We Were Girls Together
friendship as the currency of our lives
“This is a little something to remind you always how much you’re loved, and how much your friendship means to me” - a friend
In a 1997 interview, Toni Morrison said: "Our friendships with other women are the currency of our lives… In the absence of so many support systems, we are it for each other. You have to work at your friendships with the same seriousness you did when you went to school." Sitting with this image of currency, I think of circulation. I think of the body, of arteries and veins and nerves. Of blood. I draw two lines: currency equals lifeblood. Friendship as that which keeps us alive.
For many of us, before we knew romantic love, we knew love among friends. As children and teenagers, the infrastructure of our worlds bent towards friendship. Making friends seemed an inevitability. School, the corner shop, clubs, playdates, birthday parties, shopping centres and parks: all were our watering holes. Friendship swallowed time, minutes or hours eaten by long conversations at the bus stop standing in the cold or in the park after the sun had gone down. Friendship was its own logic.
And then came a series of separations. Looking back, I realise the defined shifts were easier to navigate. A sense of preparation was built into knowing you and your friends would go to different primary schools or secondary schools or universities. The subtle shifts, however, I was unprepared for. How career choices, lifestyle, income, beliefs, and life’s wear and tear could bring friends closer together or further apart. Like Toni Morrison says, it takes work to choose each other over again, to resist the creeping distance that seems to be built into friendship as we age, unless we actively choose otherwise.
And yet, in a society that places coupledom at its apex, I sometimes wonder if the biggest threat to friendships are romantic relationships, particularly heterosexual relationships. In the distance between friends, partners can and do fill voids of intimacy, joy and mundanity that friendship once might have. Love begets love, I would like to think, but practically, I’m not so sure this translates. As this podcast excellently explores, friendship has a built in sense of optionality, and therefore fragility, that means it can withstand absences or flakiness, in a way that we would not expect from a romantic partner. This is part of what makes friendship so expansive, there are many different rhythms and ways we can be with each other. But it is still all too tempting to lean into The Couple - a person, readily available, to do things with. Someone with whom you don’t need to feel embarrassed or fear that you are ‘too much’ because you might like some company running errands or just stopping by because you’re local. How often do we feel like intrusions to our friends - arranging a time to call instead of just picking up the phone, or keeping what we’re going through inside out of fear of ‘bothering’ them?
I suppose my deepest wish is to flatten the relationship hierarchy that places romantic relationships as inherently more important than the other relationships in life. This doesn’t mean reducing the importance of romantic relationships, but elevating friendships and other relationships. I wonder what this might look like, to turn out towards friends and family as life partners and active co-creators of life lived together, rather than a closing in to the nuclear couple. Sometimes I pre-emptively fear the loss of a friend to a relationship, how the intimacy that we have, that I love so dearly will shift, be less. Even to admit this, I feel childish, like my wishes and hopes are simply too unrealistic, and that I should be satisfied in accepting the lesser position society expects friends to occupy. Societally, settling down with a partner holds value in adulthood - a sign of maturity - in a way fulfilling friendships do not. I wonder what we can discover if we lean into thinking about what could be possible, and to reject the narrowness of the existing script: you grow up, get married, have kids. We know there is so much missing from this picture but do we dare to tear up the script and make our own collage, cutting and pasting pieces to make a life as we choose. What might be possible if flatten the hierarchy and allow ourselves to see our relationships anew? What new ways of being together might exist? How might other areas of our life be strengthened and enriched?
Perhaps one of the reasons I am so passionate about this is because I love my friends so much! I truly feel overwhelmed thinking about them and how they are threaded into the fabric of my life, of my being. It is the reason I will call them ‘dear’ or ‘love’ or ‘my love’ or ‘sister’ as a means of reaching towards who they are to me when ‘friend’ or ‘best friend’ doesn’t feel enough. In Gaelic, there is the phrase, anamcara, which literally translates as "soul friend". In Arabic, habib (حبيب) means ‘beloved,’ and when altered to habibi (masculine) or habiba (feminine), it means ‘my beloved.’ As Mia Birdsong says in this article on queering friendship: “…there is a deep joy and rightness with the world that I get from sitting in the presence of my closest girlfriends, loving one another, laughing, eating, drinking, and being unapologetically ourselves...”
I write this as a recently and happily married woman. Before I was married I thought about friendship in this way. Post-marriage, I continue to. If anything, my awareness is only heightened about how I am showing up in my closest friendships. I do my best to uphold rhythms and traditions, I still protect girl-time (just as my husband enjoys time with his friends). Often times, the case is made that maintaining these relationships help to enrich a marriage, but that still centralises marriage and subsumes other relationships to their end. I hope for something more fluid, an understanding of love that is less hierarchical. That I can say, my friendships just matter, full stop. And while I wish to grow old with my husband, when I think of my future, I also wish to grow old with my friends. I hope and pray that we are given the years, and that we might be like these two women, dining by candlelight as we always have.
Wonders of the Week
Surprise flowers celebrating 10 months being married!
Mulled wine and walks. It’s the time for seasonal traditions. Earlier this week, I spent the evening with two friends at my new favourite deli and later today, I’ll be on a walk around Hampstead Heath with two other babes. There’s something wholesome about bringing the year to a close with loved ones in these different ways.
I treated myself to an apple and vanilla cake with maple icing. It was £5.50 - obscene! - but so worth it. I’d share a picture but once I had my first bite, that cake was GONE.
An unusual entry for this week - bread. My brother gave me three artisan loaves earlier this week, and a dear friend gave me bread her mother had made for me. Nice bread is an underrated wonder.
I took one of the children I work with to see Refilwe, a southern African retelling of Rapunzel. Suitable for 9+ it will be on at Talawa Theatre Company in Croydon. Suitable for 5+, check it out if you have little ones.
May this week bring your beauty and wonder.
Until next time,
Sarah x
Love this