I’ve never made friends easily or in the usual places, have you? But then, I’m more comfortable around the random, fleeting, saving grace of strangers. One of them even saved my life as a new mom.
Maybe that’s another reason I became a journalist.
This week, yesterday and today, I met with two new friends — a personal record — from Twin Falls (Idaho), where I’ve lived for three years. They are as different as night and day, but they each chose me for similar reasons: comfort, familiarity, mutual understanding.
Keep in mind that I couldn’t buy a friend before. Most of my friends were friends of convenience. Soccer-mom-PTA, picked last for kickball shit.
I tried to make the best of each and every situation — like any good reporter thrust into a fire — but I never really felt right, save for a few exceptions to every rule (Terri, Bev, Sarah, Ellen).
I hate when someone swears up and down that she loves you and considers you closer than family, but you both know it’s only in the moment, probably because of boredom or an instinct for survival (those Silpada parties are brutal).
That was my situation back in Washington, and to some extent, most of my life.
I don’t have to survive anymore. I’m semi-retired, able to pick and choose what I want to do and who I want to do it with. No longer am I hampered by what others think, cringing whenever I walk into a clique of tittering women at Starbucks or one of my son’s high school friends making backhanded compliments about how awesome it is that I am not bothered by not having (being seen with) any friends at soccer matches.
Did you know I didn’t have a friend in the world, or family, who stuck with me through thick and thin? Least of all family or friends. They always bail. The worst times in my life have been endured alone.
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Only G-d has been with me, proving time and time again that He loves me and believes in me and wants the best for me. Most of all, that He knows what I’m going through, because He sent his only son to go through 1,000,000 times worse.
Even if you believe all of that is a fable, and all of this is random, there’s something to be said for strength in standing alone, in refusing to jump off a cliff with the rest of the sheep, in being your own person — no matter what the world says or does.
Thinking for yourself.
If nothing else, this strength has served this loner very well during and after the pandemic.
But for right now, what I’m trying to say is…I have two friends, a miracle, really…two women who enjoy my company, who take time out of their day to spend it with me, and who seem to genuinely like me.
When I talk, I lose all self-consciousness around them, and they look at me like every word is precious. I don’t remember that happening much before.
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It’s kind of like living out my own version of “My Liberation Notes,” a slice-of-life k-drama on Netflix. I finished the slow-burn series last night, hungry for more, hungry for the company of these richly flawed, delicately endearing characters.
I identified so much with not the lead female character, a doe-eyed, painfully introverted, neutral-to-the-point-of-numb Mi-jeong, but with her fiery, love-starved sister Gi-jeong, with a tendency to put her foot in it, as well as talk shit about everybody she likes (or hates) eventually.
As for Mr. Gu, everybody knows that’s complete fiction made up by a woman with a lively, lonely, wishfully thinking desperate imagination. No such man exists. And really, who cares.
The friendships are where it’s at in the end. When you get older, past the age of 40, you’ll see for yourself.
The friendships in this show are casual, easy, and different, too, much like the ones I gravitate toward. By the end, I wanted my own Liberation Club. I may loosely form one, yet.
We could meet at a nearby coffee shop, talk about life over matcha lattes and roasted purple potatoes, cry a little, and laugh a lot, maybe break a few rules…
What a nice thought.