Every so often I find myself telling my friends, “Everyone deserves to have poetry and letters written for them and if I have to be the one to do it for you, so be it.”
Friendship is easily, at least in my opinion, the highest form of love. It is the one relationship in life in which all parties involved must make a conscious choice every day to keep it alive. A friendship continues because one chooses the other person again and again. At its heart friendship is a mutual choice and mutual recognition of each other’s worth. All this to say, platonic love is worth celebrating as elaborately and is worth expressing as frequently as we do romantic and familial love. Friendship is, so often, taken for granted and so we do not deem it necessary to be extra about friendship. But we can and quite frankly SHOULD be.
So, write to your friends. Write them long, rambling, multi-page love letters. Tell them what you appreciate about them. Talk about your memories of them. Chances are they remember different events. It is honestly only between you that you can form a more complete picture of your time in each other’s lives, and there is so much joy in putting those pieces together. I wrote my best friend a letter for her 21st birthday and I remember her texting me her reaction the next day. I can personally attest to the rush of affection and emotional fulfillment you feel knowing you have made someone so important to you feel not just happy but valued.
Send your friends long text messages. Tell them about your day. Ask them about theirs. Share the mundane details or the weird factoids. Let them know of the things that remind you of them. Discuss the ways in which you think you may have changed. Express your pride in their achievements as you inform them of yours. I have a friend who is at university across the world from where I am, but she knows everything of note that happens in my life here at KU. I cannot imagine her not knowing. It is important to me that she occupies this phase of my life despite our physical distance. What is friendship if not affording someone space in your life through all the phases of it?
If you prefer verse to prose, put your thoughts down in poetry. Use elaborate metaphors and intricate wording. Equate your friends with the sun and stars or light and dark or whatever else can capture the depth of your relationship or the breadth of your love for each other. I am by no means a good poet, but I try my best to capture my feelings in words because it reflects how large my affection for my friends feels sometimes. Moreover, does it not feel incredible to see yourself in your loved ones’ eyes?
Or maybe you’re an artist. A friend of mine, who I consider my life partner in some ways, made a piece of art for me for my birthday last year, which was inspired by our trips to the beach by my house. I cannot quite describe how it felt to see it. To comprehend the effort that went into capturing the essence of those experiences. As someone who is severely creatively challenged and cannot even draw a straight line, to have received art and been the subject of it just feels like so much.
Friendship is a gift. It is a form of love that, at least in my case, has made my life worth living. It is the highest honor to be afforded space in my loved ones’ lives. There is effort that goes into maintaining communication with your loved ones and even more goes into expressing your affection. So be extra. Write your friends love letters and poetry. Send them flowers. Make art for them. Celebrate the beauty of a relationship that asks nothing and everything of you simultaneously, one in which you choose to give and take on your terms every day.
Write your friends love letters. Because we all deserve to have them.