“I left all my underwear in Wheaton,” she admitted sheepishly.
I didn’t know if it was appropriate to laugh, but I did anyway. I hoped she wouldn’t interpret it as the triumphant laugh of a victor when their enemy falls prey to the whims of fate. I knew there was such a hint of gloating involved, but I thought that my laughing would offend her no matter the reason, so why worry about my motives? Such an imperious person could never laugh at herself.
But Sarah did laugh. At least, she laughed a little. “Yeah, I left it all in the top drawer of the bureau when we left the States. So…do you know anywhere where I could buy some?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “I’ve never been to London either. I don’t suppose they have Targets here.”
“Um…well…in that case, do you have any I could borrow?”
I couldn’t help but laugh again, this time from embarrassment. “I don’t think you would want to wear mine. I have, we’ll just say, colorful taste.”
All in a moment, we couldn’t stop laughing. Tears leaked from the corners of our eyes and we held our sides as we giggled uncontrollably. Us, subconsciously sworn enemies, giggling like best friends at a slumber party, talking about underwear. I think the laughter came just as much from our surprise about the other as it did from the situation. The fact that we hated each other seemed suddenly hilarious.
“Well,” she said in gasps, recovering her breath, “I suppose I could always go commando.”
“Oh no way,” I said seriously, “Walking around London? You would suffer some serious chaffing.” And we were friends.
Though the beginning of our friendship is very distinct in my mind, the beginning of our rivalry is not. Freshman English majors at the same college, we came to hate each other as much out of instinct as anything else; competition between writers, especially young insecure ones, is so thick as to be tangible in settings where they are forced to compare themselves to others through grades. Sarah, a poet with lots of opinions, struck me as exactly the type of writer I both never wanted and had always wanted to be: self-assured, confident, talkative, serious. She reminded me of a spoiled princess in a book I had read once: fierce and terrifyingly beautiful, who men would go to war and die for, but never love. She terrified me.
My only distinct memory of those days is an instance in which we were put together for an in-class discussion group. I don’t remember the class. I do remember that our eyes met when the professor called our names, and I could tell she knew as well as I how the discussion was going to progress. The rest of the group ended up sitting helplessly by as we argued about something, I don’t remember what. We were probably on the same side, but honor and first impressions mandated that we disagree.
So when we first discovered that we were to spend two months in England together on a summer study abroad trip, I can speak for myself in saying that avoidance was the tactic of choice. I managed to get by with only the barest of contact until we arrived in London, when my roommate happened to be friends with Sarah’s roommate, and I came to her hotel room, and ended up discussing my choice in underwear.
After that first breaking of the ice, we talked about past relationships in Regent’s Park, shopped for souvenirs and discussed life over cream tea in Oxford, talked more about boys in our dorm rooms at St. Anne’s College, and hiked the downs of Ambleside in the Lake District. We were chased by sheep, rowed a boat across Lake Windemere, got caught in the rain, got lost, got sick, got homesick. Or, rather, I got homesick. I borrowed her blue sweatshirt so many times that it became a part of my wardrobe. In the Port meadows at Oxford, we watched the most brilliant sunset I had ever seen and a photographer took a picture of us, standing silhouetted by the colors, side by side, as if we had been friends forever.
I wanted to believe that we would be friends forever, or at least for a while after the trip, but didn’t dare to hope for fear of pushing too hard and scaring away her independent personality. All the same, another school year arrived, and we talked and laughed and shared adventures just as much as we had in England. The continued growth of our friendship has been almost as surprising as it’s beginning.
I’ve often tried to figure out why this friendship has been so much closer and more stable than any other female friendship in my life so far. The odds have been stacked against it: beginning as enemies, being forced together on a trip, and expecting the relationship to wear away once the situation of the trip no longer holds us together. No observations of our turbulent situation could have predicted the firmness our friendship now demonstrates.
