The Story of my Friendships
Having friends seems like an easy achievement to obtain but as I become older, I’ve noticed it is much more complex than had ever occurred to me. Friendships are inspiring and dense. Friendships are a chosen family. Some people click instantly and others can take a while to warm up. Becoming friends with someone has been an easy feat but maintaining friends with that person has been a difficult challenge. No matter the type of friend: superficial, casual, friends-out-of-circumstance, or best friend, I found it difficult in the past to stay friends with people for a long amount of time. I have always been curious and open when getting to know new people and found it easy to initiate a conversation with a stranger allowing me to learn more about myself and others. Maintaining that relationship has not always been my strong suit.
Before I was twenty-one, I thought I was a good friend when actually, I was not.
The summer of being twenty-one, my entire idea of how to be a friend, what a friend was, and how a friend was supposed to act, changed when I met two women. Up until that pivotal point, I would not deem myself a good friend as I can say now. I have spent the majority of my life not being a good friend to my peers. I had considered myself to be what I thought a good friend was supposed to be but if I am honest with myself, I was not.
Growing up, I did not have many friends in general as I bounced around from one stranger’s home to another due to growing up in foster care and moving through different suburbs of San Diego in early childhood and into adolescence.
I had a couple of friends here and there that would check in on me as I grew up in the system. It would be hard to stay in touch with other kids because I didn’t have a way to contact them frequently and I felt ashamed they knew I didn’t live with my parents. Each time I moved schools, I simply made new friends who I knew wouldn’t be my friend for long because I couldn’t be sure how long I would be staying in that particular school district.
Moving through so many schools before the age of eighteen, I met a large number of people in a relatively short amount of time. As I idly spend time on social media, I watch their lives scrolling through their accounts with curiosity about who they have become and who I am now. Some have jobs, some are married and others have children. It’s very special to see how people turn out; how they’re still turning out. How I am still turning out. I believe who we portray to the world online is what we would like ourselves to believe is who we are.
As a young youth, I was angry and didn’t forgive my friends for petty drama and I thought I was above them for trying to stay out of it. I felt older than my peers because I had to grow up quicker emotionally and help myself out of the situations my parents had placed my sister and me in while my peers were allowed to be swept up in social activities. I felt jealous and sad I could not relate to the kids sitting next to me in class. I didn’t like drama and would tell my friends if someone had said something behind their back because I thought they deserved to know what someone may be saying about them but ironically, that would leave me friendless. I never wanted to be involved in manipulating or gossiping to people who called me their friend when I had parents at home doing exactly that.
My temper got the best of me when I would argue with friends. There would be a squabble I didn’t know how to handle appropriately and my mouth would open and I would hear myself yell at my friends.
When I was maybe ten or eleven, possibly even younger, I remember screaming at a friend while my parents were in the car in a random parking lot. The friend was crying and called their parents to be picked up. I remember we waited for their parents to come to retrieve them and on the way home no one said a word about what we had witnessed and how I behaved. I remember the fight vividly, the mom coming to pick them up, the look the mom gave me, but I don’t remember what the fight was about. For years, I questioned myself about why my parents didn’t intervene and allow me to treat someone so abhorrent — they didn’t stop me because that is the behavior they modeled for me at home.
I’ve thought about this memory a lot over the years, I think about it when I’ve screamed at anyone or feel close to screaming.
I have my shame and regret for my interactions with friends throughout the years. There are peers out there I know I did deeply wrong by and will not ever be trusted or forgiven. I was in the wrong, ignorant, while simultaneously naïve about my actions and reactions. I had come to believe once someone was my friend, it was final, and they wouldn’t stop being my friend over absolutely anything. Just like my parents were my parents and I had once thought they would never stop being my parents no matter the outcome but that did not turn out to be true.
In middle school and even more so in high school, I noticed I didn’t have a lot of close friends. I was skilled at moving through different cliques of people in high school that were not friends with each other but I was their common denominator. I considered teachers my close confidants; I have some of the best school memories with my teachers during lunch hour. I didn’t feel like I could relate to my peers because I felt distant from them; I was worried they would cast judgment on me for not having a traditional upbringing and so I stayed far away from that topic and from classmates who hinted at my situation.
I longed for better friendships during my junior year of high school and although there was a lot of drama with the group of people I was associating myself with, it felt better than moving through a variety of people every lunch period. Badly, I wanted to be liked, cared about, supported, and have them want to hang out with me outside of school.
I was wild in a way I am not any more; I was constantly blunt and honest. I didn’t care in the slightest if it would hurt someone I was calling my friend. I spoke without any regard for what I was saying and later, in my first year of college, someone gently told me, “maybe you should think more before you speak,” I remember the comment stung but it is a useful piece of advice I have held onto since. I have a lot to say; I want to be constructive. I want my words to matter.
