I don’t know what I would do without you

As I blow up your phone for the zillionth time today.

I am feeling a bit self-conscious.

Like, is this what friendship is? Is this what my need looks like? My affection? Does this person at the other end of the line doing whatever they are up to today give a shit? Want it? And does she feel as if she can bring it over my way?

When she does, before or during or after, does she wonder if she too is too much to me and that she is stopping me in the middle of some other thing that I might be up to?

This seems impossible. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe this desperately attractive person I can’t believe looks so good at the middle of the ages of our lives,  so wise and smart or fun could guess, second guess (thirdly as I do) if this is how it is to go now that we are no longer as young as we were when we learned how to have pals in the first place.

She is no idol. I am not so craven. I think this is what it looks like to be loved for who you are without a lot of versions of attempting that which would have tripped me up. Kept me from the naked collaboration which comes from the glow of the love of just this kind of pal - one who sees me and thinks whatever of me, but sure listens and laughs and shares and keeps coming back to visit my life and welcome me into hers. Before this bliss of the refined light of cocktails and weekly bar nights, I might have done my best to be alternately absentee and inappropriate. I might have tried to make it a romance. I might have gotten too busy to keep meeting up at all. I might have shut down, as she so often and thankfully does, as she actually reflects something back upon me. Not to flatter. Not to shame. But just to notice. I would have gone all into the back of my brain to get defensive or bored. God, I think, what an asshole I’ve lived as …

Oh, hell no, she might say. She might roll her eyes, talk about process, and offer empathy and experience and all the hard work we’ve both put into to be right here, in this booth, in this city, and in this consciousness.

All that is breaking up a few steadfast assumptions I have held as to how friendship is to go down. They may not apply to anyone reading this; however, I did carry them along a lot of my life, and they go like this:

●      We have to know each other for decades.
●      Our partners have to be friends (I think ours met once?!)
●      We might dress alike, or alike - ish.
●      We are to eventually create some kind of massive, impossibly ambitious, creative project together.
●      I can’t be taken care of.
●      She won’t see me cry, unless someone dies or something.
●      My house has to look perfect, or she can’t come cover.
●      We’ve got to be into the same “stuff”. (I at least need to know what kind of music she likes - I have no idea about that.)
●      We need to talk every day.
●      We had to grow up together.
●      I can’t be the only addict.

Writing that out the stupidity of it is so crystal. Like, have I lived no life outside of network television? Goodness, all those boundaries to keep me apart from positive possibilities, isn’t that right? Oh, I am really good at that. I am a sensation junkie. I have a pain threshold that may be either high or low, but regardless is something I LOVE to tease, mostly negatively too. I am quite accustomed to economies of emotional exploitation that partner with any version of a relationship one human might have with any other.

Addressing this is an ongoing thing, I tell ya!  It is the bridging of over-trust and suspicion where a person (me!) learns to see and love things as they are. Or not. And see the ‘it’ and let myself step away from it if it does not suit me.

Has she done this? I mean, I know she is committed - to herself. That she has had a row or two with life. She’s taken action.  Tried a variety of experiments which in the moment and in the present likely strike her with varying experiences of failure and success. Was all that a bit of how she got here to this place where she gets me and I get to get in, too?

Maybe (and I am totally guessing here) that is what growing up, for a few of us at least, it to look like? Not the carrying through, in all cases as I am inclined to imagine, of a rag tag gaggle of those whom we shared elementary school bus seats with and whispered secrets of the firsts of first kisses, but in a kind of friendship-second marriage.

Again, she may say whatever. She might say something about how it all might not be all that romantic. Or she could agree, that ‘yes’, it is just exactly this kind of non-romantic, but none-the-less loving occurrence, this coming-together. That she agrees. And too, and this is a thing that severely impresses me about, well, me is that that would be OK, too. If we disagree, or shake out on some perception of something differently, I won’t feel any less loved (#facts - for we have disagreed in REAL TIME and I’ve kept at it, I still show up, I trust her and me and we keep on our keeping on!).

●      We met as adults.
●      Just before the dawn of 40 and the end the fantasy of not contagious socializing.
●      We wore masks, literally
●      We sat outside.
●      She is deep into shit I care not for, and same for her and my fan-vices.
●      As to the world, we are on the same ‘side’ of that shade of things - ugh, MUST!
●      I knew here in the suburbs of my social circle for a bit, and I am kinda bummed we didn’t nab each other soon - well timing matter, so who cares I guess.
●      We were actors - like a long time ago
●      She is so talented at everything she does, and I bet she (silly thing!) things the same, well somewhat.
●      She is so funny.
●      She has a temper towards injustice and that helps me find my own anger. Thank you.
●      We both love our dogs over anything else - I appreciate the clarity and strata of that.

I know one day I will die. I know it may get worse. Fear. Fuck up. Regression. Revolutions that may leave me behind or crush me, as well as the ones I hope come and do the same to a lot of other ideas and structures. Sickness. Distance. Poverty. Horror. Achievements. Darkness. Jealousy. Confusion. Joy. No one knows. There is nothing to know, truly, but there is this person I want with me in all of it and she is showing up and confirming the same. Well, if that speaks well of me and generously of her than I’ll trust that and not worry so much for I don’t think I’ll have to worry about what do without her.