come on friends get up now love is to be made

"What can I do with my happiness? How can I keep it, conceal it, bury it where I may never lose it? I want to kneel as it falls over me like rain, gather it up with lace and silk, and press it over myself again." Anaïs Nin

Sometimes friendship means gritting your teeth and bearing it while she orates PROFUSELY on the significance of things that are insignificant. And boring, because you've heard them twenty-nine times already. Even if you've told her TWO HUNDRED and twenty-nine times already that he's the worst only you've said it nicer. And even if while shopping for her birthday present you carry a copy of He's Just Not That Into You around the entire store but you finally put it back because she'll figure it out and when she does, you'll be there.

Sometimes friendship means leaving a party at two in the morning and going all the way back downtown because she just flew in and can't find her key. When you get there, she'll be asleep in the doorjamb, and you'll think, That's so cute and also This neighborhood isn't THAT safe, geez.

Sometimes friendship means having to convince her that she is DEFINITELY NOT PREGNANT. At least a couple of times a year. And when you can't quite convince her of that, even with science and common sense backing you up, it means convincing her that if she is pregnant WHICH SHE DEFINITELY IS NOT then you will move in with her and help her raise the baby Kate & Allie style except that you won't have your own baby you will have a cat.

Sometimes friendship means pausing in your careful layering of eyeshadow (for optimum sexiness and ease of transition from daylight to barlight) to run into the bathroom because you hear loud noises and yelling. It means that you will hold the shower curtain up while she finishes showering, because it has somehow fallen on her and everything is now soaked, even if that means you're going to have to start your makeup over again because of steam. And because you're laughing so hard there are tears.

Sometimes friendship means getting out of bed in the middle of the night and going for five-hour drives around the state of Connecticut whilst wearing your pajamas because she just needs to talk. And you know what? So do you.

Sometimes friendship means deciding to be the first one to stop being mad, because it was a stupid fight anyway and because you can choose between staying mad and making your point OR running over to the car with your camera, because that idiot is stuck in the trunk. And you're totally going to help her out, but first you're going to take a picture. You're also totally going to make your point in a few hours (over steamed cheeseburgers and chocolate milk to soften the blow) because you were totally right. Which brings me to:

Sometimes friendship means knowing when not to say "I told you so."

Sometimes friendship means going into the bathroom at the IHOP in Times Square and comparing anatomy to confirm a lack of weirdness, because it really just cannot wait.

Sometimes friendship means waiting for your friend to come back from Crazytown. Sometimes you have to wait a long time.

IF YOU ARE EXTREMELY LUCKY:

If you do not have a hundred-foot-tall, football playing, MBA-getting male friend, get one immediately. Because when that friend breaks up with his long-term ladywoman, friendship will mean a lot of inappropriate dancing and a tiny bit of hilarious friend kissing. And if you think, oh, no, I can't go out with a man who looks like a supermodel because talk about a c-block, you are wrong. Because when that boy whose kisses are starting to plant butterflies where your food is supposed to go shows up, this friend will say: Get it, girl. Let me know if you need me to beat anybody up though. And he will mean it. And he will always make sure you get home okay. So seriously, get on this.

The other day I had a conversation with someone that wound up with me sharing a little bit of frustration I have about one of my friends. It wasn't anything hostile, I was just talking, but the person I was talking to asked me why I remained friends with this girl. And I had no answer. And I've been thinking about it since then, and I still just really have no idea. She's someone who, if I'd met her today instead of ten years ago, I probably would not go near with a ten-foot pole. For a lot of reasons, but mostly because she's almost exactly the same person she was ten years ago. She's never progressed beyond the adolescent egocentrism that plagues us all for a time, which makes me feel this, like, profound sadness for her. (When I don't want to slap her in the head because her perception of reality is so skewed I feel like it must be that her brain is tilted or something.) We've shared experiences that will live in my heart (AND IN MY NIGHTMARES) forever. But for years (yeaaaars) this friendship has felt like something I have to manage, and lately I've just been wondering why I bother. I say I love her, and I do, but a more honest thing to say would be that I am hugely, enormously ambivalent. I ambivalove you? I late you? I don't know. Basically the awkward hug scene in Step Brothers sums it all up. It also sums up everything else about my whole entire life, if you were wondering, which I know that you definitely were. Anyway, I don't mean this in a mean-spirited way and I don't mean to make myself sound like a martyr, staying friends with this hideous, awful person. It's not like that at all. EXCEPT WHEN IT IS. Just kidding. Sort of.

So the moral of all of this is: I don't really get friendship. But I'm super, super grateful for all of mine.
(Including you, friends who live inside my inbox. Including. You.)