inconsequential
friendship is the slipperiest kind of love
Dear Friends,
The first time I began my blog posts this way—“Dear Friends”—was November of last year, mostly to remind myself that I had friends. I was so lonely then, so very literally alone. I remember journaling something like, “What does living abroad look like? It is reminding myself every day that I exist, and that there are people who love me.”
Ever since then, any time I write to you, I begin with great intention: in my head, it’s always, “Dear Friends.” Mostly, those words are for me; I write them to remind myself; my posts are bids for attention. But in the times that you need it, I hope my greeting can remind you that you exist, too, and that I love you, and that I am thinking of you. This is the point of my blog post today.
So much has happened since the last time I wrote: I traveled to Taiwan, Japan, back to the States, back to Vietnam, around Vietnam (with my parents—the first time my dad was back since ‘75). Then I moved home altogether. Several of my friends got married—to each other and to people I don’t know. I visited my college, and there I walked slowly down the same streets I had once raced through like a speed demon, convinced I was needed somewhere. Needed now. Everything used to be a crisis.
I have come to realize that I am not needed, per se. And that most things are not in crisis. These are not sad realizations, just humbling ones. I am not the center of my friends’ lives; they are not the center of mine. Friendship is more like a sitcom than it is a Greek Odyssey. We orbit around each other, and when the orbits intersect, well, that’s what you call a celestial miracle.
I met her when I was 18. It was at a freshman mixer, and I noticed her because we were the only ones crying. Someone had mentioned missing home and suddenly, completely unprompted, we both started sobbing. I didn’t know this girl, but deep in my heart I felt this was someone I could be with, actually and fully. I bought her milk tea boba on her birthday and said “it’s on me” —a feign of generosity because what I really wanted was friendship. She was lactose intolerant. We became friends anyway.
There is a picture of the both of us, which someone took with a distortion filter: her face is squished into a blob and I look like an unhappy squid. We were 18 then, maybe 19. Several late nights became hundreds of Messenger calls, became misunderstandings and forgivenesses, became several years of knowing each other, became deep and sometimes unfathomable friendship. I don’t know all of her. There are things I’m sure we don’t tell each other, not because of any dark reason, but because life happens, because there are other people to tell besides each other, because of this and that. She is married now, a ring on her finger; I flew halfway across the world to witness it.
I realize that this is a bit of a corny post, mostly because of its universal truth, mostly because there are a million ways people say the same thing: “I felt this was someone I could be with, actually and fully.” There are a million ways those stories then end with the same conclusion: “I didn’t realize how rare those moments are, those people.”
I think we write these sweeping statements because friendship is the slipperiest love that exists—and it requires the most difficult, most tender balance of desire and letting go. Friends are not bound to each other out of responsibility or tradition. And once something bad sours the mood—guilt, abuse, disinterest—it is no longer, by definition, a friendship. Friendship is, in this way, entirely inconsequential. If you leave, likely nothing will happen. No grand break-up, no splitting child care, no huge family blowout. “Friendship is unnecessary,” C.S. Lewis wrote, “like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself.”
Then: “It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”
I love my friends, and after traveling the world for 2 years, I miss my friends. As corny and obvious as it is, I have found that friends are indeed difficult to make. Thankfully, I have also found that the best ones are a lot easier to keep than I once believed.
Today, I met up with my now-married friend. We walked into a cafe together, sat down near the electric plug so I could borrow her charger. Have I borrowed this charger before? There is so much of my precious friend that I do not know, so much that perhaps will never be known. What is my role here now? Who am I within this friendship?
Several months ago, on the way to her wedding, I read a book she had been recommending for a while. It was a memoir on friendship, an ode to college, an anti-eulogy for the author’s friend who died in a carjacking. I wept.
From the book1: “Derrida remarked that friendship’s driver isn’t the pursuit of someone who is just like you. A friend, he wrote, would ‘choose knowing rather than being known.’ I had always thought it was the other way around.”
