I don’t know if this is true for anyone else, but when I go too long without seeing my friends, I start to feel trapped — like there is a ceiling on the sky above me. I think it occurred to me too many years out of school that, without putting in effort, you can go a really long time without seeing your people. This is particularly true when you’re married. Sometimes I get so caught up in my pre-work writing, my during-work managing and my post-work colleague-relationship maintenance plans that when the weekend comes around, all I want to do is let my tongue fall out of my mouth, deadweight my arms and legs and watch reruns of Friends until my husband tells me it’s dinner time. And when I do get out of bed, I am perfectly happy having that dinner just the two of us, thank you very much. But then a month or two goes by and I realize: What the fuck? I haven’t seen my people in months! Then I’ll freak out and over-plan and after one or two truly recreational pre or post-work gatherings, I will feel whole again. Complete. And because of that, I forget and fall back into the vicious cycle and the re-runs of Friends are ending and the fact that I’m watching Friends, not living Friends, does not get lost on me.
Maybe this is part of the reason we are dedicating the month of June to friendship, but probably not (it was Amelia’s idea, not mine). Either way, if you are nodding your head in accordance, if you’ve been working and self-maintaining and dating for so long — doing anything, really, that has gotten you caught in your own universe — that you have forgotten to call your best friend, now is a really good time to call her (or him)! And because it’s June and the weather is (fingers, toes, arms and legs crossed) getting better, it’s a great time to pick up your head and make some plans with people you love. While you do that, we’ll probably write about Sex & The City because when do we not? We’ll appraise what it means to be a good friend, someone may or may not confess that they’re not good at it at all. We’ll enlist the stars (the entire zodiac system, really) to advise on what makes a compatible friendship and talk about twinning. But don’t worry, we won’t be so literal all the time. Garments, accessories, the digital ~connection~ we have stricken with one another all make for great friends too, so let’s have at it. (And if you have any ideas, please share them in the comments!!!! I love when we write Man Repeller together.)
Photo by Edith Young.
