APIA-nionated — On Friendship, Loss, and Memory: A Review of MariNaomi’s new graphic memoir
Q: What is memory? MariNaomi asks near the beginning of their retelling of a decades-long relationship with their ex-best friend Jodie. A: A person’s subjective recollection of past events. These lines captivated me as I dove headfirst into I Thought You Loved Me, the second graphic memoir I’ve ever read and one that gripped me from the start. I began the novel at 11pm, intending to get through a couple dozen pages before going to bed, and ended up speeding through the whole 325-page adventure within two hours.
I thought it was incredibly appropriate to begin with musings on selective memory (and to dedicate the novel to Chris Smith, a classmate who MariNaomi had trouble remembering despite various encounters with him). I loved the author’s choice to reread past journals as a method for filling in the blanks. As a fellow avid journal-er with a similar stack of notebooks, I know what it’s like to be obsessed with the documentation of memories. Real talk, when a memory or various memories of someone have seemingly vanished, can we get them back? MariNaomi certainly tries as they read through over a decade’s worth of journals to relive their interactions with Jodie. The descriptions of journal entries are extremely vivid — I feel as though I’m part of the friendship myself.
Throughout the book, we experience Mari’s romantic relationships ranging from slightly cringe (e.g. Giuseseppe) to actually toxic (e.g. Joe); life in the “zeitgeist” of their 20s with Jodie’s worldly travels and Mari’s seemingly random odd jobs; and Mari’s development as a writer (e.g. the editor who says “this is way too personal to publish”). After the friend breakup, the author writes, “Basically, life went on without Jodie in my world.” Yet, Jodie’s presence and absence continues to weave throughout Mari’s development, cementing the significance of this friendship even when it ceases to exist.
As someone who’s been ghosted by a loved one, I relate. I relate to the constant back and forth between anger, self doubt, forgiveness, and love. I relate to the overthinking of what could’ve possibly led to this and blaming myself for every little thing I could’ve done wrong. I relate to the compulsive internet stalking, to the insatiable curiosity about what that person is into now and whether or not they watch Drag Race, and even to the familiar push-pull that arises within me when I ultimately see the person again.
As a biracial and bisexual person, I was LIVING for the queer arc. In chapter 1, MariNaomi writes “Jodie effectively kissed me out of the closet.” While non-queer readers may not pick up on the subtext, queer readers are all-too-familiar with having that person (or multiple people) who may or may not be romantic, are certainly not 100% platonic, but the lines are so blurry that it makes more sense to the world to just say it’s a friendship and call it a day. Living outside the boundaries of conventional love, queer folks are also more likely to take “platonic” friendships more centrally and seriously.
In describing Friendship with Jodie and life without it, MariNaomi truly raises the Big Questions of relationship and connection: What does it mean to truly know someone? To love them in their totality of black to white and all the gray in between? What if you lose them, and how much of processing that loss is about the other person versus about ourselves? (As the author writes, “At what point does an attempt at catharsis become self-flagellation?”)
And what happens if you never get closure from the other person? If our histories are one sided, will they ever be enough to satisfy our deep desire to know? What can we do about that? I don’t have answers to these questions and neither does MariNaomi, but I Thought You Loved Me is a hopeful and helpful companion to everyone who has loved and lost, regardless of where we are in our journeys towards healing and closure.
The beauty of this novel is that it blends a coming-of-age story with romance and nostalgic commentary — together uncategorizable, just like the author, and like life itself. It reminds us that we all have Chris Smiths and we all have Jodies, remnants of experiences with others imprinted on our own beings, regardless of whether we fully remember the moments. It tells us that maybe, at the end of the day, what’s really holding us back from our full spectrum of emotions and memories is the farce that clear-cut answers exist in the first place.
