Forever Friends, Forever More (aka Dental School bffs)

Even before B. started dental school I'd heard rumors.

"Oh the friends you'll make!" exclaimed my sister-in-law, who although younger than me, wisely married someone four years older and thus was wrapping up her "dental school experience" just as I was starting mine. When they moved out of their little townhouse after graduation day, we moved in (a monumental mistake worth explaining another day).

"You won't ever want to leave and your last Sunday there you will cry and cry!" she continued.

But my first Sunday in my new ward I was skeptical.

See, I didn't consider myself the "typical" dental school wife. By the time I met B. and married, most girls my age were marriage veterans and had at least two or three kids under their belt.

Needless to say, as I looked around in Relief Society that Sunday all I saw were girls who looked younger but had far more "experience" and confidence in those matters than I did. It was intimidating in a way I'd never known before and I found my normally confident self becoming slightly insecure. Instead of introducing myself and going out of my way, I found myself crouching up in a little anti-social shell and doubting that any of these girls would want to be friends with me. Afterall, we had next to nothing in common.

As the oh so long days, weeks, and months of that first year passed, I was so paranoid that I wouldn't fit in that I started to believe it. As you can guess, with B. hunkered down studying like mad, it was a very lonely first year for me.

It wasn't until the start of the second year that I met my fellow dental wife bff L. We instantly became best buds. Although I could have easily brushed her off as another one of those "younger" girls, we were in the same boat and she was impossible not to love. We had both been independent career-women before we met our husbands, had both married guys already in dental school (who also happened to be former roommates), and we had similar interests, etc.

She was heaven-sent, I am sure of it. I would not have survived those remaining dental school years without her.

Fast foward to graduation day. I did cry, as my sister-in-law predicted. But only once. And not because I was sad to be leaving and couldn't bare to part with all my lifelong friends (tears=moving/house selling drama).

But if I learned one lesson during those years, it was this: it doesn't matter if you're 21, 26, or 30. Every one can be a potential friend, even if it appears on the surface that you have absolutely nothing in common.

So, in a sense, yes, the rumors are true.