Friendship in the Age of Change

I need my friends right now, is that okay?

In some podcast or some sort of clippy little media avenue, I heard writer Elizabeth Gilbert confidently admit that friendships have been the greatest romances of her life. 

A recent Modern Love episode explores this very concept. A Youtube creator I’ve been following for years, Hitomi Mochuzuki, waxes poetic about the intimacy of friendship. Relationship therapist Esther Perel speaks on friendship as an exercise in relational free choice and a “unique love story.” One of my favorite books of all time, City of Girls (also by Gilbert) follows a young woman through love and self-discovery and theater and sex and messiness in the 1940s. In the end, she is left with the fullness of a long, lasting female friendship.  

I am drawn again and again to tales of friendship. I derive so much of my identity from the people I surround myself with, as if their accomplishments seep into my selfhood. I just want to brag and brag and brag about my friends. I remind myself that I am the sum of the 5 closest people to me. This has been a powerful tool in re-orienting myself to my values. Who do I want to be like? What type of person do I want to be in this world?

A great joy of mine is being a source of comfort for my friends, and however difficult or stubborn I may find it, I do love when they are sources of comfort to me. I rest my head in Lexie’s lap, Amy gives me back scratchies, Ava roots for my writing, Ellie lets me rant, Maggie fixes my twisted bra strips, Carter holds my fears without judgment, Petra believes in me. I promise to do the same for them. 

I’ve had friends helpfully remind me, like my sweet Katie, that friendship is not a direct, precisely reciprocal give-and-take. There have been so many times the past few months that I have just needed to cry on the couch at Katie’s. I’ve come empty handed, no cookies or warm meal to thank her. Just me and my tears. It can be easy to feel defeated, like an energy suck taking the patience and saneness from your friends. But, in these moments, I’ve just had to surrender to my friendship. To trust that they’ve got me, and in some other way in some other time, I will have them.

Friendship has proven so essential to my wellbeing.

I remember being so achingly lonely in my gap year. I was 18, not in college, living in a studio apartment by myself across the country. I would get ill or itch with hives for no apparent reason. I believe it was loneliness and anxiety. When I couldn’t derive the bubbling joy from a hike or a meal the way I wanted to, I would return to the fact that happiness is only real when shared. I did all the self-work and the meditation and the prayers alone. And it wasn’t enough. I just wanted to go out with a friend and dance.

When I finally found my groove in college and also found myself some friends, my world expanded. It got bigger in a snap. Everything, from a dining hall breakfast or a party to studying or working out, felt so much more exceptional and poignant and romantic alongside others. It sucked all the gnawing thoughts from my brain and brought me back into my body, pulling my attention toward something, someone else. 

But something is happening to me these days.

As I navigate separating my life from a long-term partner, I feel this immense societal, shame-induced pressure to be alone again. To do this whole thing right. I feel ashamed for wanting — and yeah — maybe needing to be around people when I’m seemingly supposed to brute force this single-hood by myself.  

There is this inner part of me (an unhealed-ness or a human-ness or both) that feels like a little girl who just wants to be around her friends, her mom, her neighbors. I want to go out to eat and talk to my server. I want to have coffee and confide in my parents in the morning. I let my writing interviews become drawn out conversations. I say yes to coffee with strangers. I leap from city to city, Zoom to Zoom, restaurant meal to restaurant job. It doesn’t really feel like numbing, but it may appear like that; it just feels like it’s my present way of moving through emotions and massive life change. 

I remember my first breakup so loudly. I’d cry on the couch and ask a god for help. I was torturing myself to feel better. There’s a lot of therapy and self-help talk encouraging the heartbroken to be alone, be alone. I was alone then, and I have been alone many times in my life, and I don’t really want to be alone right now. I feel stubborn about this. 

I find myself reaching toward old friends spanning many years who have seen me at my best and my worst and my most hurt — people who have known and loved me before, after, and during. I find myself reaching for new friends too, who can meet me exactly where I’m at, who carry no preconceived notions about me. I find myself asking mentors to go to dinner with me, or find myself mentoring those younger than me. I also find myself just wanting to be reached in general.

I think I need these people right now. Is it okay to need others?

I went to visit my dear friend Maddie in DC and we talked about this. We decided it is really okay, in fact, really normal, to need others.

We know how to care for ourselves. We love spending time alone on a walk, a run or at a coffee shop. And still, we will always require close friends, loose acquaintances, and even good-hearted strangers to carry us forward. We are a communal species. Death ceremonies involved not just individual mourning, but tribes of friends and families. Our psyches weren’t evolved to grieve alone. Why force ourselves to do this then? 

Maddie and I also talked about how — for the first time in our lives — our best friends are everywhere, but beside us. I’m seeing my best friends go to grad school in London, pursue art and change careers in LA, work corporate jobs in New York. Hell, Maddie just got back from making wine in New Zealand.  

Some are starting their career and others are ending it. Some of my friends are leaving their long term relationships; others are about to get married. Friends drift outward and around. Some are at max capacity right now, and as an adult, I’ve been trying to lean more into empathy than frustration for our fuzzy communications. I am so happy for the max capers - let’s go! I’ve been there. In fact, I am there.

Although this reality may sound like I should be feeling more alone than ever, it is quite the opposite. I am so proud of my friends navigating their own worlds. It feels like we are all on different earths orbiting each other. I am so happy we are alone together. It is so moving to see my friends make scary big decisions that serve them. It is an honor to see my friends’ parallel lives blossom into weird, wonky paths.

I used to struggle with FOMO, torturing myself over if I was one step way behind or one step too forward. Feeling like I just missed something. But now, at 25, I’m slowly learning there is no longer a linear path that could ever mark someone as behind or forward. We are instead, figuring it out alone and together, distances apart.  

The nature of friendship being spread out is that our time together is also spread thin. As I pack my current life with busy writing, work and Charlotte friend affairs, I’m afraid I’m not being a good enough long-distance friend. I can be better about returning calls and mailing the postcards I’ve been storing. I can surmount my lethargy for a catch-up over the phone with a friend — at the end of the day, a call always energizes the both of us.

But if it ends up being more phone tag than phone call amidst the chaos of being 25, I remember what I used to say to a person I once loved, and to my friends who I love from afar: You are always with me. You are tucked away in a pocket of my heart. I carry you always.