Last December was a pivotal month for me; I was confirmed to have Rheumatoid Arthritis, I had hard but necessary decision to stop having children, I finished reading ~L~’s novel (awesome by the way), I was probably annoyed with being cold, but most importantly I pitched an idea to one of my best friends about starting a blog. I love to write and ~L~’s drive to finish her book inspired me. Thankfully she loved the idea and we settled on our name pretty quickly.

I think it went something like this, “How about cross roads something or other…”

“Crossroad tripping……..”

“Crossroadtrippers?”

“Yes! Genius!!”

I still love the name today and I am super excited that we have the domain thanks to ~L~.

The idea was simple, write honestly about life and see where it goes. Since we were just putting our toes in the water, we decided to sign our names simply with ~L~ and *d*. It gave us anonymity, confidence, and equality. If someone decided to insult *d*, maybe the blow wouldn’t feel as directed at me. If someone I knew came across the blog, they wouldn’t know it was me and it made honesty much easier. Most importantly we could feel equal as writers. We also hoped the anonymity would allow our readers to relate to our blog personally. Since we are very different individuals, we hoped someone could either say, “I could be *d* or ~L~!”. Our reach could be broad because we have very different beliefs about religion, politics, socal issues, children, and the list goes on and on. We could also write cohesively because in many ways we are very alike. We graduated from the same high school, we are the same age, we love to write, we have a similar warped since of humor….. you get the point. I thought how fun it would be to share our very different perspectives with the world but also show how those differences bind and strengthen our friendship.

We live in a world where people are barking at each other from two sides of the same road. No one wants to get along with someone who isn’t aligned with their own personal views. Sure, it helps, but what if we dared the world to be as different as the two of us; find what is alike and build something great. We don’t go into these deep topics very often, probably because we don’t like to fight about it, especially with a stranger behind their computer screen. ~L~ and I don’t fight about those obvious differences when they come up in conversation, so we aren’t about to start now. We have a deep respect for each other that says we have a stronger friendship when we can discuss our lives openly without fear of judgement and we can be open minded enough to listen. Maybe these things haven’t come through in our blog just yet but they are there.

We have since outed ourselves and our work but the idea remains the same. We are *d* and ~L~ , we are two completely different women in their thirties frequently rolling up to the crossroads, sometimes tripping, and trying to find which way to go. We are also there together. One of us may be looking in a direction far different from the other, but we are still smiling and glad we don’t have to go it alone.

*d*