An ode to my Zoe Bowie.
I remember the first time I met Zoe last year at the start of uni. I couldn't understand a fucking thing she said to me. Her Irish accent was so thick and she spoke so quickly that my brain couldn't keep up with her. I was constantly asking her, "what? I'm sorry could you repeat that please?"
At the start, we didn't really hang out that much. She was part of what we called back then, "the tripod," which consisted of her, Fiona and Santos. The three of them always did everything together and at the time I was usually with Lauren going out and getting wrecked.
After a while though (and after she had a fallout with Santos, if my memory serves me well), Zoe broke out and started coming out with the rest of the group without Fiona and Santos. We started hanging out more, and before I knew it, she was coming over to Virginia to visit me over the Easter holiday. To be honest, I really didn't think that she would come. I didn't think anyone would come. Why would anyone want to travel all the way to the states to hang out with me in northern VA? Boring northern VA. At least boring to me. I didn't really have anything planned out except to take her to DC since we lived close by, but other than that, there wasn't much else. Well, except for the exceptional malls and enormous piles of food that we would consume, always followed by Zoe saying, "oh, I feel sick. I think I ate too much."
When she ran in the elections last year, I was her campaign manager (as she is for me this year) and we went all out. We went out every single night for a straight week, campaigning, meeting new people, and getting her name and face out in the uni public. And when she didn't get an entertainment position, I was there in Central when her eyes watered up, but she forced the tears back down and decided to drink the whole experience away.
Now, she is currently in my room, clicking away at the foot of my bed and working on one of her Spanish essays, while I blog because I'm not in the mood to write my short story. If we weren't extremely close last year, we have bonded to the max this year and have made up for lost time while we were apart over the summer. We do everything together, and now that I think about it, there hasn't been one day that I've gone without at least a text message from her.
Generally, I don't like to get mushy and put people out there when it comes to complimenting someone, but this week in particular would not have been possible if she wasn't there by my side every step of the way. Campaigning last year was different for me, because I wasn't in the front doing the brunt of the work, but now that it's my face that has been plastered all over uni, and my name that is pinned, blue tacked and taped up, I feel more of the pressure and have realized what a huge undertaking this is.
She has helped me put a majority of the posters up, she's gone out with me to uni events so we can socialize and meet different people, and she has talked me through tough situations when I didn't think that I was going to be able to press on. Tuesday was particularly overwhelming for me (what with boy Sam, his girlfriend, her friends, trilby boy, my opponent and her horrible friends), and while I was having a freak out moment, she just calmly said to me, "eh, fuck 'em." So I did. And I rocked it.
I have never known anyone quite like Zoe. She has so much strength that I wish I could have, and she's so motivating. Even when I'm run down, can't be bothered and don't want to do something, she's there to tell me, "come on. It'll be fine. Just a little bit longer and it's over with." And for some reason, she gets me to thinking that I really can. I can't believe how brave she is either. I know I moved to a different country, but she's going to Peru.
Peru.
Do you know where Peru is? It's super fucking far away. Oh yeah, and she won't be speaking in her mother tongue. AND she won't have an internet connection (we know how much that bothers me). She's going to be far away from town, living in a small room, with cold water (no hot showers folks), a tiny bed with a little mattress, and teaching children. Teaching children! How fucking admirable is that? And for a whole year. Without any breaks to come back home.
I don't know how she does it.
When she's gone next year, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. It's bad enough already when she's here and I can't get a hold of her for a couple of hours because I want to know what she's going to wear to the bop. We chat about the most random things, like how we're going to go to the rain forest one day and have all of the excess fat on our bodies burned off by acid rain, and it's only funny to us. We get lost in foreign countries and laugh at the most inappropriate times when we think that we're lost. We binge drink, make fools of ourselves in public and then laugh some more the morning after about the boys that we've pulled. We take care of each other and proper stick up for the other one if we need to. We don't get jealous, we don't judge and we're always understanding and sympathetic.
A couple of days ago, I was walking back home with Jack, who is one of Santos' ex-boyfriends, and we were just chatting about things that have been going on for the past couple of weeks. He was telling me about something to do with Fiona and Santos and how they have a dysfunctional relationship, when Zoe and my relationship came up. He said to me, "but you and Zoe are best friends aren't you? You guys do everything together."
I smiled and said to him, "yeah, we do everything together."
I have a feeling that just because she's going to be off in Peru doing fabulous things, we'll still be doing everything together. Nothing is impossible. One of the many things that I've learned from my Zoe Bowie.