April 22nd, April 23rd, April 24th

I put no stock in Horoscopes.  I don’t think the stars align to tempt or seal our fate.  Fung Shui is not my “thing.”  Tossing salt, reading tea leaves, jumping over cracks – lest I step on one and break my mother’s back.  Foolish, I know.

Look, it's all Taurusy - you know, the whole "Bull" thing.

If I have one, or two, idiosyncrasies it’s that my favorite numbers are 4 and 8 and when I drive through tunnels, I hold my breath.  4 and 8 came from the original “Game of Life” and holding my breath in tunnels came from childhood trips around the country.

That colorful strip with numbers there to the right? 

 Yeah, that's how 4 & 8 became my lucky numbers

To recap, I take no stock in weirdness.  I place no value on things that tickle fancies with words like luck or fate or kismet.

What is…is.  Except…

Born April 23^rd, 1964 (year of the Dragon), I first met her at church.  She caught my eye and I fell head over heels.  Something about her playfulness mixed with confidence.  She was beautiful (still IS beautiful) and had dimples in her cheek as if God himself put them there using a specific dimple tool.

Of course I was smitten.  Many a guy were.  Still I thought I had a chance.  I was the caring, loving, listening guy and she was with a loser (they always seemed to be with a loser).  Of course he was rugged and cool and just a slight dangerous.  I was sweet and nice and just a slight boring.  It was inevitable, I would fall into one of three categories:  boyfriend (highly unlikely – see dangerous boyfriend already in place), non-existent (highly unlikely – as she went to my church and I was smitten), or, finally… friend (likely).

As her caring and loving friend, I would listen to her talk about how much of a loser he was and how badly he would treat her and I would give her advice and let her cry on my shoulder and, at some point, dangerous loser guy would exit the scene and I would be there with open arms and she’d finally, FINALLY, realize that boring normal sweet and nice are actually better than exciting thuggish douche-bag and dickish.  Yes, I was in the dreaded Friend Zone.

Eventually her relationship with said thug/dick/douche ended and she turned towards someone else – not me.  Why?  Because we were “too good of friends” and she “didn’t want to ruin the friendship.”  I had plenty of friendships, I could spare one.  Or, at the very least, take the risk.  Certainly I also knew that even if whatever relationship I hoped to have didn’t work out, that I wouldn’t cast her aside like thug/douche/dick.  I’d find a way to work through my feelings and we’d rekindle that amazing friendship just now with a bit of history behind it.  History that hopefully included a lot of kissing and hugging and stuff.

Yeah, uh, none of this.  Not gonna happen.

Alas…no.  Into the Army she went.  When she came back she had grown up (years and military do that to a person) and she fell in love with a guy that wasn’t a thug/douche/dick and got married and is still married.  And happy.  What friend doesn’t want another friend to be happy?  Even one you’re head-over-heels over?

She was truly, my first real platonic friend.  I had a few others in there, certainly, but not like her.    

We don’t talk much anymore.  Time and distance do that.  But I see her updates on Facebook and she seems to be doing good.  Good.

She was born April 24^th, 1964 (year of the Dragon).  She fancied herself an actress or…something.  Maybe she just liked one of the guys in the group.  The guy in said group actually knew April 23^rd and I can’t remember if they dated or not but, still, there was some weird cross-pollinating going on with April 23^rd and April 24^th.  It’s not a large area we lived in and they went to rival schools and wouldn’t you know there was a guy involved…but I digress.

April 24 was different than April 23.  Where I was attracted to April 23’s confidence and free spiritness, what attracted me to April 24 was her quietness and lack of confidence.  Of course she was (and is) beautiful and her beauty stung me like 1000 wasps but her inability to either see or own that beauty stung me like 10000 wasps.  How could someone so stunning in so many ways not recognize it?

Side note:  Before you cast this blog off as the ramblings of a shallow human being only interested in looks and nothing else, I can reassure you that the women I’m talking about in this blog are also amazingly talented, super intelligent, giving, caring and loving - sometimes to a fault.

As I became friends with April 24, I made the point of always telling her how amazing she was.  How beautiful she was.  How important she was.  I set my sights on making her feel as wonderful and powerful and stunning as she truly was.  She fought me, tooth-and-nail, but slowly and over a year’s time it started to sink in.  She started to own that she had value and worth and humor and beauty.

Yeah, "Libra" nowhere to be found.

