When Friendship Saves Us (Part 2) : Our Take On Modern Love

Believe me when I tell you that nothing sounds more terrifying to me than a posh British girl who has just transitioned out of her successful career as a modern art curator to focus more fully on our societal responsibility to address mental well-being. (For reference: I am insane, and 50% of the “art” in my house is from TJ Maxx.) 

But a few months after our second babies were born, it was time for our firstborn children to start Kindergarten, and by some stroke of luck, or destiny (or the fact that there was actually only one school in our town) our children ended up being placed in class together.

I sometimes wonder what these days would have been like if I’d understood at that time who she was…who’d she’d be to me. If I’d have felt less lost? Less alone? If we both would have? But maybe that’s the beauty of friendship? There is simply no rush to force its unfolding, no timetable that stipulates where things ought to be; a freedom that allowed us to bumble through the initial unfolding in spit-up ridden fits and starts, baby slings flapping unceremoniously in the breeze as we realized: being together through all of this was just better than being apart. 

There was a time when I thought of friendship as an immature pursuit, that all of these minor relationships were simply buying time until the real relationships began. Surely I’d outgrow the need to spill forth all of the pieces of my life in the hopes that my poor, unsuspecting friends would put them back together. Surely slumber parties and impromptu ice cream binges would lose their appeal? Surely I’d feel increasingly more inclined to hide who I was in the hopes that I’d remain protected, collected, secure. And maybe that’s true. Maybe we do start holding ourselves together more as we age. We smile and respond “I’m great!”, and we shift our conversations to inconsequential topics and we occasionally pop in to therapy when things get bad…but by and large, more often than not, we choose to suffer alone. As our problems gain significance and gravity and weight, we are no longer confident that our friends can bear their burden, no longer confident that they’ll be able to see us through the wreckage of our flaws. Maybe that’s why, when we find someone who does see us (really sees us) and loves us still…maybe that’s why we hold so tight?

Claire was the first person I opened up to fully (partially because she made me feel safe, and partially because I was breaking down before her very eyes and there was no longer a polite way to brush off her concerns).

• “Yes I babysat your daughter today!” (You’re welcome!)
  Yes, I also stayed at the park the whole time because I thought a murderer was hidden in my attic.

• “Yes, we rode our bikes to school pick-up today!” (What a fun and active mom!)
  Yes, I also believe a bomb has been planted in my car and will explode at any moment in some sort of Speed-esque fashion (but minus the uniformly-sweaty-and-bronzed Keanu Reeves.)

• “Yes, my eyes are very puffy because I’m tired!” (#momLife amirite?)
  Yes my eyes are also puffy because I’ve been crying constantly/hysterically/desperately wondering how to escape the confines of my body.

Due, in part, to a series of traumatic events and in part to a less-than-ideal genetic composition, I’d found myself locked in the jaws of anxiety and paranoia, once again — a constant gnawing that quickly escalated to a violent, thrashing attack. And when everyone else saw the smiles and the bikes and the requisite puffy-eyes…Claire saw the bite marks. When everyone else was happy to accept the ‘I’m fine!’s, happy to accept the facade I’d so expertly constructed (and who could blame them?) Claire was the type of friend who was brave enough to look beyond the poorly-bandaged wounds to the disaster that lay beyond. And when she saw me there (the real and broken me) the ‘me’ who had no jokes or quips or excuse left; when anyone would have been justified in their rapid fleeing ... She stayed.

When Friendship Saves Us (Part 1) : Our Take On Modern Love

She’s moving back to England and I can’t come. (Obviously.)

Because the thing about friendship is: you don’t plan your life around people that you’re not having sex with. (Which honestly feels a bit barbaric, to me, but ok.)

Finding romantic love has long been considered the gold-standard of human achievement, evidence that we are worthy of a lifetime of devotion, or, at the very least, that we are tolerable enough to withstand for the better part of a lifetime. Romantic love is a precisely choreographed dance, the steps of which will never be revealed; a high-stakes game with loosely-defined rules and a massive potential for loss. On the one hand we’re expected to foster an impossible level of comfort and security. (We hurl forth our hopes and dreams, crossing our fingers that we’ve found someone who will see them and share them and keep them safe … someone who won’t be sent fleeing wildly in the opposite direction.) On the other, we’re implored to maintain a similarly-impossible level intimacy, eroticism and mystery. (If you’re not popping out from behind the dresser in a French-maid costume or developing a new mental health disorder every month, are you even trying???)

Friendship does not exist on this same playing field, or within this same town, or even within this same earthly realm. Friendship is an ever-available gift from the gods. An opportunity for connection and closeness without ever having to talk about mortgages or school districts or pills for sad penises.

Friendship is unburdened by such trite matters. Friendship does not care about flaccidity, or project-based learning or “interest rates we should really capitalize on.”

Friendship offers a purity that is complicated only by the fact that there is nothing legally binding you to one another. Nothing to say, “if you leave you’ve got to give me a house or a boat or half of your grandmother’s jewelry.” Just this love that lingers in space…vulnerable…subject to the whims of men. 

When I first met Claire, she was sailing a paper boat down a stream, giggling with her young son in a fashion that suggested she was probably a nanny and almost definitely a little bit drunk. (She denies both claims.) I fell for her her all the same. Her lightness, her ease, the way she smiled and laughed, the way I could see her walls…the way I knew before she did that they’d start to fall.

We first bonded over the fact that we both had children. Not that they were similar or that we were raising them in the same way or that they even liked each other, just that they existed and that we had birthed them within the same relative time frame. (This, I’ve discovered, is as good a reason as any to develop an adult friendship.)

The unfolding was slow. I forgot her name multiple times and was forced to introduce her to some unsuspecting acquaintance who found himself lingering nearby so that she’d have to tell them her name). We had no real reason to meet so we’d just happen upon each other, at the houses of mutual friends, at the park, by a stream. (Stalker stuff.)

Years later, when it came time for us to produce our requisite second children, both of us managed to hold out for an ungodly 5 years. While the rest of the world went on to space their children perfectly, precisely, methodically, 2.6 years apart, here we were, bucking the norm, starting over after half-a-decade. (Her, because she’d had a successful career and seemingly unlimited ambition…me, because my body wasn’t very cooperative and that I was busy stock-piling mental and physical health disorders.)

The first time I saw her after having the baby, I forgot to ask the baby’s name, or when she’d had her, or if she was so tired she might die. We just sort of stood there on the sidewalk making small-talk, smiling vaguely … each of us pretending to be ok.