I wept. I wept because a mother and her son were seated to my right, and when would my friend become a mother? I wept because how was my friend already getting married? I wept because there was so much I wanted to know about her, and so many more ways I wanted to be known. I wept because I wasn’t as big of a person as Derrida makes himself out to be. I wept because my earlier flight had been canceled midair, and no other flight would make it in time; wept because I had booked a one-way ticket headed in the opposite direction (instead of through the Pacific, I was flying through the Middle East, the UK, Greenland); wept because even then, I would be landing at the same exact time my friend would be exchanging her vows.
I wept because despite my effort, I would have to Zoom into her wedding from a clunky, lonely Uber in the middle of nowhere; because I would screenshot the kiss, screenshot the flowers, pinch the screen to scan her face; she looks so happy, I’m so happy for her. I wept because I hoped my friend would know I was happy for her. I wept because I hoped she knew I loved her. I wept because I loved my friend. I wept because there was a part of me that—so inconsequentially—needed affirmation that she loved me, too.
I have always found it so interesting, so moving and poignant, that the shortest (and by some metrics, therefore the most “inconsequential”) verse of the Bible is about a friend. John 11. The Death of Lazurus. Verse 35. Jesus wept.
His friend died. Jesus wept. It is so simple. It is so small. So unnecessary, one might say, for the Son of God with the power to raise people from the dead, why the trouble of crying? But there it is. That terribly inconsequential, completely unnecessary yearning. His dear friend. His dear friend. Jesus wept.
After my friend left this cafe, some hours ago—routed to that new apartment she now shares with my other friend, husband and wife, these huge, ordinary, unfathomable titles—I pulled out my laptop and began writing. The balding middle-aged man seated on my left pulled out his phone and started talking to his friend. I’d like to think my own laughter, my own shushing and joking and serious reflection with my own friend, just some minutes ago, gave him the courage to phone his.
“Been so long, man,” the bald man coughed, trying to sound cool, unfazed, as if dialing his pal had been an inconsequential slip of the thumb. He said he hoped his friend didn’t mind him calling. Yeah, he’s seen his therapist recently, yeah, it really sucks, yeah, she’s not really talking to me, yeah, hey, thanks so much for calling, man, and, oh, hey, I’m happy you got to see your kid recently. Thanks so much for calling. Thanks so much. Really, thank you. By the way, can we do this again?
On her wedding day, when I saw my friend for the first time in a year, fresh off the $150 Lyft, my hair half-washed in the airport sink—
When I scrambled with my luggage into the bridal room as if I belonged, as if I was needed, as if it was a crisis—
When I looked at this beautiful woman in her beautiful gown, I knew she had just been married. I knew I had tried so hard to be there. I knew they had just been several inconsequential seconds, but I also knew that I had missed them anyway.
I knew sometimes things cannot be helped, and yes.
I wept then, too.
Dear Friends,
Thank you. When I was back on campus for a short moment, you reminded me that it is possible, after all, to be loved inconsequentially, through accidental bump-ins at Shake Shack, over pizza at the Air BnB, texting this person who will text this person who will text this other person to pick us up and then we can all walk the canal together. Thank you for telling me you read this blog. Thank you for telling me I inspired you to take a creative writing class, or two, and/or possibly start your own blog. I couldn’t believe it. I spent two years reminding myself I exist. You told me I exist and more.
When I began this blog, I had no expectations for where it would go, or how many people would read. Now, there are 100+ people subscribed. That is no small number. Some of you I have known so intimately, in the way of inside jokes and leftover Chinese takeout. Some of you I have met on the other side of everything I thought was familiar, in a country that changed me. Some of you are strangers—beautiful, cryptic email usernames that trusted my writing enough to subscribe.
Either way, no matter what it is, thank you. So much. With all my heart. There have been no consequences to our friendship, at least in the way that there are no consequences in poetry or philosophy or art or the universe or beautiful living.
If it at all moves you to write back to me, I would love to hear how you are. You can drop a line in the comments, send me a private email response, anything. Thanks so much. Really, thank you.
Love,
Kaitlan
just catching up with your blog now but loved reading this and hope you're well!
beautifully said...friends are precious, and not to be taken for granted. The older you get, the harder you have to work to maintain those friendships. In my opinion, it is worth the effort!