We Were Girls

There is nothing as sacred in this lifetime as female friendships. I am so overwhelmed with love for my friends that sometimes I can’t contain it. Tears well up in my eyes at the thought of the women in my life, people I hold so dearly to my heart, and I can’t help but think how envious I would be if I were a man and never had the opportunity to experience something of the sort. How beautiful friendship is in itself -- two people, not drawn and tied together by sex or physical attraction but rather just the mutual agreement that all we want is the company of one another. What a privilege it is to know what is happening in someone else’s life, that I can be present at their highest moments and their lowest, and in turn I can also be joyous and dismal around them without any judgment. Yes, romantic love always seems to be the most desirable, the most sought after, but nothing compares to platonic love, finding a soulmate in a best friend. 

Female friendships are unselfconscious. We do not harbor the same shields around ourselves as we do with boys. We were never taught to do that around each other. It’s feral, almost. Baring our belly, even to strangers, showing our claws and teeth but without threat because there is an unspoken truce that binds us all together. Even around women we may not particularly like, those who have hurt us, there is a string that relentlessly keeps us all connected. We lay our cards out on the table, waving a white flag. We understand each other in ways that no man ever can, even those we fall in love with. There is nothing that can equate to the feeling of having someone understand you on such a fundamental and granular level. It is irreplicable. 

From time to time, I wonder what my purpose is on this Earth. Why am I here? Why am I here, now? But then my best friend will grab my hand in a crowded room as a solace of comfort and I will think, “This”. She will rest her head on my shoulder on the subway and I think, “This’. I laugh with my friends until my stomach aches and I don’t even remember what was funny in the first place and think, “Oh, this. This is the point of everything”. There is no greater meaning to life than loving, fully and deeply. And not in the way you fall in love, not like that. Not in a way where it consumes you, but rather in a way where it completes you. It is finding that missing piece, satiating that void you have been searching to fill for so long. 

I apologize for sending you so many messages today; no, I’m fine, do not worry. Everything just reminds me of you. 

Sometimes I am overcome with such love and adoration for my friends that it feels like realities have imploded and the cosmos has collapsed. This feeling is so confounding, so devastating, but it is rooted in something so simple. It’s rooted in finding someone I enjoy doing nothing with, finding someone I can be in the kitchen with. I would like to believe that my best friends are my best friends in every universe. And if it so happens that we did not find each other in our infinite other timelines, I can not thank my lucky stars enough that we exist at the same time right now. 

My friends make me feel seen without feeling like I have to hide certain parts of myself. There is an urge in me to always find meaning in everything. I turn the idea in my head, over and over and over again. Why this friend, why now? What is the universe trying to teach me by bringing this person into my life? What is the purpose? But the reality is that there is no deeper meaning to female friendships other than their existence. It is pure, a great kindness presented in my life only to prove that love does exist in many forms, and this just may be the best. Romantic love has torn me up, shredded and scarred me to pieces, but platonic love has put me back together,  fragment by fragment. It is the soft hands of my friends that have shown me gentle love, a quiet and steadfast type of everlasting support.  

I find myself at this stage in womanhood where I have been and have become many things. Of twenty-three years, I am a student, a sister, a genius, a thief, a reader, a writer, a liar, a joy in bed, a man’s worst nightmare. But there is nothing I take more pride in being than a friend. I do not know if I will ever find the words to ever express how lucky I am to call my friends, my friends. 

I catch up with them over a bowl of pasta and a bottle of wine. 

My week was good / I need more sleep / Did you hear what happened?/ How is your dad? / I love the haircut / Are you doing okay? / Oh my god, that book was so good / This pasta / and the wine / we almost broke up / and my new shoes / We need to go there / and the sex was … / Let’s go dancing / I miss you / I’m so full / more wine? / I hated that movie / Yes, please, more wine / I miss you too / I love that bar, should we? / We can’t wait so long next time / I love you, / I love you too.