An Almost Life-Long Friendship Continues to Thrive

I’ve never been too sure why, but although I have quite a good memory, I can never remember how I met my friends. It’s a weird thing to say, I know, but it’s always been something that my brain can’t seem to grasp for a while after I’ve met someone. The same is true of my friendship with Victoria McConathy. 

We’ve been friends for many years, our first year of Kindergarten, give or take. I’ve seen her go through an array of sports: the main one being gymnastics, but she also danced, played volleyball, and cheered for a few months throughout elementary and middle school. 

Despite her past of multiple very physical sports, she is now interested in more calm hobbies, such as writing and reading. She also mentioned how she liked drawing though she has done that for quite a few years. She is now opening herself up to the more “nerdy” side of her mind.

Continuing our interview, we moved to a different subject: conspiracy theories. This is actually a subject we’ve bonded over a lot. When asked if she could ask someone who has passed away any question, she replied with “JFK.” With the mystery surrounding his assassination, it’s no wonder it is high on the “popular conspiracy theory list.” That being said, this means it is a topic of many conversations. In fact, once this question was asked, we went on a good two-minute-long rant about what we’d ask. 

Moving to a different question, Victoria proves to be a very faithful friend and loves spending time with those who are close to her. Ideally, she would love to spend her birthday with her friends and family, just hanging out and having a great time. Even though her birthday is in January, she loves swimming, so she loves spending time in indoor pools for her birthday parties. In fact, there have been two very notable parties at an indoor pool, both of which were a blast; we remember having so much fun.

If there is anything I’ve learned about Tori in the past few weeks, it’s that she absolutely loathes the summer and would rather spend her life somewhere where it is always cold.  She explains that she likes it that way because she loves bundling up and “fending for her own warmth.” Not to mention, she loves how the outside looks and how pretty the snow makes everything look. We shared a laugh as I joked about that being pretty bad for her, considering we live in the South where it is always hot and humid.

Following her intense hatred for the summer, she also hates it when people mistreat animals or other people. Especially with animals, she believes that, just because they aren’t humans, it doesn’t mean they deserve to be treated any less. Personally, I think this comes from having her life-long dog Tiki, and having a large assortment of cats (at one point she had 18, but now she only has 5: her favorite is named Ariel), and her bearded dragon Zeus. She also used to have an adorable sugar-glider named Bear, so it’s obvious she takes her animals very seriously. 

And then there are the people who think being rude to people is a personality trait. She expressed to me her loathing for people who do that. She feels there is just no reason for it. In her opinion, you should just keep your mouth shut if you want to say something bad about someone else. 

She likes to travel and is even planning a trip to New Orleans sometime in the late fall or early winter. We actually went to Destin Beach together right before the start of sixth grade. I remember having so much fun and I know we took a lot of pictures, cringey and otherwise. 

She believes in the motto, “there is always room for change.” In fact, she says she changed so much in the past two years alone and knows she will continue to change. She feels like her younger self would be very confused if they somehow met, simply because she’s changed so much in a short amount of time. 

Actually, she feels like, if she could change a relationship with anyone she knew, she’d pick herself. She says she wishes she hadn’t tried changing her personality just to fit into a certain group and the result of doing so has made it hard for her to know her own self. She wants to be able to change that time and become the actual person she was meant to be. 

The best advice she’s ever been given is “everything happens for a reason.” Good or bad, she feels like it was meant to happen and whatever it was made you into the person you are today, so she has started to fly away from caring about what other people think of her. She wants to be her own person and focus on her. 

Even though I’m not completely sure how our friendship came to be, I’m so glad I’m able to be the friend of a caring, amazing person such as Victoria McConathy.