He’s one of my best friends.
Is it actually possible to have more than one best friend? Isn’t the word “best” supposed to be definitive of being better than all of the rest, and therefore, only applicable to one person? So then, are there tiers of best friends, with the best of the best friends being the Superman of Best Friends, and the others falling into the lesser categories of the Supergirl, the Batman, the Spiderman, and the Joker of best friends (and yes, this time lowercase)?
But then, doesn’t that, in itself, negate the claim of having best friends, plural? Is the use of the phrase “one of my best friends” done out of some guilty attempt to not reveal one friend as being less than another? Or is it a dodge out of the way of the unpleasant and potentially terrifying prospect of categorizing your friends?
Can friends even be categorized? Isn’t there something sacrilegious about the idea of placing friends in different categories? Labeling them, like they’re products on a shelf, waiting to be bought? Let’s stick a price tag on them, while we’re at it, so people know just how much they’re worth – just how little we’ll accept to dump them and turn to someone with a faker smile, but pockets lined with things we want?
… there’s something incredibly painful in that idea. Something that hurts a lot to think about, stabs you in the heart and in the back to feel. Brutus, with all of his betrayal, and a knife.
Heh. Ironic.
I’ve never put a price on friendship. Maybe it sounds egotistical to you, after what you’ve just read. I’m not gloating about being a better person because of that. It’s an observation only, but something that brings enough pain and memories with it to make anyone brood.
I’ve lost a few friends in my life. We all have, I’m sure. It’s a part of the inevitability of our existence – that things should begin means that they will ultimately, at some point, end. A harsh truth, but one we must become accustomed to, or risk being shattered irreparably. We can’t be glass houses, because these people we keep with us, who we hold inside of us, deep inside in our hearts, carry the stones of knowledge that will be our destruction.
The first friend I lost was named Rosa. I use her name here without concern because it was over fifteen years ago that we parted. My first friend, I think, but kindergarteners make friends so easily. Friendship is so simple for children. Hey, our hair’s the same color! Hey, your dress is pretty! Hey, can I borrow the blue crayon? Let’s be friends forever!
Rosa moved away. I remember crying, because when you’re five, the world is an endless expanse of land and the furthest a letter goes is to grandma’s house, twenty miles away. A state? What’s a state? Pennsylvania, trees, a valley of mountains is all I know. The world ends beyond this point. Nothing stretches on forever.
The second friend I lost left me as much as I left him. I’d always been a tomboy growing up. After that childhood stage of wanting to be a princess and wearing dressed because all of the Disney princesses did, there were jeans and T-shirts, and grade school was good for making you pick a clique and staying there. And since painting your fingernails and actually knowing how to apply make-up was damn girly, I joined a group of four boys and we commandeered the jungle gym, which totally became our pirate ship (and yes, it was completely logical that it could sail through lava without sinking), and we played Alligator Tag during recess until the aids told us we would get detention if we didn’t come in now.
But the shifts in school are not kind to friendships. The movements from grade school to high school are as exciting as they are terrifying, and then classes are different and you’re placed because of your last names, now, and suddenly, being at the top of the alphabet sucks, because all of your guy friends – the guys who saved you from burning up in lava pits, who flipped the bars in the jungle gym because you asked them to, who pushed you on the tire swing and hung out with you even though you were a total loser and nerd – are at the bottom of the alphabet, and now the only time you get to see each other is if you pass each other in the hallways. And the phone calls become fewer, the glimpses, the notes in the hall lessen, and suddenly, it’s years later and you spot each other in the grocery store, and hell, is he actually taller than me now, when did that happen, god, I wish we were still friends. But you don’t even know them anymore.
The third friend I lost died. Sometimes it still seems surreal. I’ll think about her, about how we should definitely go out for Chinese again sometime, like we did that time she was babysitting her goddaughter, and then I’ll remember – Jesus, she died. They tried to save her, but they couldn’t, and now she’s gone, and she was a really good friend and I wish I’d realized that sooner, but now it’s too late, and she’s gone… and it’s so weird.
The fourth time I lost a friend, I lost two, and it nearly broke me. In a way, it did, because it shattered who I was – destroyed the person that I was at the time. Dependent on the two of them, leaning on them for the near-decade of my life that we’d been together, I sometimes wonder how I couldn’t have realized how very sick I was, to go through my life needing such a crutch. But three’s a crowd, and they’re not lying, because it is – someone always gets left behind, even when they really try to be a friend, even when they’re like a damn puppy, needing to please, or perhaps because of that.
