Phantom Friendships
An existential invite
I can remember feeling the pang of loneliness: an almost phantom limb-type sensation where my people should have been, but weren’t.
I loved living where I was in Montreal: it was a gorgeous city with rich culture and a lot, A LOT of fun. The food was exceptional. The huge cafe au lait + too many cigarettes while I studied or wrote papers made grad school somehow seem sexy and sophisticated, and the very cute one-bedroom apartment that I shared with my mon petit ami, with the huge window overlooking Mont Royal, was perfect (if drafty).
So why did I feel such a void?
Other relationship issues aside (because OF COURSE), the hole where my girlfriends once were was gaping. While I truly loved the company of my then boyfriend, the physical and geographical absence of my rich tapestry of grounding female friendships—in my day-to-day, week-to-week, or even month-to-month life—was more painful than I thought it would be.
As an only girl that grew up amidst the hullabaloo of 3 brothers, my girlfriends were always an especially binding force in my life. The sisters I never had.
Even in the blur that was high school and then college, I always knew in a very conscious way that my friendships were special. That many people don’t get to experience the type of deeply present female friendships I have had in my life.
As I continued to exit one phase and moved on to the next, I discovered the delight that is bringing together all the people I love and knowing they will love each other just as much. The venn diagram of some of my current day friend groups is hilarious.
And then, there I was. In a different country. Heart full in many ways, and really empty in others.
So, I tried hard to dig in deeper in the places that made sense: the restaurant in Little Italy where I was a server a few days or nights a week seemed the obvious choice. This worked, a little. But I could never truly grab onto anyone or fully be myself it seemed, something that felt new to me.
Making new friends had always come easily. I was outgoing (or used to be), loved a drink or 2 and was an open book of eclectic experiences. What better 25 year old friendmaking material is there?
It turns out though that there is a certain environment, a certain type of person that breeds this reciprocity. This specific type of mutual vulnerability. And that environment wasn’t it for me.
So what is IT then? Especially in this season of my life: mid life motherhood, wifehood, business-owner-working-from-my-home-in-leggings-hood? I’m working on that.
What I do know is this: friendships, especially the deep, soul grabbing sisterhoods that have been my lifeblood since I was 17 years old, require certain ingredients—including a willingness to know and be known.
And I think this might be one of the toughest parts for people of my age(ish), and in the world we live in now.
It was easier when we were younger, had less dings and dents on our lives, and fewer shitty past experiences to explain or defend. Or maybe it was just still funny (enough).
You know, when you just generally had less to be judged for. Less to wade through when figuring out exactly how much to disclose to that new mom you met at the playground. The one that doesn’t already, instinctually, KNOW how generous, judgment-free, and ride or die you can be.
It’s hard to have the energy these days to make it through the many, many short, interruption-filled conversations-at-the-playground-while-you-alternately-dispense-snacks-and-bandaids you will have to have in order to actually figure any of that stuff out about each other.
It’s hard out there for a mom is what I’m saying.
One thing that has been a propellant shaping many of my friendships, is being thrown together in a specific circumstance.
When I was 23, for example, I moved to Ixtapa, Mexico to be a lifeguard for Club Med. This is where I met said French-Canadian boyfriend I eventually moved to Canada with.
(This is probably about the time you start judging me, though that could have been way back when I first admitted I moved countries “for a boy” or even when I talked about smoking cigarettes with my cafe au lait. I won’t try to guess. There’s much more where that comes from anyway, lol).
I digress.
The point is that for 9 months (ish) I lived in a Club Med Village with lots of people my age (ish). We worked together, ate together, drank together, complained together (proof that even that kind of life produces something to complain about) and just generally were each other's people during that time.
Many of us were off living that way, with complete strangers, for the first time ever.
At least 2 of those friendships, specifically with people who only overlapped for 4-5 of the same months in the same place with me, were at my wedding 14 years later (not to the Canadian. That’s another story for another day. Or maybe never.) These were friends with whom I’d shared multiple adventures over the years, getting together in their city or mine (wherever I was at the time), and eventually, attending each other’s nuptials.
These are people that knew me—that KNOW me— inside and out.
I have several examples of friends like that, from situations like that. Teaching abroad in Ecuador, traveling to Spain, London, Mexico, wherever for friends’ weddings. I have always leaned in where others instinctively lean out and it’s in that space that I have often found the ease of the bond between women.
I love when people ask us: how do you all know each other?
The unraveling of how people originally met and came together is so rich. And, it also doesn’t matter anymore. Because when friendships have been such a foundational part of your life for 25 years, the how and when parts just kind of fall off. Those friendships just are because you both cared enough to create them that way over time and space and myriad life changes.
And now I’m looking to mimic that feeling, that unique petri dish of circumstances that allows for mutual vulnerability and the desire + the will to know and be known—except maybe without having to move abroad to an expat community.
(I mean, to be clear, I’d like to move abroad to an expat community again. Especially now. But I have a family. A husband and a daughter and many other factors to consider besides just myself.)
Is it possible, though? Can I create an environment where women can come together IRL, leave their pretenses and foibles at the door and open their soul to the possibility of someone fully knowing them AT THIS POINT IN THEIR MID-LIVES? (SHUTTER)
Sure, is it less sexy, less romantic of an idea to grab coffee on a Tuesday morning than it is to stay up all night drinking pints of wine (THIS HAPPENED), and smoking cigs (don’t you judge) on the beach or on a rooftop in New York City somewhere until you literally have nothing else to say because you’ve unraveled the story of your life up until that point and why you are the way you are??
It is. For sure.
Does anyone care enough to make that Tuesday AM coffee happen anyway though?
I do. I’ll be waiting with a coffee if you do too.