Toward the end of high school, I met a guy who later became my best friend and I his. He had graduated two years before me but still had a lot of friends in the drama department. We both worked at the movie theater close to the high school which led us to see each other frequently; we started to hang out slowly and then all at once — almost every day and certainly every weekend. When he and I hung out, I was accepted for who I was. Every interaction we had felt light and silly. We were playful: running around on the beach, watching movies far too often, eating Little Caesars in his car, and singing to Disney music everywhere we drove. He was the first friend I had who didn’t make me feel like I had to change anything about myself. He showed me it was perfectly okay to be silly, to be loud, to have fun, and even to be obnoxiously blunt. I appreciated how calm and collected he was. From him, I learned to not take everything so seriously and to remind myself I will make it through any situation. He has died now but I remember how he nurtured our friendship with care and support giving me a lesson for life on relationships with future friends.
At where I am in life, a part of me cares vastly too much about what others think of me. I want to be the best version of myself. I want to present myself to people as the best I can be. I can be quite insecure about who my friends are and if I am what they want or need. I have arrived at this mindset because of my early actions as a child and how I treated my friends. I overcompensate: apologizing frequently even if I may not have a reason to, double-checking to make sure I don’t exclude anyone, seeing if a friend is doing okay even if we are having a good time together even when we are sitting right next to each other laughing, and meeting someone’s needs instead of meeting each other’s needs in the middle. I need to continue to work on myself in order to be the best type of friend I can be to all.
I hurt a lot of friends I felt close to as a kid and teenager; I didn’t understand why I was losing people. There was a disconnect between hurting my friends and not understanding why they didn’t want to be my friend anymore.
I would hear comments now and then such as:
“You’re not friends with a lot of girls.”
“You are mean.”
“You lose friends quickly.”
“You have a nasty tone.”
I disregarded these persistent comments because they did not seem accurate and I simply did not care. I had a lot of pride in my brutal honesty; I thought I was being honest in the easiest way possible but it came with a heavy cost.
With knowing more about myself now, I can admit to myself and everyone else, I was mean and can still be mean when needed. I felt powerful and some people were compelled to joust with me until I struck a chord.
I most likely still have more friends that are men than women but I believe that is starting to change as relationships adjust and dynamics in life evolve. I didn’t enjoy being friends with girls growing up because I always felt they didn’t exude the strength I considered myself to have. I thought girls only cared about what they looked like. I thought girls were dramatic and catty for no reason; I didn’t want to be included as part of that description I held for myself for reasons I didn’t understand or know why I had formed them in the first place so I turned to hang out with guys. Boys that became teenagers acted unkindly but still held a level of inner strength that I considered myself to have such as climbing trees, jumping over fences, spitting as we ran around parking lots, or insulting one another.
My tone was and can be my biggest issue. I didn’t necessarily have to say something wrong or hurtful but it was how I would say something. Before I even had the chance to notice I had a tone, a classmate’s facial reaction would be enough to realize I had suddenly hurt another peer. My tone has been my biggest obstacle to tackle when I communicate. I would grumble an embarrassed apology over my tone and try to explain my tone didn’t actually mean anything but the damage would be done.
It matters more how one says something rather than what they say. I despised that constant lesson growing up but it was helpful once I started to be cognizant of my tone. I resisted learning that lesson for many years out of pure stubbornness. I did not want to work on my tone because my tone protected me and it felt completely mine. I did not want to lose my tone because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to protect myself without it. I have come to learn I didn’t have to lose my tone; I had to become better at wielding my tone. Using when necessary and not in every interaction I have.
With a combination of my tone, attitude, behavior, unkind honesty, aggressiveness, and stubbornness, I tended to stay only superficial to casual friends with people. I didn’t notice I didn’t have any best friends; I thought I did have best friends but I was usually unable to be somebody’s best friend because of my attitude and where I stood in life.
By not having the appropriate role models to show me how to be a good friend early on in life and without having the self-awareness I needed, there was an intense stubbornness that adamantly told me I was a good friend when I indeed was the opposite. I did not have the tools at my disposal to show me how to be a better friend. I was criticized for my attitude and behavior but never shown how to do better by someone.
It is hard to say if I am being completely honest as I share this narrative or if I am being a little hard on myself. Perhaps it’s both. I know for the majority of my life I was not a good friend and I was given many second chances. I also know I wasn’t taught what a good friend meant to be; I had to observe my peers and go through uncounted trial and errors.
A dream of mine had finally come true: to study abroad and live in Berlin. I had been studying German culture for a few years by then and had been learning the language. I wanted to be so happy but I felt miserable. I was surprised to find myself missing the familiar: my boyfriend at the time, American food, speaking English, and so much more. I was extremely exhausted every day from the humidity and constantly translating German in my head.
