When Sophia laughs, I’m sure she’s just a few final breaths from death. A wheezing gasp that makes you feel simultaneously so fucking funny and also deeply concerned that you’re moments away from having to perform mouth to mouth. In fact, when I visited two weeks ago, she laughed so hard that the joy in her heaves sealed up the last fissures of my faded heartbreak.
Anna Rose and I talk on the phone approximately 15 times a week. I know she’s sitting on the couch and dying for a chat when her little blue dot is on Bergen Street. Fig gets married in Virginia and Cristina moves to Madrid and Maura is going to law school in Michigan and I’m the happiest I’ve been in a very long time.
There is an endearing chaos to the conversations I have with my friends in New York over texts and FaceTimes and long voice memos (Liza holds the record at 16 minutes). In our shared photo album, Emma uploads a photo of herself tipsy on the toilet with the caption:
I’m a happy person I really am but how am I going to end this obsession over the currency of my youth as a female presenting human??????? How do I accept time’s finger prints all over me???
And Sophia replies:
Nothing is mine, and nothing will ever be. So did I lose anything? No. It was just returned, and it will all be, either by death or denial…
And Logan chimes in with:
Marvelous a poet!
Which is something a poetry teacher once said to me that has now been swallowed up into the shared vernacular of our friendship.
I become a woman two weeks before moving to London, in a bar I can’t remember the name of now. I stand up for myself with the kind of dignity I could once only dream of possessing as I feel my insides crackle and churn. My stomach tissue hardens to rage, and I can feel little pieces flaking off in there, swimming around. Months earlier I had written, “Girls crumble into women.” And now, I can tell you the story of the exact night it all fell.
I spend ages excavating myself. I clean out the cracks and crevices to make room for new. I cry alone in a movie theatre on the 4th of July. I bike home from Williamsburg behind Liza, who doesn’t seem to know that I never bike, and expects me to keep pace on a perfect summer night. Logan and Cristina stick a sparkly pink candle in my chicken nuggets to celebrate an important date. I’m coming home from work at midnight, and as I’m walking up the steps of the tube, I pass two women in their 40s, elbows hooked, one blonde, one short. I stop, caught in their moment. Their love for each other so sharp, so exposed, so obvious.
I meet a Madi and a Maddie in the fall. The second time Maddie and I hang out, we go to a pub. I order a glass of white wine, and Maddie orders a Guinness. We take our drinks to a quiet table and launch into our stories, talking over each other, trying to figure out in real time the right order to tell them. When the server comes over and asks to take our order, Maddie says, We’ve made a big mistake. She looks so serious, my stomach drops. We haven’t looked at the menu yet. I laugh out loud. She’s a director, not an actress, yet has all the magnetism of one. Halfway through the meal I run to the bathroom because I’m two glasses of wine in, and that means I’ll now be peeing every thirty minutes. I’m feeling warm on the inside but cold on the outside from having to pull my pants down. I look at the bathroom wall, and again, I laugh out loud.
I make this photo my phone background, and to my delight, on the shuttle to the church at Fig’s wedding, one of the groomsmen asks me about it. I explain to him that Cristina christened me a gorgeous goblin long ago. She’s spent many nights watching me gobble a large McDonald’s chicken nugget and fry, washing it down with a Coke and apple pie. She’s seen me eat way too many raspberry Pop-Tarts in succession, straight from the box. She knows that if she makes cookies, I will eat more than what’s socially acceptable for a person who was not a part of the making of them to eat. She’s seen my stance on the couch - smack dab in the center, legs splayed out wide on the coffee table, taking up as much space as I please. Usually, I’m wearing a ratty oversized t-shirt and basketball shorts with my hair piled high in a claw clip and my wire-rimmed glasses sliding down my nose because they’re stretched out from reading in bed on my side. I am never afraid to be ugly with her.
I add Elise and Daisy and Nuria from school to my pile of people in London and know I was right to leave home.
I’m working on a film about friendship, and I interview Emma about what it was like living together for so long. She says:
I think there’s something really beautiful to having that level of intimate look into someone’s life. I think maybe it can feel overwhelming sometimes, but when you have the opportunity to see someone go through something life-altering or heartbreaking, you are basically looking into a mirror of oh, I know that feeling, or maybe I don't know that feeling now, but it’s an inevitable feeling that I’ll have too.
My friends have witnessed me oozing out everywhere. They’ve watched me lose my head and my morality and my shine. And then Anna Rose lets me borrow her incredible black top for a date, and Rosa confirms it’s hot!!! when I fashion show down the hallway. Logan leaves me a note on the island reminding me to have fun and be insane. Sophia’s death laugh and pleas to send her a voice memo with all the details follow me out the door.
On Monday, I take an adult ballet class at the Royal Opera House, and I hear them call places over the intercom for the Royal Ballet’s performance that night as I dip into a plié and my right hip cracks. I elongate my neck and peer up at my left arm curled slightly, high above my head. I suck in my stomach and squeeze my glutes and feel the familiar pain of holding a beautiful position taut. The teacher walks by and ticks her pointer finger at my waist and I immediately know to tuck my pelvis and square my hips. I have not taken a ballet class in nearly four years, and I almost start to cry. I’m overwhelmed by my body instinctually remembering the carriage of the head, back, arms, and natural grace I only seem to possess at a barre.
I’m sitting on the train home from Maddie’s, dessert and tea weighing me down to the seat. I feel unbelievably solid as I lean against the glass partition and close my eyes for a few stops. The tube is so warm, which I’m sure will be a nightmare in the summer, but for now, I am content. A year ago I declared I wanted to write wider and wilder, and I know I’ve written this piece with so many run-on sentences, but I couldn’t figure out another way to express the abandon and potential I feel right now. Actually, it is not hard to love again at all. I have the most remarkable friends. They’ve always been gently nudging me towards the knowledge scribbled on that pub bathroom wall.
"Actually, it is not hard to love again at all" wow breaking my heart, beautifully written!! Love so much
soo beautiful!!!