And I remember the screaming over the telephone, having to hold it away from my face because I don’t mean enough for them to talk rationally, or I don’t hurt enough for them to stop saying such mean things. And for some reason, I’m speaking so calmly, but inside, the shattered glass that was once this part of me that needed them is slicing into my insides and cutting wounds that surely can’t be healed – they’ll just bleed on and on and on until I die, and gods, please, I want to die, because I can’t go on without them, I can’t breathe without them, I’m nothing without them. I’m not me without them.
Do we define ourselves by our friends? Or are the friends – the friendships – defined by us? Which way does it go? Is there enough force in the connection between these two people for it to spread equal parts both ways, or does someone have to initiate this? How much can a person be willing to give up, to create this thing we call friendship? But really there’s another name for it, we’re just afraid to use it. We’re afraid because people take it the wrong way, they assume it means something else, but it’s all the same. Friend, sister, mate, mother – each is a title given, not by determination of blood, but by love, and really, calling it anything else is ignoring that simple, beautiful, thankgodyouexist thing some precious deity graced us with.
Love. The word brings to mind chocolates in a heart-shaped container. Corny romances on TV with lines so overused dinosaurs would roll their eyes. Satin sheets and canopy beds, legs sticking out from under a comforter, groans and grunts in a darkened room in the middle of the night, and too much tongue and not enough thought, and damnit, THAT’S NOT LOVE!
And what is love, then, Wandering Muse? What is the definition of this four-letter word, or are you just a bitter young woman whose about to spend another Valentine’s Day alone without ever having been on a proper date? Well, readers, dears, you’ve answered your own question, haven’t you?
Love is a four-letter word.
It’s right up there with fuck. It’s sitting in the middle of damn with shit piled on top of it. It’s lying on its side and getting the crap beat out of it. “Love” is a word we overuse, but never use enough.
“I understand with love comes pain, but why did I have to love so much?” – unknown
I never do anything half-assed. One of my bosses once commented about me that I am nothing if not thorough. When I love someone, I do not do so in a simple, easy fashion. I do not love carefully. When I love, I love fully, and I throw myself into this feeling, this friendship, this emotion, as though it is a sky and I am a winged creature as of yet forbidden to fly.
Terrifying. Painful. Raw. Love is all these things, and many more things – some that I know from my experiences, and many that I do not know, but you might. Perhaps, for you, love is peaceful, or proud, or heavy, or close. In my experience, love is painful, and thank god.
Maybe I’m a masochist. Maybe I’m insane. Maybe these past experiences have fucked me up more than I can tell, but I’m glad love hurts. Because the fact that I’m still throwing myself into it means that the idea of loving someone – of that sensation of love – is more powerful and still greater to me than the pain that will come if I should lose it.
I make a family out of friends, because I love them. And how do I define these people whom I love? They are those who are close to me. They’re the people who have managed to crawl beneath my skin and buried themselves somewhere within the shell of myself, where they can see part of who I am, where they can know me, and where they’ve learned the words that can tear me apart. These people whom I love are the ones with the power to destroy me more than anyone else in the world. They have greater strength than the strongest man alive. Greater power than a gun-collector riding a tank. More wisdom about my heart than a three century old psychic on an empathy kick. I love them.
So where did this blog go? Somewhere far away from what it was originally supposed to be, but the message is still just as strong. Every friend has a place in your heart, in your life, somewhere underneath your skin where they bury themselves – where they never leave from without ripping some part of you out with them.
My mom, dad, and my brother bear those titles because I love them, not just because I was conceived by two and forced into siblinghood with the other. In friendships I’ve made with others, I’ve found two other brothers, something resembling a hybrid aunt-grandmother, a weird-ass uncle, and four sisters. Maybe someday I’ll have more. Gods, I hope so. I hope someday my skin is rolling because I can’t hardly contain the people that have slipped underneath it and found their way into my heart.
Love is something people are afraid to talk about, because it means French kisses and spaghetti dinners to most people; but that’s not love – that’s Hollywood. Love is rare, hard to find, terrifying to feel, painful to speak of.
Love is agony. And may the gods strike me with it and never allow me to recover.
~ Wandering Muse
