The Friendships That Get Us Through Living

I've been thinking a lot about friendships. Especially the ones that bloom throughout all seasons of life: the spring, the fall, the summer and of course the dreadful winter.

I believe, friendships are sites that hold us, just long enough, for us to renew the will we need to continue living. The will we likely drained showing up for a Monday to a job we do not like, or a Tuesday for a difficult conversation we did not want to have, or a Wednesday where the memory of a break-up that happened 5 years ago hits you in the gut! That's the thing about grief: that unannounced menace of a guest, Mr Grief does not care if an invitation was extended, it will make a point to RSVP!

On such days, when everyone and everything appear to be working against me. The only site where hope bloomed for me, is among the space I held, and was held by my friends. In the 8:00 am morning call that started with, "Behen (sister) how is your morning so far?", in the 6:00 pm Whatssap text, "Wanna walk in the graveyard with me?", In the text I sent to my friend at an odd time in Thailand that simply said, "Crushing commencing", followed 10 mins later with "Sleeping commencing".

These spaces and exchanges, made life worth the next inhale and exhale for me.

Even friendships that withered away, while eliciting grief in me, never elicited regret. To have walked a mile on planet earth with another who shared their emotional world with me, no matter the shade of their inner world: grey, blue, yellow, black, I consider a privilege of human-being (as opposed to human-doing)

Our inner worlds, the one's we carry within us as we interact with the world is very fragile and unique to each of us. In that world, we carry stories of shame we do not understand, dreams we hesitate to share out loud, hopes and fears dance in braided knots. It takes immense courage (one that goes unnoticed and unacknowledged) to comb through these knots, even more to share these knots (braided or matted) with another human.

And for this reason, I hold no grudge or regret for the friendships that imprinted on me without permission, or left me confused. In the memory of what existed, for a little while, both humans, felt seen and not shamed.

In doing so, we sat together in the discomfort of being humans in a world that sometimes shames us for our human-mess. Oh what a privilege!

Penned by Noor Begum