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What I’ve Learned From a Forty-Year Friendship
There’s something so special to being a testament to someone else’s growth, to bearing witness to their soul sprouting forth from an unsteady youth towards a confident future self. Then that gift comes rippling back for your own benefit. It’s awe-inspiring, this imagining of souls.
My Bestie and I met our first year of high school, when I was thirteen and she was fourteen, coming from less than favorable backgrounds. Our home lives were tough to say the least and we both felt the pressure of carrying that burden. We’d each been shut out of social circles and bullied, so there was some trauma bonding happening, but mostly I remember we spoke a lot in silence. Typically that’s a very masculine approach to life and keeping company, yet it worked for us. Perhaps there was enough mutual understanding happening. Or maybe we just liked the quiet.
Neither of us remember meeting the other one. It’s like we picked up the conversation mid-sentence and had always been friends. The how of it escapes us to this day. Funny.
And it doesn’t matter. We were there for each other’s destruction, when we’d somewhat drop out of contact because we were ashamed to have the other see the bad choices we knew we were about to make. We fought and took time away to cool off. We came together for family time Sundays, crowding with chosen siblings into a favorite brunch spot. We birthed her child together.
It’s okay to fight, to disagree, to make poor decisions. What are you doing if not having growing pains within forty years worth of being a person? We’re also both strong-willed people, big personalities, and that has made for some explosive times as we formed who we are.
It’s wonderful to come back together, to know that will always be the case, and to be steadier for it. We have much more compassion here in our later years, still amazed we are living into old age together.
We no longer stop at roadside stands for burgers with coleslaw and chili because the reflux is second fiddle to the fact that we live several states apart now. We had a good run for road trips in the middle of the night, blasting Sinead O’Connor and Ministry, taking ourselves to clubs when we were underage.
We gave each other away at our…
