That's My Best Friend, She's A Real Bad B-tch
Where would we be without our best friends?
I’ve been thinking about friendship a lot lately. D, one of my best friends, came to LA to visit us in September, and I didn’t realize just how much I missed having one of my longtime besties so close.
We’ve been best friends since the summer of 1998, when we both realized how much we loved *NSYNC. Prior to that, we were friendly to each other when in forced proximity, but we didn’t really have anything in common. Our maternal grandmothers were friends, and our moms were friends, but when we were younger, we weren’t really friends. But ever since that summer, we’ve been thick as thieves.
Of course, life has taken us on very different paths — she got pregnant at 19 and became a mom at 20 while I went off to college. She got married to her high school boyfriend and I didn’t have my first boyfriend until I was 23. Our kids are eight years apart in age, so we will never be in the same season of motherhood at the same time. My kid just turned 10, and hers just started college. There was a brief period where we were both single moms, but then I met Beth and she’s still single. But she’s living the life she didn’t get to live in her teens and 20s, the one that I logistically had, but never really explored because that’s not my personality.
Now that she’s divorced and has an older kid, our relationship is close in a way it hasn’t been in a long time. I understand why it happened, but I didn’t realize how much I missed it until this trip. I always make a point to see her when we visit New York. I was too broke to make a trip home this summer and I was bummed. So imagine my surprise when my bestie was like, “are you free this September weekend?” and I was (September was an irrationally busy month for us this year.) Minutes later, she texted me a picture of her flight confirmation. She stayed for three nights and it was so much fun. We stayed up late chatting about everything and nothing every night, we did a couple of touristy things with the boy child and spent an entire day together at Disneyland.
I know it was my choice to leave New York after my son was born, but it was a choice that was necessary for multiple reasons, the biggest one being my mental health was suffering significantly because I lived with my parents. But when I left, I left behind some of my very best friends. Not being able to see them created an asteroid sized hole in my heart. My friends are more of my family than my family are — they’re so important in my life. Not getting to see them regularly, even if we talk all the time, hurts, even if I’m the one who left.
I talk to one or more of my besties at least once a day, even if it’s just sending each other memes on Instagram. But talking everyday doesn’t replace the feeling of being in the same place for a little while. There’s something to be said about the restorative nature of a hug from your best friend. They just feel different. As we get older, those hugs seem to linger a little longer, and we hold each other a little tighter. You don’t always know when the next one will come, so you have to cherish those few seconds as long as you can.
As I get older, my friendships become more and more important. This is especially true since the pandemic happened and life became more precarious and by extension, more precious. I love Beth, but she’s not my best friend. The love I have for her is so different from the love I have for my friends. They’re the ones who have loved me through every version of myself, and the ones who I go to when I need someone who knows me better than I know myself to give me advice. My besties are the ones who keep me grounded and remind me of everything I’ve gone through to get to the person I am right now in this time and place. No matter how much you love your partner, there are going to be parts of yourself you keep from them, or parts of you that they don’t know, simply because they have only known you for a certain amount of time.
My best friend S has known me since right after I graduated college. She saw me through my first relationship, becoming a mom, coming out, and meeting my person. Honestly, she’s the other half of my brain, and I truly do not know who I’d be, or how I would survive if I didn’t have her in my life. We haven’t seen each other since last year, and I hate it. I have been trying to convince her to move to LA for years to no avail. Right now I’d settle for a visit where we go on some sort of fun foodie adventure and to a couple of bookish events. Hell, I’d be perfectly fine with just sitting on a couch and shooting the shit for hours. We don’t talk on the phone often, mainly because if we do we have to carve out HOURS. A “quick” phone call for us is still at least 2 hours, where we keep saying we’re going to hang up but then we remember another thing we need to share and before we realize it, it’s the middle night. One time we were on the phone so long, my kiddo put himself to bed instead of waiting for me.
Having friends like that is soul restoring. You can be having a total crisis and then after you talk to your bestie, you feel like you could climb Mt. Everest. My besties remind me that I’m a fucking bomb ass bitch, and I am always happy to return the favor. They’re all the most badass women I know, and I’m so lucky to call them mine. My other S bestie started off as my boss, but we quickly became besties because we are cut from the same cloth. I’m currently trying to figure out ways for us to work together again, because no one encourages me and pushes me quite the same way she does. She lives in Oregon and has a small army of children, so I haven’t seen her since 2017, which is truly criminal.
So many of my close friends have kids now, and I hate that living so far away from them means I can only be Auntie Sai from a distance. One of my childhood besties has a toddler I’ve never met because they live back on the east coast. She didn’t get to meet my kiddo until he was almost four because it’s so hard to make time when you’re an adult. Another of my nearest and dearest just had a baby and I wish I could afford to go visit so I can get baby cuddles and give her a break. Hell, one of my besties lives 40 minutes away and I barely see her or her baby boy because it’s so hard to make time!
More often than not, I feel like I’m the worst friend because it’s so easy to get caught up in my own shit that I forget to check in with my friends about their shit. I miss the days when we didn’t have so many things to worry about and could just text each other on a Friday morning and have dinner that night. Now, seeing each other requires months of planning, weeks of rescheduling, or spending a small fortune on a plane ticket. I think it’s so easy to take your friendships for granted when you’re younger and have less responsibilities. You have no idea that in a few years you’re going to have to work like hell to keep those friendships intact. And then you’re going to inevitably fail and you’re going to feel like shit because of it. And you know your friends don’t take it personally or hold it against you, but you can’t help it.
No one ever tells you how hard adult friendships are. But at the same time, no one tells you how awesome they are. And how even if you haven’t seen each other in three years, you just pick up from where you left off like nothing has happened. When you have your people, they will love you through all the hard times in your life, and you will love them through theirs. Also, there’s NOTHING like the power of female friendships. Don’t let the media tell you otherwise. No one has your back like one of your best girls, and I will absolutely die on that hill.
The biggest supporters I’ve ever had in my life have always been women. My female friends have lifted me up, loved me when I didn’t love myself, and showed me that there will always be people in my corner. There is a belief that a woman’s biggest enemy is another woman, and the only reason there’s any truth to that is because we have been convinced by the patriarchy that there’s a scarcity mindset, and the only way forward as a woman is to throw other women under the bus. I don’t subscribe to that mentality at all.
If you live near your besties, give them an extra big hug next time you see them for those of us who can’t. And if you don’t, know that I’m sending you the biggest bestie hug.
❤️