been a roller coaster. She is, without a doubt, one of my absolute best friends, and always will be, but my God, we really know how to get on each other's nerves. We tend to have a love-hate relationship, even at the ages of 26 and 22. One second, we'll be having the time of our lives together, and the next moment, bam! everything is out of control and we hate each other. And yes, I do mean hate each other. We are both such passionate people that we get to that point where we simply cannot be around each other. The beauty of it is that it lasts for a few minutes, an hour, maybe a day, and then we're back to being best friends. 


When I think of our sisterhood, my mind is flooded with memories - both good and bad, funny and serious, happy and sad - and I'm a bit overwhelmed with sheer gratitude that I am lucky enough to have so many memories with such an amazing person. And to make sure that in the event my sister is actually reading this - she's already confessed that my blog is "way too Full House" for her to read - I'll share one of our rather ridiculous, over the top stories:


We were six days into our road trip across country. It was just the two of us and we were tired not only of driving, but of sharing the already way too cramped space with my one too many boxes. So there we were in South Dakota. Tired. Hungry. Irritable. and Lost. (For the love of God, please do not ask how you get lost on a straight shot across country). Things went from bad to plain ugly within minutes. I remember I was on the phone and probably not using my inside voice as Ashley likes to call it, while she was trying to nap. I woke her up, rather abruptly, and expected her to help me with directions. Cranky from being woken up from her nap, she snapped at me. That's when it got ugly. First the yelling began. Then the classic, entirely immature name calling began. Before I knew it I pulled over and we were full on fighting. Physically fighting. A  20 year old and 24 year old pulling each other's hair and attempting to hit each other. My God. Talk about embarrassing. But no, does it stop there? Of course not. After five minutes of a full on girl fight (the kind that you'd see in the girl's locker room in high school), Ash was out of the car and walking around a pretty desolate neighborhood in the middle of nowhere South Dakota, crying on her cell phone to my Mom, while I sat in the car, crying on my cell phone to my Dad, insisting that he buy her the first ticket possible to ship her back home. Oh, and then, as if that wasn't bad or embarrassing enough, I looked up to see a cop knocking at my window. I slowly rolled down the window and weakly whispered "Hi, Officer." He proceeded to tell me that a neighbor had reported us to the cops. (Seriously people?! You have nothing better to do!??!). I desperately tried to stop the tears as I peered up at him innocently and babbled away about how my sister and I had simply had a little tiff (Really, Court? Hair pulling counts as a tiff?!?). Clearly, Mr. Officer did not buy my story. However, rather than making the situation worse, he gently explained to me that he had two daughters of his own and empathized with me, offering kind words of advice on how to make amends. Eventually the kind officer drove away and my sister returned to the car. For the next six hours, we drove in silence. We even sat at different tables at a hole in the wall diner we stopped at for lunch. Pathetic? Yes. Embarrassing? Completely. Sad? Absofreakinglutely. We had made complete fools of ourselves. It wasn't the first time. And, sadly, it wasn't (isn't) the last time. But, by the time the sun had set that evening, and we had secured a decent hotel for the night, we were back to being...us. Sisters and best friends. 


So, while that story had nothing directly to do with this unexpected sadness I'm experiencing about moving away from my sister, it just goes to show that, despite a fight like that, my sister is still the one person that I simply cannot live without. She is the one who loyally called me almost every morning for 14 months while I lived in California to serve as my wake up call. She is the only one who can convince me to not only watch and love the Jersey Shore, but then get choked up with me when Ronnie breaks up with Sammi Sweetheart for the twentieth time. She is the only one who can make me laugh over the most *ridiculous* things that any normal person would not find even remotely funny. She is the one who will knock on our shared wall and whisper "Good night Court, love you" even after we've had a bad fight. 


In four days, I will be packing up my things and moving out of my parent's house for good. I won't be far from my family...just a mile down the road. It's something I've needed to do for some time now - quite frankly since I moved back from the West Coast. But now I realize that maybe there was a reason I spent the last year and a half back at home. Not to pull a Dr. Phil, but maybe I was here to share the wall with my sister one last time. 


I'm sure I'll see Ash every week once I move, if not every day. And I'm absolutely positive that our friendship will continue to grow and strengthen over the years. But the days of the shared wall are over. But cherished forever.


Love you, Ash.