I had every reason to doubt my own contributions to the friendship, as well. Having only one younger brother and an often-distant relationship with my mother, I’ve always felt inadequate as a female friend. I don’t know how to respond when another woman tells me good news, or how to comfort her when she cries about the bad. With the interference of my overactive conscience, I often don’t know how much gossip is wrong and how much is just normal girl conversation. Sometimes I forget that other women don’t usually use the word “dude” when they’re excited or enjoy stories about outdoor adventures. I don’t know how to fight like a girl, with all the crying and negotiating and hurt feelings and telling other friends who tell other friends. In short, I know myself to be pretty inept at being a girlfriend.
With Sarah, none of these things have ever seemed to matter. Not that our relationship is like the relationship I have with my male friends or my brother; I don’t usually talk about outdoor exploits with her or make stupid jokes that everyone laughs at because they are stupid and for no other reason, though we do say “dude” occasionally. But I am myself with her, something I’ve only experienced previously with other friendships in a handful of brief and scattered moments.
Coming to this conclusion, I suppose I answer my own question as to what has made the friendship last and grow deeper. The relationship has been sustained by this trueness to self, our feeling that we are ourselves when we are with each other. The question, then, becomes this: what is it about this friendship makes me feel as if I can be myself at all times without shame? What makes the difference between this and so many other temporary and tenuous friendships in which I have only played a role, been a piece of myself instead of the whole?
To be honest, I don’t really know. I wish I did, because if it were quantifiable, I might be able to capture it into a system or set of rules and apply it to all my friendships current and future. I would be the Solomon of friendships, collecting and collecting until I was known for my friendships and built up for myself storehouses full of stable relationships.
In this thought, however, I think I have my answer to this second question, as well. It is precisely the unquantifiable and rare nature of a deep friendship that makes it so precious. In other friendships, I can point to the things that hold me to someone: hobbies, interests, beliefs, backgrounds, simple proximity. Sarah and I can point to some of these things as well. We share our writing, we hold to the same faith, we want similar things from our lives. But we both know that there’s something more foundational to our friendship than activities or simply stated self-assessments.
After all, who can quantify themselves?
Our friendship is beautiful precisely because we do not feel as if we must know ourselves or the other person completely, put into a tiny box of understanding, in order to feel connected. I am myself, and she is herself, and we are friends because our two individual persons enjoy the company and conversation of the other. The key to our relationship, I think, is in not trying to define either the other person or the exact nature of our relationship. If we tried to figure out why everything works or exactly why we enjoy the other person, we would end up focusing on those small details in neglect of the only real thing that holds us together: who we are as people.
One must admit, however, that any good friendship needs to have some level of understanding beyond just the personhood of the other. Otherwise, we could be close friends with every other human being on the planet, even if at a distance. Yes, it is true that only when we see each other as whole, unquantifiable people, can we have true friendships. However, we can only really see and appreciate another as a whole person when we are blessed enough to find one of those few people in world who we feel can really understand us and we them. Herein lies the paradox: the best friendship is one in which there exists an appropriate balance between knowing and mystery, between understanding and admitting that one can never fully understand the other person. If these two things can be kept in balance, then the friendship grows.
I’m always looking forward to learning more about Sarah, the person. I know now that she is a princess men could love, and do love. She is still occasionally imperious to me, but I respect her strength and look to her as an anchor when I feel like someone should put me away in a padded room. She is strong where I am not, I am strong where she is not. She is always a mystery to me, but I can usually read the thoughts behind her eyes. I can always understand her, and I know I will never understand her completely.
This balance doesn’t necessarily determine that the friendship will last forever. It does guarantee that the friendship will leave a lasting mark in the form of significant growing experiences shared, connections between two souls established. Even if my friendship with Sarah grows apart in the future, I know that I will always consider her to be my friend and remember her as a person with who I truly shared my life.
We ate scones in my apartment the other night and she told me she had thought of me.
“I was at Target,” she said, “and I saw some underwear I knew you would like.”
And so we are friends.
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