I have been thinking and reading a lot about friendship and vulnerability and how I have a lot of shame and fear to unpack regarding both friendship and vulnerability. I have been thinking about how I oscillate between drowning in my need for connection and stomping on my needs by zooming in and hyper-focusing on my work, and my goals, and cultivating a space within myself that lacks needs and feelings of loneliness.
When I was a little girl, there weren’t too many people I called my friends, but those I called friends were like family and I loved them deeply. I was never the type of child seeking superficial friendships for rewards like popularity or fitting in. Depth, intimacy, longevity, and truly knowing my friends and being able to feel held by them is something I’ve always craved. I rarely felt like I belonged with a lot of my peers for this reason, something I still struggle with as an adult.
My first best friend ever was a girl named Jade. She had short blonde hair like the warm and doting mother from The Parent Trap and her skin glowed during the winter seasons. When I got my first flip phone, she was the first person I called outside of my family. This was before iPhones took over the world and her parents had a landline. Her parents would pick up and I’d ask for Jade and we’d chat about things children chat about; homework, recess, and crushes.
One day, Jade moved, and I never heard from her again. Throughout my childhood, I’d look through the Yellow Pages to see if I could find her number, last name, or address. I never found anything. Still, I carried her and our lost friendship with me for years to come. She was the first best friend whose absence introduced me to heartache.
My next significant best friend was Leila, I will call her Leila for the sake of privacy. I loved Leila, she was Colombian and had soft brown eyes. She lit my world up, and I saw her through a lens in which her imperfections and flaws made her more lovable. We bonded over silly things like Disney shows and songs like “Here We Go Again,” by Demi Lovato. Leila was the sister I never had, and I felt so lucky to have her, but at some point, I was no longer hers.
Leila found her way into a new group of friends and left me behind. Sometimes they were nice to me and other times they made fun of me during classes. I burned with embarrassment when they would make ugly faces and even stick their middle fingers up at me when I was walking by during lunch. I remember pretending I didn’t notice these things or care to cope. Those moments snatched my confidence before I had a chance to truly develop it. I morphed into a self-conscious and anxious person who never quite feels or trusts that she belongs anywhere.
I remember coming home upset after school one day and attempting to tell my mother about Leila’s new friends and being treated so cruelly by them. I felt abandoned, unloved, and confused about my lovability. What did it mean about me if someone I considered my sister could leave me without explanation and sculpt herself into a lesser, but still cruel, version of a mini Regina George?
This loss and betrayal pained and haunted me my entire life. I wish I meant that jokingly, like “Psssh, no my elementary school best friend abandoning and bullying me did not affect me for like 10 years straight after. Does it look like a give a fuck? Cause I don’t,” but I was affected. I did give a fuck like Tiffany Pollard breaking down in that one episode of Flavor of Love while also looking stunning in that gorgeous blue dress. #BreakdownButMakeItFashionable.
Throughout the rest of elementary school, I made other friends and best friends. They weren’t Leila, but they didn’t have to be. Looking back, it was good that they weren’t. Still, I pined for Leila deep in my heart. I wanted my best friend back, but I never got her back, at least not fully. The spark in my heart for her reignited when she texted me in the summer before sixth grade though. She’d text me to apologize for her cruelty and I was excited about the thought of us being friends again. She crushed my dream fast, telling me that just because she’d said she was sorry didn’t mean we’d be friends. I licked my wounds and vowed to never reach for her again.
As an adult, I don’t have many people I call my friends and I don’t need a lot of friends to feel happy. Still, I struggle with loneliness more often than I’d like to say. I think lots of people my age feel this way; lonely and afraid to reach for connection. It’s a 21st-century thing. Sometimes my loneliness is painful, overwhelming, and depressing. My loneliness doesn’t stem from a lack of quantity, but a lack of being seen, a lack of depth, a lack of sharing a life, a lack of moving in sync, of belonging and feeling invited. There is a lack of togetherness in modern day friendships that pains me.
I struggle to wear my heart on my sleeve in friendships, even in the friendships I’ve had for years. I often feel embarrassed about my needs and what it takes for me to feel close to people and loved. Maybe I’m not so much embarrassed as I am afraid of being the little girl whose curiosity, longing, and depth were met with coldness, cruelty, absence, rejection, and apathy. The little girl whose desire to love and be loved was unfulfilled and left to wilt and wither. The little girl whose needs went ignored, needs that no one cared to know or ask about.
Making new friends as an adult isn’t difficult. Cultivating genuine long-lasting and authentic friendships is incredibly hard though, especially when everything feels so transactional and we live in a society that promotes hyper-individualism, aloneness, and isolation. I get too excited when I meet new people, especially when I feel a connection with them right away. Something in me almost always pulls back from taking the plunge into a new friendship out of fear of doing, saying, and feeling too much. There have been many times I thought I’d made a new friend only to never hear from them again or realize they weren’t capable of crafting the friendship I was seeking.
