Friendship

Friendship.

It’s all the things.

Life giving, soul soothing, heartbreaking.

Gets you through life’s most crushing moments.

Sometimes you have to break up and move on which is really fucking hard because it feels like you’re losing a limb, but if you don’t, your soul dies a slow death.

It’s laughing until you cry or pee your pants.

They’re your oxygen, life raft, and glimmers when there’s so much suck.

I met my friend, I’ll call her Natalie because she looks like Natalie from The Chicks, in an Overeaters Anonymous group when I was 16 and she was about 18.

We hit it off from the start in part because we were so close in age and most other members were at least a decade older than us.

We exchanged numbers and quickly became attached at the hip.

We spent so much time together just driving around, going to West Acres Mall in Fargo, eating meals together, going to the Hallmark store and laughing at the cards because we were broke and didn’t have money for other entertainment.

Natalie was the first person who knew all my secrets; all the things I was ashamed of.

All the things I kept hidden from the rest of the world because you didn’t talk about how your parents drank too much or fought and screamed at each other.

She knew my bright shiny funny side and about all the anguish that was going on behind closed doors.

She was there for all of it and I was there for all of hers.

And I felt like I lost a limb when she moved out of the state to get married in our early 20’s.

Thankfully over the years we’ve reconnected and I see her every time I go home to Fargo.

We text, send cards, check in, and put the work in because friendship is work; and it’s worth it.

I was home this past fall when my Godfather passed away and Natalie and I met at Caribou Coffee cuz we both love our iced coffees.

She’s the kind person where it might be a minute between conversations but it doesn’t feel like it. We pick right up where we left off.

During our conversation it hit me like a MAC truck to the face.

Just how much her friendship meant to me at that really rough time in my life. 

The full weight, importance, value, and meaning came at me like a Tsunami in the coffee shop and I started ugly crying and couldn’t stop.

I always knew how important she and her friendship were/are to me, but the full realization came at me all at once and it was so much love and joy and peace that my system couldn’t handle it all and it spilled out in tears and snot.

Natalie and I always loved the same music and we listened to a lot of music when we were driving around. 

Certain songs or groups are tied to her. 

This past week she texted me a sweet message with the song “Part of Me, Part of You,” by Glenn Frey which was featured in Thelma and Louise, the first movie we saw together.

She said she was putting together a playlist of 80’s songs and this one reminded her of me and our time together.

*grab more Kleenex for a good cry*

I asked her to send me the Playlist when she was done with it and she did with the caveat that she’ll keep adding to it.

Right now it’s about 25 hours long and every song brings something up.

I was doing something in the kitchen while listening and, “Call it Love,” by Poco came on and I just started dancing and singing to it. 

This playlist reminds me of how much I’ve grown and changed in the decades since I first heard those songs.

It also reminds me that that fun, playful, free spirit of a girl is still totally here!

And we’re intentionally working together to undo the bullshit that society, culture, my own brain’s lies, and others’ emotional baggage heaped onto me.

All that crap got there slowly and so we’re slowly letting go of what’s not mine.

It’s a good and deep editing of what’s weighed me down and kept me playing small in life.

It’s messy and uncomfortable but I’m not here for crap that isn’t real, honest, and true; not anymore.

Natalie will never know just how much this playlist means to me because I can feel it in my body way more than I can describe it in words.

We’re social animals.

Please don’t give up on finding one or two good friends because your soul deserves it.