Days leading up to my trip and at the beginning of living abroad, I was going through a hard friend breakup. I had made a pointed decision not to be friends with the group of women I started college with. In my junior spring term before going to Europe, I had felt a distance between my close friends and I wasn’t receiving open communication as I had before. I was feeling excluded and heartbroken; I tried to ask my friends if something was wrong, did I do something wrong, did they want to talk about anything regarding our relationships but I was met with silence and awkward glances between the others and me.
With no one in the group wanting to express what happened or why we were falling apart, I made the executive decision not to be friends with them anymore. I was angry and mourning. I felt shocked to be losing friends without a cause and I was left feeling completely responsible despite no direct communication. I felt heartbroken to be losing more friends when at the time, it had been less than two years since my best friend was killed. I didn’t want to be abandoned again and in a way, I was. I was fed up with losing people. I didn’t want to close myself off but it felt like I didn’t have other options to choose from.
Friendships are breakups too. I have always found when a friendship ends it is harder to recover from than breaking up with a partner. Friendships end all the time, every day, over anything, over maybe nothing. Friendships can end simply because one moves away or gets a new job. Friendships can end over a sideways glance or a fight. If a friendship isn’t working out, it’s deemed acceptable to end the friendship without communicating or acknowledging the friendship is over. They quietly disappear. When I have incurred a loss of a friend that is still living, often without any communication about why we are ending, I question if I hold inside myself something broken, a bit of myself I will never be able to work on. A piece I cannot find or pinpoint and yet others can see a stain on me I cannot detect. When I stopped being someone’s friend when I was not ready to, I didn’t feel I had the vocabulary to communicate how much I was hurting. It is more acceptable to receive reassurance or support after a romantic relationship ends from friends or family but not as much when a friendship ends. Breaking off a romantic relationship by suddenly not communicating and ignoring them is not justifiable as it is with a friendship.
Our society values romantic love over the value of friendship. We, as a society, are quick to ditch our friends for the ones we are in love with. I have been at fault for that too. Stephanie Coontz, a historian who has studied marriage and family structures in the Western world, has made claims to show the contrast between romance and friendship. Coontz interviewed women who spoke about what it meant to be friends specifically with other women in the 1950s and 1960s. The many women she interviewed mentioned the point of friendships with other women was to help meet a potential suitor. As time has gone on, women have joined the workforce and wanted to become economically independent, and with that, friendships have started to expand and grow in new demeanors. The generations that came before mine have witnessed and experienced what Coontz has studied. Knowing this, it may be a reason society struggles with having a healthy balance when a friend starts to see someone. I want to be able to balance my friendships and my romantic relationship healthily without feeling I am letting go of one for the other.
I spent my years in school searching for a boyfriend instead of focusing on my friendships and myself. I thought a boyfriend could play the part of a best friend and a partner. Neither group can take the spot of one another. Neither group can fill all of one’s emotional needs. A partner will never take the place of a friendship. Friendship within a romantic relationship is a must but it doesn’t take the place of my friends.
In Berlin, I was incredibly lonely. I knew I was supposed to be enjoying my time but I instead was wishing to be home. I felt shocked by this desire; I couldn’t believe I wished to be home, when my entire life, I had been waiting for the moment to say I had once lived in Berlin. Everything felt harder than it should’ve. Small inconveniences to large bureaucratic issues felt overwhelming and unbearable. I wasn’t used to the humidity. I was constantly fighting with who is now my ex. Once I came home, I learned it had been the hottest year on record for Europe since climate changes started to be recorded according to The Guardian. I was working through a bureaucratic credit issue between my home university and the university I was studying at that was causing me immense financial stress. On top of that, I had never been somewhere with so many bees causing me to stung twice in less than two weeks. Everything felt like it was falling on top of me at once. I didn’t want to be in my skin. I felt agonized.
In the cafeteria where my peers and I would have lunch and mingle between classes, I was introduced to a group of classmates. I felt out of place and embarrassed to be sitting with a group of strangers I had not spoken to before but everyone was kind and inquisitive about who I was.
Rather quickly, I made friends with one of the young women sitting at the table. I remember initially thinking how funny she was and how at ease she seemed to be with herself. I instantly felt a connection with her and we made plans to explore Berlin together.
Through her, I met another woman who spoke quietly and thoughtfully. Immediately, I paid close attention when she would speak. I wanted to hear what she had to say. I wanted to know her. I wanted to be her friend.
I started to hang out with them more and more after classes: visiting museums, going to cafes, checking out the night scene, swimming at the beach, day trips to other cities, and my favorite: sleepovers.
Those two women have become my Platonic Soulmates. This July, we will have been friends for four years. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve these two women in my life. I have been given immense grace. Immense love. Immense kindness. I am beyond grateful for my beautiful best friends. They are the only people who know absolutely every single detail of my entire life and still have chosen to accept me for who I am and what I can offer.