I’ve learned that feeling connected to people doesn’t mean they’ll take the plunge with you on building a friendship, getting to know the ins and outs of you, dedicating time to spend with you, or even really caring about you for that matter. People seem to reserve this sort of effort for their romantic relationships only. Sometimes you’ll have a wonderful connection and friendship with someone only to have it fizzle out because of conflicts, miscommunications, or simply a lack of effort. I have been trying to embrace the fact that people come and go, especially as a woman in her twenties, but deep down I want to find the people that will stay, grow with me, and love me too. I want to find where I belong.
I used to see tweets that said things like, “I’m the type of friend that can go months without speaking to my friends and it doesn’t change a thing,” and I’d see comments in agreement, downing the people who dare want more from their friendships, the “needy” people. I remember feeling ashamed for not sharing that feeling. I was even envious and wished I was nonchalant enough for someone’s absence to not mean anything to me, for me to not even notice someone’s absence. According to lots of people on the internet, you should just understand and accept your friends’ absence for weeks and months. You should accept their lack of communication or interest in your life. And you should never complain or ask anything more of your friends than what they are willing to give.
Unfortunately, I’m not this kind of friend. Distance doesn’t make my heart grow fonder, it makes me never want to speak to people again, to be honest. Too much space triggers my abandonment issues, anxieties, and fears. I shut down and feel uncared for and unloved. It’s easy for me to cut my losses despite my need for connection when I feel there is potential to be wounded, disappointed, or hurt. I’m often embarrassed about how easy it is for me to disappear into the abyss of too much space, distance, and silence in the relationships I hold close.
I want more from my friendships. I don’t want friendships that only exist through text or FaceTime. I don’t want friends that don’t care to notice my absence. I don’t want friends who easily neglect their friendships once they begin romantic relationships. Do you know how much it sucks to lose a friend because of a new girlfriend or boyfriend taking your place!? It’s even worse when these friends use you as a crutch when they’re having problems with their partner. I don’t want friends that ghost me for three months and text me on a random Tuesday at 3:47 PM like, “Hey, how are you?” Like I was great before you rose from the dead, respectfully.
I want to talk to and see my friends and their faces during the week, in real life. I want to still matter even if a new girlfriend or boyfriend is in the picture. I want know I am cared for, I want to be missed. I want to do mundane things like grocery shopping and running errands together. Getting together at each other’s houses for movie nights or having a solid food spot downtown that we frequent every week for drinks or dinner and catching up about our day and lives would be so cool. These things feel impossible, though. Most of my friends are working tirelessly to make ends meet or live in cities that are too far away for me to casually travel to, like New York and New Jersey.
In my mind, I want too much from my friends and I should stay silent about my feelings, needs, and desires, but I know that’s just my shame and fear talking. I am always afraid of being too demanding, of not knowing my place and taking up too much space, of talking too much, and of overstaying my welcome. I am especially afraid of being a burden to my friends and a source of stress or negative feelings. Sometimes I feel paranoid that I am not truly loved or wanted. Part of this is my attachment style. Another part is people consistently failing me. Another part is my paralyzing fear of speaking about what I want and need.
Sometimes I live vicariously through the women in some of my favorite shows like Girlfriends, The Game, or Sex and The City. In these shows exist women who have their own lives and careers, but also prioritize their friends who sometimes come over to their apartments unannounced, emotionally dump, share lots of space and time, call after hours, and don’t convince themselves that they have to be statuesque and rigid with their boundaries to be loved, accepted, or to belong. The friends in these shows are seemingly at the center of each other lives or instead, are a top priority rather than an afterthought orbiting on the outskirts of their lives.
I want that for myself; to be a priority to friends and to have friendships that are a priority to me. I crave closeness and intimacy so much. I have often mistaken my need for friendship for romantic desire and I think a lot of people do the same, but friendship offers us things that romance alone cannot. I love friendship. I love the dance that is friendship, the way you grow to love someone and their gestures, mannerisms, and body movements. I love the possibility of longevity and safety that lies in friendship, of knowing that someone is a space where I can be different versions of myself and that I am a space for someone else to do the same. I love the way bodies become vessels for dreams and secrets and pain and joys in friendship. My closest friends are not just friends, they are family; they are the loves and lights of my life.
It’s hard to express and share my need for closeness with others. It is nerve-wracking to admit that I want others to want to be and feel as close to me as I feel to them. I want to feel more than wanted. I want to feel chosen and gorgeously loved. I want to know I won’t be abandoned. I want to be a priority friend. I want friendships where presence and availability matter. It’s ironic how we all have smartphones that allow us to be more “connected” than ever, and yet, I only feel more disconnected and isolated from that which is real and tangible.
But I have been praying that I find my people this year. The people who will love me, value my presence, and hold me in close regard. I have been praying that I find people who value friendship as much as me and don’t take it for granted. I want to have a retreat from the world with people who are safe, able, and willing. I’ve been taking inventory of the people in my life who share the same sentiment as me and allowing my heart to be warmed with gratitude for their presence in my life too.
I want to fulfill my need for friendship, closeness, and intimacy this year. I want to embrace my large feelings and needs and create the friendships, community, and spaces that I yearn for. I want to deepen my understanding of what it means to be a friend. I want to open up more and tell people what I want and need from them. I want to let go of the shame and fear I hold about reaching for connection in a world where people are more disconnected from each other than ever.
Until next time, XoXo.
Mood btw: