I’m fucking insufferable lately. Real sad sack. And my friends, my sweet and beautiful friends, are the first responders to this theatre of suffering, to this one-woman show of heartbreak. I stand in front of them and ask them impossible questions like who does this? And how stupid am I?
I’m a so-called jilted baby.
They don’t always know what to say, but they bake challah and deliver it with a bundle of lavender and offer emergency benzos. They do the lurking for me. They light a cigarette and listen.
They know when to agree and when to push back.
They know when to hold up the mirror and when to put it down.
You’re not stupid, Sara. But you acted like an asshole here.
They know when it’s my fault.
Who else is going to tell me the Truth?
Couched in the tenderness of friendship, we can acknowledge the worst versions of ourselves. We can be reminded of our complex humanity without becoming overly thin-skinned and shielding the way we sometimes (often) do with a lover or a family member.
Friendship’s beautiful potency, ripe with transformational and radical possibility, is something I’ve wanted to write about for a long time. I’ve written about what a weird volcel I am and my myriad of intimacy issues. But my friendships are my pride and joy, my whole world. They are what I tend to, what I nurture, and what I make sure blooms year after year. Ride or die, baby.
Growing up, I was blessed with a Best Friend and an insular world, mostly just the two of us all through elementary school and high school. When I dropped out, she seriously considered doing the same, not at my behest but because the thought of not seeing each other every day made her emotional. We lost touch around the age of twenty when I moved across the city, and she started auto mechanic school, but I still remember her with this sort of nostalgia and sweetness that an ex, no matter how compelling, could never inspire.
I remember with special fondness the choreographed dances to each song on Shania Twain’s Come On Over. As young teens, we’d go to Blockbuster every Friday night. We’d always ask if they had SLC punk yet. They never did.
As we got older, we did drugs together too. Both of us big fans of not eating and doing a bunch of speed. I was always worse, she didn’t have the death drive like I did, just your typical teenage rebelliousness. We saw terrible and not-so-terrible bands together. She was the first person to find me funny, the only one who never seemed to care how moody or impossible I could become.
Whatever we did together, whether it was skipping school or spending the day in her bed recovering from doing molly, massaging our jaws, and lying to her mom, we did it with joy, the triumph of each other’s company.
Experiencing this sort of intimacy, the kind where you learn that arguments and disagreements are not permanent, where you learn to apologize and to forgive, is invaluable to me. Those with siblings will know that we do learn this through our interactions with them as well, although the crucial difference with friendship is the agency, the choice. We choose our friends. There is no obligation with friendship. You can walk away, and sometimes people do. But if you stay, it’s usually because you want to. I’ve been witness to the growth platonic intimacy can offer, and I invite it into my life to stay.
If I still believe in romantic love, it is because of friendship. If I continue to write, it is because of the support of my friends. When I feel like shit, the solution is doing something for them. Friends pull us out of our narcissistic ruts of madness, remind us of the the rest of the world, offer us precious perspective.
The closest person to me right now has held that title for twelve years running. I love her more than words can say, even though I will still attempt to describe it, this deep gratefulness for the continued blessing of friendship in my life and for hers in particular, the person who has seen it All and never once flinched in the face of it.
The other night, I called her to hang out and distract me. She knows what this means, knows what we will avoid speaking about, knows I will bring it up anyway, but only later, maybe after a drink. Instead, we talk about Everything Else, six hours of it, and I realize that the proof of love is in the tender tolerance and appreciation for each other’s quirks, in the endless shared patience that we have for each other’s pain and in the fucking magic of making each other laugh.
I make her dinner: breaded pork with tahini dill yogurt sauce and fennel, cabbage and radish coleslaw. We drink beer. We gossip. Eve’s empty plate a strange and beautiful reminder that I can still do good, nurture even when I acted, as she so lovingly put it, like an asshole. She tucks me into the bed I made for myself and reminds me to remember that I don’t have to burn every bridge, that I can wait things out. It’s like I’m hearing this for the first time, like she presents options to me that I would otherwise rob myself of.
When I thanked my friend Sarah for her thoughtful gift of challah, she responded with:
My pleasure forever
I mean. What more could I want?
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<3 <3 <3
" first responders to this theatre of suffering" ...yessss
i had the thought one night: my friends are my greatest work - grateful for that lucky lucky feeling!