The biggest misconception about friendships, in my opinion, is that they have to be loud.
We have somehow decided that friendship must come with evidence. Birthday posts. Matching outfits. Shopping trips. Restaurant hopping. Inside jokes loud enough for everyone else to know that there is an āinsideā. The perfectly timed Instagram dump with the obligatory friend-booth photograph, because apparently if there isn’t photographic evidence, was the friendship even real?
But I have never believed that friendship has to make that much noise. I have friends who know entirely different versions of me. Some know the life-loving, bubbly girl who can turn a five-minute conversation into a three-hour event. Some know the funny one, whose primary coping mechanism is making a joke at the exact wrong time.Ā Few know the studious, ambitious girl who gets frighteningly excited about a good grade or a perfectly organised plan. And there are a handful who know the quieter girl; who tries to find enough reasons to stay yet another day.
They all know me. Just not the same me.|
And perhaps that is what makes friendship beautiful. We are not books that people read from cover to cover. We are more like houses with many rooms, and different friends somehow end up with keys to different ones. Some have seen the balcony where I dance in the sunlight. Some have sat in the kitchen at 2 a.m. Some have only ever knocked on the front door. And a very few know where I keep the things I don’t know how to name.
There are friends I speak to every single day. There are friends I call once a week. There are friends I can go months without speaking to, only to return to the conversation as though we had merely paused it yesterday. Somehow, the friendship does not expire simply because the snapchat streak did.
I have never measured closeness by frequency. To me , it’s never been the frequent hangouts or always being seen beside each other that makes the cut. Nor has it been grand gestures.
My best friend, for instance, probably wouldn’t have the slightest clue about my newfound
hatred for onions. He may not remember every tiny detail of my life, may not know what I ate yesterday, what song I’ve had on repeat, or what insignificant crisis currently occupies my brain. But if I ever reached the point where I wanted to call it quits, he would be there.
And somehow, that matters more. Because friendship isn’t always the person who knows what you order at restaurants . Sometimes, it is the person who knows what to do when you donāt know what to order.
We romanticise friendship into these grand visible rituals – someone who goes shopping with you, tries every new cafĆ© with you, stays up until midnight for your birthday, throws you the biggest surprise, remembers your favourite dessert, or makes sure you are always in the group picture. And yes, those things are beautiful. They are little love letters disguised as ordinary acts. They matter. But they are not the entirety of love.
Sometimes friendship is a grand gesture. Sometimes it is simply knowing that there is a person you can disappear from for three months and return to without needing to submit a formal explanation, and sometimesĀ it is a two-hour phone call, orĀ a meme sent at 3 a.m. Sometimes it is someone remembering your coffee order. And sometimes, it is someone who doesn’t even know that you’ve started picking onions out of your food, but knows exactly how to sit beside you when life starts feeling unbearable.
And so, I think,Ā friendship isn’t about having people who are constantly beside you.
Maybe it is about having people who remain with you like lighthouses. You don’t stare at them every night. You don’t call them every night. You may sail for miles without seeing them at all. But somewhere in the dark, you know they’re there.
And perhaps that’s enough.
So no, I don’t need my friendships to be loud. Some of the most important people in my life are barely making a sound. They’re just quietly, stubbornly, and beautifully there.
And honestly, in this economy of disappearing acts, I think āstill hereāā is a spectacular love language.