Everything We Ever Wanted Is Found in a Friend

I met Ginny long before careers, babies, bills, and mammograms. We were 12. She lived two doors down from my Nanni in the predominantly Italian neighborhood of Glen Elk. When you grow up in small-town North Central West Virginia, "Italian" refers to the second generation—families who came from southern Italy and found themselves that much farther south, a hundred or so feet underground in Appalachia, hoping the canary wouldn't die. Ginny was made of bubbles and sparkles and brought out the best in me. She is my oldest friend next to Marcie, who has the distinction of being my earliest partner in crime, when our whispers would inevitably erupt into giggles and elicit reproach from the Sunday school teacher at Freewill Baptist Church every Sunday of our lives. They are the OGs in my long, winding path of friendship. 

The story of my life is demarcated by the many people I've bonded with while tumbleweeding my way from state to state in search of myself. My friends have been a mirror, the three-way kind that reflects who you are from all angles. Now in my mid-40s, I wrestle with redefining friendship. I endeavor to, as God and Glennon Doyle say, Be Still and Know.  

When I was 21, friendship solidified my indifferent relationship to alcohol. I was never going to achieve Master Partier status, but I was destined to spend a lot of years with people who loved to drink. When it was time to hang out, I'd fill the time with a little bit of alcohol, a little bit of dancing, and something deep-fried. My early 20s ran together in an amorphous blob of existence. In just one meeting with a pretty, impossibly naturally tan makeup artist named Dee, my future began to take shape. Dee had moved away from West Virginia for a bigger life in South Beach and was in town visiting her childhood best friend Traci, one of my ride-or-dies at the time. A year later, I packed up the white Pontiac convertible I'd bought from my mom and became Dee's roommate four blocks up from Ocean Drive. Life was all frozen drinks, flamenco dancers, and fried plantains. My friend group included women from their early 20s through their mid-30s, hailing from places like Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and Minnesota, plus one man, a well-to-do, 50-something semi-retiree who helped found one of the country's most famous theater troupes. 

Art Deco buildings faded into the distance within a year and gave way to the clamorous thrill of NYC, where friendship was nonexistent, unless you count the handful of young male models I bunked with in an Upper East Side apartment paid for by the modeling agency where I worked. While they snorted coke off the kitchen counter, I drank honeyed chamomile and chain-smoked Parliament lights. NYC was a May-December romance. 

At 23, I moved back home and gave college a second try. Those years bestowed some of the most meaningful friendships of my life, including a few soulmates. "Soulmate"  holds no boundaries for me. Whether romantic partner or friend—or canine, as I've found—a soulmate is one who connects with you in a way that defies clear explanation. It just happens. It just is. All friends aren’t soulmates, but all soulmates are friends.

In college, friendship was the source of life. There were parties in cramped apartments and dance parties to Lil' Jon in a late-model Toyota Camry with my mom's Jesus fish permanently affixed to the bumper. Girls' dinners centered on divine gouda cheese sticks that we still talk about. My roster of male friends grew exponentially: I spent many days "milding out" with Johnny, an uber-energetic synthesizer nerd; talked history and creativity in the shop with Tattoo Chris; dissected the meaning of life with Nate H. aka Hamstick aka Hambone aka my ex-boyfriend's friend I claimed for my own; shared music and oddities with Bryan, who gifted me a tube of Colgate after I admitted that I thought it would be Ultimately Satisfying to squeeze out an entire tube. (I ended up keeping it as a memento, safe in my underwear drawer to this day.) 

And creativity! The scene was painters, writers, sculptors, photographers, poets, musicians as far as the eye could see. My girlfriends and I went to art openings wearing our best getups punctuated by funky finds from Goodwill and vintage shops. Weekends were for cheap beer and social cigarettes at the hangout, 123 Pleasant St., set to the sounds of touring bands on the indie circuit. Nights out often didn't start until midnight. Days centered on the Blue Moose Cafe, where I made lattes and sour faces at customers who dared interrupt my food breaks. From punk rockers and professors to lawyers and loud homeschoolers, plus That One Super-Skinny Sorority Girl, diversity flourished at the Blue Moose, which itself became a soul mate of mine, nurturing my intrinsic curiosity and satisfying my ravenous appetite for stimulating conversation. 

In my early 30s, the social scene shifted south, to a flat, expansive city where the air was thick with barbecue and the ghosts of Civil Rights and Rock n Roll. In Memphis, social norms were like nothing I'd ever seen. Friendship was not an Appalachian valley cradled by rolling green hills. It was not a full-color, glossy afternoon at Wet Willies on South Beach where Cares Go To Die. Friendship was like trying to swim across the great Mississippi. I had my share of near-drowning experiences. 