Side note two:  Both April 23 and April 24 had been adopted.  April 23 never talked about getting to know her birth parents, April 24 always wanted to find her birth mother (which she eventually did).  Maybe that had something to do with the self-esteem issues?  Certainly, but I wasn’t about to let April 24 use that as an excuse.

I stayed in April 24^th’s life as much as I could and fought falling in love with her but, eventually, the weight of who she was and what she was becoming became too great and I succumbed to wanting to be with her, too.  But, of course, by this time “I love you as a friend” was said far too many times and I was pinned with the song “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by the band YES by my friends as my theme song.  Any sort of next-level relationship would not come to pass and she fell in love, got married, had three kids, moved to Missouri and has carved out a life only few ever get to have.

Missouri?  Misery?  It's all on how you pronounce it.

I sure miss her hugs, though.

She was born April 22^nd, 1967 (year of the Goat).  I didn’t meet her until I was long married so there was none of that infatuation, “will she date me?” “Why is she with that loser?” crap that I had with April 23^rd and 24^th.  She was, strictly, a co-worker who thought I was “weird.”  I could live with that.

What struck me about April 22^nd wasn’t that she was lacking confidence, she wasn’t (or she hid that well).  It wasn’t that she had low self-esteem or good self-esteem.  What she taught me, or showed me, was that change can be good.

Throughout my life I’ve encountered people who are trying something new, whether it be religion or self-help or a diet or exercise program or…and they come to me and say: “Hey, Matt, check this out!”  And, for a while, I “check it out” and I watch the person change…for a bit and then old habits creep back in or stuff happens or whatever and they return to the way they were before. I mean, hell, that’s life.  And life is like that sometimes.

Do I put any stock in this?

For April 22^nd when I met her and worked with her, she was in massive amounts of debt.  We’d go to Nordstrom’s for lunch and she’d come back with a pair of shoes.  We’d go to Macy’s and she’d put something on her credit card.  It was a downward spiral and I couldn’t really help.  But then, she stopped.  Seriously.  She stopped.  Cold turkey.

She called Consumer Credit Counseling and she started the process to get herself out of debt and on the path of recovery.  I stood on the sideline waiting for the eventual habits to return.  The call of a good pair of flats that made her feet look “cute” with just enough toe cleavage to excite the boys.  But she didn’t fall off the wagon, hell, she drove that wagon.

Once she was out of debt, she went back to school to study art.  From there she got her Masters in Chicago.  She lost weight, took up training and teaching at the local gym.  She went to exclusive artists retreats, starred on a Reality Artist TV show that never got released.  Spent months in New York stalking Ann Curry outside of the Today show (seriously) and did an art piece on it.  She tried out, multiple times, to be on “Survivor.”

Ann Curry (little known fact, Stephen Curry's great Aunt - kidding)

If there ever was a survivor, it was April 22^nd.

But as her friend, I knew something was missing from her life and that was the cuddle of a boyfriend.  She had sporadic relationships that never seemed to go anywhere but then she hit her high school reunion and met a guy and they “clicked.”  From my distance (we worked far apart at this point) she was falling in love.  And I couldn’t be happier for her.  Everything was finally falling into place.

Then the relationship ended.  He was a dick who had been sleeping around on her and I offered to go punch him in the neck.

And here it was, finally, the precipice upon which she was going to fall.  The diet would be thrown out the window.  Art would have to wait.  She was going to spiral down so fast, it would make anyone’s head spin.  And not a person would blame her.

In a move I found very surprising, she owned the hurt.  She owned the pain.  She turned it around into something amazing.  She regrouped, refocused and became more positive about all the things in life.  Where I would have easily found a corner to go fetal with a jumbo bag of ranch Doritos she came through the fire stronger, braver and more focused.  I couldn’t be more proud, even though the offer to punch him in the neck was still on the table.

Yeah, kinda like this.  With probably as much force.

April 23^rd has known me over 35 years.  April 24^th has known me over 33 years.  April 22^nd has known me about 25 years.  But what they’ve taught me about women, about friendship, about love and strength and hurt and perseverance and about life goes beyond years.  It goes beyond the decades.  There’s no way I’m even a fraction of who I am today without these three women in my life.

I have many other female friends.  Some very close.  One even born on April 21^st.  And I’ll truly admit I haven’t been the best of friend to any of them.  But I try.

To the April trifecta, thank you for everything you’ve taught me, shown me and how you changed me.

Oh, and happy birthday.