I genuinely know I would not be where I am without them. They believe in me in a way I still don’t.
When I was twenty-one, I was shown an unending devoted friendship with two women who did not know me at all. I did not become a good friend until I met them; they showed me what it means to be a good friend. I learned from them subtly and intuitively how to be a good listener, thoughtful, respectful, show up when needed, show up at all times, pick up the phone for a random call, be considerate, hold hands or be held when sobbing, travel to new places together, try new experiences together, to meet in the middle when we live far away from one another, spill secrets and fears, to learn from each other and most importantly to be loved so fiercely.
When I was twenty-one, I was accepted into an unending devoted friendship that completely changed my life for the better. I will forever be indebted to both of them for welcoming me into their lives.
I hold them in the highest regard because they showed up for me when no one else did. Two absolute strangers came to my aid and stayed in my life even after our study abroad program ended. Throughout the program, I was swearing a lot about anything and everything. I was sweating constantly. I cried on boats and in restaurants. I was complaining every time I breathed. I was accepted for the mess I came as.
At the end of the program, when we had to say our final goodbyes, I was devastated. How could we be leaving each other so quickly after meeting? Two almost strangers who suddenly showed me unconditional love. Who made me feel like I wasn’t as alone as the world made me feel. None of us wanted to say goodbye and so, we exchanged phone numbers. In those long months following, the three of us texted every single day for nine months before meeting again.
When we reunited, I felt whole again. I felt like with them, I could solve my issues. I wanted to prove to them I was worth having as a friend. To be able to be depended on. I wanted to show up for them in every way imaginable as they had countless times for me. Talking to one another for nine months every day before having the ability to see one another, proved to me that this relationship, this friendship, was worth everything I wanted and more than I wanted to admit, undoubtedly needed.
When I am with my Platonic Soulmates, I already feel like I am a better person. A better friend. A better community member. A better partner to my love. I want everyone on the planet to know who they are and what they have done.
For the last four years, I have been committed to showing up for those who kindly say I am their friend. To show up for those who are in need. They are my first friends to tell me I am their best friend. It is the most special feeling I have ever experienced. It is a larger feeling than being loved. They are now my family.
Romantic love and platonic love I have found through my experiences are extraordinarily contrastive. Friendship is easily shrugged off and not considered as important as a romantic relationship. My friendships with my Platonic Soulmates have provided a secure foundation for me to have the ability to explore different avenues of life: career paths, new romantic relationships, confiding in my Platonic Soulmates, and not feeling misunderstood for who I am. I can attest to this with the success I have been able to build upon by having that secure friendship: moving to San Francisco, being able to work in my desired field, having a healthy partner, and buying a new car. Without my secure foundation, I would not have the life I have now.
Now that it has been almost two years out of college, I fiercely miss how easy it once was to bump into a stranger and have it be so effortless to strike up a spontaneous friendship. Outside of college, in the “real world,” it feels harder to make friends. The abundant activities that surrounded me in a mile radius still exist but the confidence to once go alone is gone. In college, I would feel certain I would meet someone who would want to hang out during the event. That can still happen now but there is a fear to it. What if I won’t meet anyone? How do I strike up a conversation with a stranger? Why does it feel harder? Why do I feel insecure about that now? Meeting friends outside of college has felt strange to me because meeting other adults at the current stage of life I am in is intimidating. Everyone in college was more or less in the same phase of life. Now, it’s a mixed variety. The stakes feel higher when I introduce myself to someone new. Although, at times, there may be competition with my peers who are working towards the same goals as I, there is a confidence in knowing we may be able to understand one another. Oftentimes, I have found myself not feeling understood; college is somewhere I felt free.
Specifically with my Platonic Soulmates, the friendships that have bloomed and flourished, there is a risk factor. I am taking an emotional risk by knowing the friendships could potentially end. I am fully aware of what the consequences could be. Heartache. Despair. Anger. But the risk is worth the beauty of the friendships I have been able to create and maintain. My strongest friendships stand from the foundation we have been able to build in a span of almost four years. I do not worry the relationships would fall apart over a disagreement or argument. Having stability and resiliency has been long-lasting and what will matter if an issue arises.
When I proudly share how I met my now Platonic Soulmates there is always surprise. The awe on people’s faces. Usually I am asked, how can I still be friends with the two women I met studying abroad? Practices, rituals, assurances, trust, and communication have brought us a long way. I have been committed to continuing to be open about everything without the fear of judgment or being shunned. I share with all of my friends how much they mean to me, thankful they continue to be in my life, and how appreciative I am to know them at all. I want all my friends to know the role they have in my life is memorable. My friends have challenged me, taught me, saved me, and loved me in all of who I am. I want to do the same for each friend I have.
I appreciate the memories, experiences, loyalty, love, and affection I have received. Now, it is my turn to give it back.
