My friend offers chocolate to everyone in the room, except for me. She’s learned by now what I like and don’t like, and this is proof. Later she checks in, unsure that perhaps it seemed a little rude, and I brush her worries away. She just knows me, I both think and voice out loud.
Another friend articulates a feeling I feel — and write about — often, spurring a conversation. Youth REALLY is wasted on the young. It’s the natural segue to this discussion that is hard to find beyond friendship. We bare quick glimpses of our souls like it’s nothing, a subtlety that requires a certain kind of closeness, and then we move on. Some things don’t require elaboration and this is one of them. We always have things to talk about.
The girl I’ve known since freshman year wordlessly grabs my hand, taking the lead and guiding us through the happily impaired crowd of peers to the exit. This bar has lost us; maybe it was the music or the desire for a cheaper drink that finally hit, but the decision to leave required little discussion. It’s more of a certain look and, “ready?”
With two select friends I’m able to nonchalantly reminisce on old memories of my dad. That his birthday is this week, or that every Friday growing up we visited 7/11 like clockwork, or that time we rode bikes around the block in the hail. I don’t need to explain what happened later or how hard it still is now — they know the feeling too. It’s a tie none of us wish we shared, but we do, and that brings on a different type of freedom and understanding. Here, with each other, we don’t have to shy away from it.
Oh my god, I mouth to another friend sitting across the room. We exchange looks of amazement, happy, but also a little overwhelmed, at the number of new members in our weekly Her Campus meeting. Later, amid the exchange of college pleasantries, I walk up to our mutual friend and agree this might be too much for us. We all reflect on the experience a couple days later — where we’re all a little overstimulated again — and laugh. I think the temporary chaos is worth it, it’s how we all met anyway.
It’s the weekly text(s) I can count on from another friend — a friendship born initially from mutual friends, but has since cemented into a deliberate choice — every weekend querying what my plans are for the weekend. We have no overlap in majors or minors, and thus must actively work together to figure out a plan to see one another. We’ll see each other at least once, this is an all but sure thing, and we’ll trade updates, being a little more honest than we would with anyone else.
X would really like this album. I’m gonna text it to her, I think. It’s Calico by Ryan Beatty, and I know the songwriting is something she would appreciate. She gives it a listen and sends her favorite lyrics back — like I suspected she might. Time has affected us both, me in my senior year, and her venturing beyond the veil of college into the real world, so the tide has inevitably pulled back on our opportunities to talk in person. But we still think of one another, even if it’s just through short texts, liked stories, and written anecdotes. The friendship isn’t any less so because of this.
There’s another girl that has known two versions of me: who I was in high school and who I am now. It’s a rarity for me, I think I’ve changed so much that it’s hard for people to grapple with these two versions, unsure of how to reconcile them together. She does it well though. I think it might be because we became accustomed to one another through a shared interest that’s slightly embarrassing to reflect on now. Our origins are hard to articulate, so to know is to be let in on our very own secret.
This is friendship I think. Actually, I know it is.
It’s the way they grow from conscious, intentional choices — that’s how it differs from blood relationships, we get a say here. At any point we can decide to cut the strings twining together each of our own lives, ending our joint paths.
Sometimes I struggle to feel lucky. I probably still will the next time something goes even slightly wrong. Another of course this would happen to me thought. It’s human nature trying to rationalize our existence, scrambling to find some reason to explain why things happen. Luck is an easy one to blame. But writing this all down, detailing the different ways how I know friendship is real and that I have it, I know I am lucky in some capacity. I hope you are too.