Over the years, I tried on a few social circles in Memphis, including one populated by 20- and 30-somethings whose list of priorities was 1. Drinking and 2. Stuff You Have To Do When You Can't Drink. I thought I had known drinkers before, but this was a new world of dedication to fermentation. I eventually found my people. We brunched. Coffee-klatched. Turned up the volume, literally, on drives from the bars of Midtown to the banks of the Mississippi, where we skipped rocks and the breeze gave birth to life-sustaining inside jokes. Among my truest friends in Memphis were a couple of men, although I didn’t know it until after I moved away and looked back on the ruins of what I thought were lifelong female bonds. It turns out hindsight can be a blessing and a case of whiplash all at once. 

At 34, I crash-landed in my home state on the edge of my biggest-ever What Now (superlative because What Now was my general state of being). As a single, soon-to-be first-time mom, I had decided to burn down the life I had tirelessly, relentlessly designed so that my son could be that valley in Appalachia—held safe amidst hills that reach closer to God. Where my firstborn was safe, I was lost. I missed my old life desperately: Belly laughs on Sunday mornings at Otherlands coffee bar. Striking up conversation with interesting strangers wherever I went. Group text messages with plans for the evening. Nerding out with pseudo-experts in history, politics, music, and existential anything. Standing in the crowd at a show, eyes closed, one arm raised and holding a beer, swaying to the music. 

Living in West Virginia again, it was as if I’d opened my eyes and  everyone else had gone home. 

Over the past 11 years, I’ve mourned the loss of what was. I've created something new in its wake—rekindled old friendships and started new ones. My friends are men and women, single and married. They’re thoughtful and helpful. They’re talkers, like me. We laugh. Real laughs, not internet lolz or emojis of dubious intent. Unlike my time in Memphis, I don't question who I can trust. 

I’m grateful. Yet wistful. 

At 45, I have an impressively long list of lovely friends—whom I rarely see. My heart's desire is to create a tribe. This is an expectation, one which my therapist, my grounding force these days, would label "unreasonable" because it doesn't match my current state of existence. Fine, but it was also unreasonable to expect to rekindle my career once I was a single mother twice over, living in a state where "freelance writer" was more likely to mean a daily column writing Disney-level fluff in my hometown paper than a career with substance that would actually pay the bills. Plot twist: I did it anyway. So as far as I'm concerned—and as a rule, my concerns stretch very far—sometimes you take a leap and expect the unreasonable.  

I have plans for my tribe. We go to dinner and eat all the carbs, once every month or so. We pour our hearts out on walks and coffee dates. We dance, even if it's in the car on the way to lunch where we'll take turns doing "I love my kids so much and here's how they're killing me lately." We are not outdoorsy, unless the tent is an Airbnb and there's wifi, a proper grocery, and at least five restaurants to choose from. We make exceptions for well-manicured paths where snakes won't attack our naked ankles as they peddle in futile terror. And, dare I say, we'll take the coveted girls' trip: A delightful, simple concept that in my current world seems as likely as Alec Baldwin becoming infertile or Donald Trump grasping his native language, which reminds me of a joke a friend used to tell about a kid named Bobby who flunked English and Bobby's dad said, "But Bobby, you speak English!" She is an ex-friend, mind you, because in the end, my concerns stretched very far and I didn't properly address it when she behaved like an entitled, jealous jerk. Instead, I gave her a lot of rope because I had my share of confidence and she needed to feel important. My bad. 

Giving credit where it's not due aside, friendship is a salve. It heals wounds better than time, because friendship exists in the here and now, not in a distant mirage that promises pain will be in the past. Aside from being alone, which I've done a lot of and thoroughly enjoy, being with friends is freedom. If we choose wisely, friendship is a safe space where we can be true to ourselves and be rewarded—with laughter, shared interests, understanding, a helping hand. There is no type of relationship that isn't made better by the foundation of friendship. We should be friends with our selves, first and foremost, also known as radical self-acceptance. We should also be friends with our parents. Our partners. Our children too. Remember: Friendship is a relationship, and healthy relationships have boundaries. My kids deserve to know the best of me, which is practiced through being a friend. 

I won't give up on creating my tribe. However, since I've signed on to having a professional teach me to focus on things I already know, in order to discover peace in my 40s, I'll follow her advice. I'll do my best to live with intention. I'll endeavor to not live in longing but to live in letting go. My therapist reminds me of an invaluable truth: I am my own omniscient narrator. If I can quiet my ever-buzzing mind, I'll hear myself describing a life that isn’t like the past or the idealized future but a beautiful rendering of the present.