I realized it one evening in mid-January, sipping a drink in my new apartment with three different groups of people I'd managed to arrange to meet that week, that my friend group had changed significantly.
It wasn't necessarily a dramatic realization - it occurred gradually, as things typically do - but I understood at some point between completing my PhD and accepting my faculty position, and moving to Capitol Hill, that the people I spent my time with had shifted somewhat.
I was still close with Ella, of course; nothing would ever change that. She was still my person, the one who dragged me out of myself when I wanted to stay in, my friend who had, in many ways, forced me to become who I was. But we'd both grown, and I no longer needed Ella to rescue me, and she stopped trying so desperately to push me into dating culture.
