when maintaining > making friendships
on connection, community, and craving closeness
1. if you miss me then tell me
some days i revere my friendships that don’t need constant updates and communication, and other times i find myself being exactly the person who wallows in the feeling of loneliness because none of my friends are texting me and why did i have to find out about this cool life update through their insta story?!1
Even now, I wonder how many people I’ve missed without telling them. How many times have I let a moment pass without reaching for someone, without saying the thing that aches to be said? And yet, is it not enough to simply hold someone in your mind, to let missing them be an internal thing, quiet and private?
i love this piece and the way it captures the tug between relishing one’s solitude but also finding that anxious-attachment creep in sometimes for someone (i hate it) :)
Not every relationship needs the steady drip of updates, the play-by-play of each passing hour. Some thrive on it. Others suffocate. After time alone, I’ve come to love my independence, to cherish the silence between messages, the space to exist without explanation.
And yet, somewhere beyond my carefully guarded solitude–I know my walls are not unbreakable. With the right person, I’d want to see what dishes they’re cooking and hear the songs they’re playing on repeat. But real love should never feel like surveillance. It should be the kind of knowing that doesn’t require proof. The kind of presence that doesn’t demand constant validation. I want to live my life and I want them to live theirs. But never in a way that makes me feel like I’m losing myself.
2. how to grow old with my friends
all my friends in adulthood now live in different cities & continents. how do we navigate life systems that are in periphery of one another? how do we break apart the nuclear family as the primary construct?
It seems like the only person you can rely on to be there indefinitely, and with whom you can build something long-term, is your partner, and this is nice, but I do find the concept of a nuclear family—two parents on their own raising a few kids in a suburban house—a little depressing, when contrasted with a bustling extended family, many of them living together in the same building, hosting boisterous family dinners and monthly trips to a cottage. How do you build that as an adult, when your actual extended family is on a different continent?
3. being new & holding on to this friendship thingie
growing up across the country and moving every 2 years coz of an army dad meant never growing up with childhood best friends. the best you could hope for was to re-find some old friendly classmates on facebook as adults2.
you learn how to make friendships, but never maintain them.
I have felt the same. I’m extremely willing to over-share about my depressive episodes, past relationships, even my intense bouts of hypochondria, but the idea of disclosing that in the past I didn’t have many friends, and sometimes I still feel lonely, makes me wince. Maybe it’s because I know that others, in turn, would be reluctant to admit they relate. Or because it seems too small and sad to be funny, so any joke about it would seem like I wanted pity.
this piece resonated with my bones, coz…same:
What I also have, though, is a tendency to think about my friendships like I’m about to be audited for evidence that I have them. In past years, I’ve typed out lists of them in my Notes app, to reassure myself that they exist.
4. showing up especially when it’s inconvenient
one of the most rewarding parts of growing up for me has been unlearning hyper-independence and being okay receiving help (and even asking for help!). that has now nurtured a community of friends who will cook me food when i’m sick, pick me up from the airport, help me pack my bags before a long trip, bring me flowers just because, and check up on me when i’m silent.
and that needs intention. community is not convenient. showing up takes pains.
love this essay that captures this succintly in: “Community is saying "yes worries" and showing up anyway.”3
Equally damaging? Being the person who always drives others to the airport but never asks for a ride themselves. You have to muster up the courage to humbly sit at the steps of your village and ask for help. When you don’t, you’re inherently perpetuating the idea that the burden to sustain and grow your community is on one person rather than fabric you’re weaving together.
So, I’m going to hold your hand when I say this—you don't get a medal for being the kind of person who thinks they don't need any help. That hyper-independence is precisely what stops us from having a village. Nobody is going to stand at your grave and say, "Here lies Meher, the woman who did it all on her own and never needed any help."
5. romantic = platonic love?
that we put romantic love on such a higher pedestal than platonic love has always bothered me. i’ve been the person to do that too, but in my better days, i often think of the love i feel towards my deepest friendships and how akin to romance it is.
“I really don’t think romantic feelings exist. Love, exists, definitely, but maybe the word ‘romantic’ doesn’t stand on its own. When people talk about romance, isn’t that just the butterflies you get when you become close to someone you really want to become friends with? After being in the relationship for a while, the honeymoon phase wears away, and at the base of it all, it’s your friendship with that person holding it all up. Doesn’t that mean romance is just platonic, loving feelings with a different name?
Barring the acts of intimacy, if you took the engagement in sexual relations out of the equation, what are the considerations you have to make to officially realize you romantically like someone? Is it the level of how much you like them as a person? Because if so, isn't that just the love you have for a friend, but expanded twofold?”
perhaps our communities would be stronger if we all gave friendships the same chance, vulnerability, time, and consideration we give to romantic relationships ~ and maybe that is where we begin to challenge the loneliness epidemic :)
james baldwin says it best:
until next time & new reads!
🌻
~ rufus
if you’re feeling attacked by this, then yes i’m probably talking about you
being depressed throughout university doesn’t help either because you either spend all your time reading books lying on the grass or overhustle juggling internships and freelance work and so who has time for friendships, amirite?!
the pitfall is if you start keeping score :)