On Female Friendship

Once, on my morning commute, a woman in a silver Toyota Prius sobbed next to me at a traffic light. It was one of those never-ending, seconds-that-feel-like-hours, maybe-it’s-broken traffic lights that you can find only in LA, a peculiar torture unique to a city where angels and asphalt coexist, where traffic lights seem to conspire in holding moments captive.

The woman’s grief was sketched in deep shades of violet, her tears tracing silent stories down her cheeks, the remnants of her day scattered around her — a half-empty coffee cup, chipped blue nail polish, a yoga mat uncoiling like a question in the passenger seat.

I had watched her like a silent movie I started at the climax. A pang of something like sympathy, for a stranger I knew nothing about, intertwined with the voyeuristic thrill of witnessing private grief. Where was she headed and what brought her here?

I love watching people at traffic lights. Everyone suspended in the same amber purgatory: a silent sentinel at the crossroads, entwining a collection of solitary voyages.

The knowledge that in a mere matter of seconds that feel like hours, the maybe-it’s-broken-light will turn green, the moment will dissolve, and we’ll hurtle forward towards our disparate fates.

~

My friends have allowed me the luxury of being a girls’ girl. I fucking love girl friendships. A twisted, beautiful depth that unfolds like a secret language, a ballet of unspoken understanding and fierce loyalty. A woven fabric that is both intricate and indissoluble.

When my oldest friend looks at me, she embarks on an expedition across the uncharted seas of my eyes, navigating by the stars of our connected memories. She enters without knocking: occupying the spaces no one else is allowed, one fraught with complexity and the kind of fear that only intimacy can soothe. There, she sits, and for a moment, I am truly seen, not just by another person, but by the reflection of myself in her gaze.

~

She enters without knocking: occupying the spaces no one else is allowed, one fraught with complexity and the kind of fear that only intimacy can soothe.

~

It’s no wonder to me that women are considered to be witches, really. We weave spells, not with wands and chants, but with the quiet strength of our bonds. Each tear, each hug, a thread binding us together, unseen but deeply felt.

If you were to walk by my friends, I know you’d smile.

There’s one, embracing the day with a mimosa in hand, as if to paint the dawn with the colors of possibility. Another stands in the hopeful promise of athletic wear, a silent vow to a soon that dances just beyond now’s reach.

You’d smell the symphony of perfume and shampoo and fresh laundry mixed with city grit. And yes, you’d think we were talking a bit too loudly but you’d be OK with it because it’s the type of noisy happiness that you’d want to preserve, to put it in a jar and pour in vinegar and water and herbs and pickle, only to open it years from now when the power is out and there’s nothing left to eat except the tinned youth from the group of 28-year-old girls drinking mimosas you passed in the West Village on a New York day.

~

My best friends and I see each other less frequently now. Weekly Friday nights and bagel-laden Saturdays have morphed into Tuesday dinners, inevitably cut short by the demands of adulthood.

The women I once knew intimately, their Hinge dates and arguments with their moms imprinted in my mind like constellations, are now becoming frayed around the edges. People I could draw with my eyes closed have become simultaneously more complicated and more unknown.

More and more, we know less and less. Our journeys, once entwined like vines, now span across the vastness of life’s canvas. Different cities, different careers, new relationships blossoming. Coworkers they call by their first name become privy to the secrets once mine to keep.

The sharp edges of memory softened, blurred into a watercolor wash of time, the details leaching away, the whole picture harder to grasp.

We condense months of updates into minutes, the brushstrokes of significant life events — a wedding, a move, a promotion. I think of Mrs. Dalloway — of the extraordinary within the ordinary. I wonder if I’ll ever get this level of detail of my friends again — if I’ll ever be able to blindly sketch them with confident precision.

~

As I write this, Bob Dylan tells me in a Los Altos coffee shop that the present now will later be past. God, I love that man. I’ve always preferred writing to old songs because it reminds me of my ordinariness — that we’re all part of something larger, an endless loop of feeling that binds us.

Two women with hair the shade of winter clouds sit across the chipped Formica table. Pixie cuts, both of them, the kind that speak of unspoken decisions and quiet turning points. I wonder where the manual gets distributed, the one on navigating adulthood with a modicum of grace. When, precisely, does it become required to trade youthful abandon for silk pajamas, blunt haircuts, and expensive eye cream? The women dissect their French toast, a sugary cinnamon haze hanging in the air, knees buckling as they murmur about the intricacies of lives well-worn.

Or so I imagine, because I can only hear Dylan’s droning voice, of course.

It’s Monday of Presidents’ Day and one wears a Disney sweatshirt with Minnie and Mickey and little hearts outlining their mousey bodies and rimless glasses and smiles to show her slightly yellowed teeth. They sit for so long — longer than it’s taken to write this and they nod and they lean in and hold hands.

I find myself smiling. Smiling with the insatiable urge to distill their connection, boil and preserve it for that night when loneliness burns my insides. Each breath would be a burst of cinnamon sweetness laced with the decades-old tang of love and unwavering support, a temporary antacid for the anxieties that decay.

~

The incessant ping of our group chat momentarily draws me back, bringing me to the immediate, the now — our bachelorette planning and inside jokes that tether me to the present.

28, perhaps, is our traffic light. When the world holds its breath and we’re together one last time. The amber eternity stretches before us, a stolen moment suspended between the past and the unknown, where the lanes of our lives, once comfortably parallel, threaten to diverge irrevocably. We sit — the remnants of experiences scattered around us — the weight of the shared past and the uncertainty of the individual future pressing down on us.

~

The amber eternity stretches before us, a stolen moment suspended between the past and the unknown, where the lanes of our lives, once comfortably parallel, threaten to diverge irrevocably.

~

The women with pixie cuts rise from their table, leaving behind the lingering scent of cinnamon, a reminder of what stays and what fades. The light, inevitably, turns green.

Editor: Emy Makakalala