This is everything I know about Friendship
If I were to sit down with my legs crossed on my dirty kitchen floor and scribble out the pieces of my life that felt like limbs, friendship would be my right arm. I feel most alive when I’m within arms reach of the people who feel like the first sun on my back in spring.
Friendship is splitting an Uber at 2 AM while you eat nuggets in the back seat with sweet and sour sauce smothered all over your face. Friendship is comfort; it’s a cushion to keep you from crashing into the hard edges of life alone. Friendship is secrets and honesty; it can be both consuming and effortless. Friendship is standing in silence, knowing exactly what the other is stewing up. If I know anything about friendship, it’s that it’s been the most reliable source of goodness in all my life. Its consistency is thick and pours deep when you allow yourself to fall headfirst into it.
One person’s definition of friendship isn’t unanimous. It’s nuanced and special, it sparkles and sometimes fades, and there is no one right way to be a friend, but I do think it’s rooted in this underlying belief that your life is unquestionably better with them in it.
Growing up, I never had a problem with making friends or being a friend, but not in the way where I was a high school pubeless prince, quite the opposite. I’ve just always naturally gravitated towards people when I’ve felt alone. When I feel lonely, my kneejerk reaction isn’t to retreat to the corner; I prefer to expand. I remember being ripped to shreds at junior school for my abnormally high voice, so I sat with girls who sounded just like me at morning tea. I speak to the universe through people. I like listening to people. I’ve always found it the easiest way for my brain to absorb information. I get butterflies when I have something of value to say to someone. I like telling people what I feel and know to be true and watching how their expressions change - how their eyes roll and hands shake as I confuse, rattle and fascinate them. I would rather sit down with someone blowing smoke at some depressing downtown dive bar for three hours and listen to them wail about literally anything than watch some shitty show on Stan alone. Friendship isn’t just about companionship. It’s also about escapism, where even if just for a moment or two, you can leave your own universe and sit in someone else’s with them.
When I’m not too sedated, I often dream about my friends in colours that don’t even exist. And I know it’s not weird to dream about your friends. Over the years, I’ve received countless crack-of-dawn texts about me being a jackass in one of my friend’s dreams. And that has always brought me immense joy; it’s comforting being thought of. But for as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamt about different friends, almost weekly, and I rarely tell them because there is no cadence I can pinpoint. People come through my mind, some mean more to me than others, and then they leave when I’m awake. People leave their mark on my brain like a love bite.
People mean more to me than I give off, but as I’ve grown up, it’s been harder for me to navigate my friendships. I’ve lived in four different cities. I’m on the cusp of turning 28. I’m willful in my truth that there are countless people on this big beautiful, spinning Earth that I’m yet to meet that will be just as important to me as some of my longest-standing friendships. The value of a friendship doesn’t just lie in its length; it’s just as much about how that person has been there for you when your knees were a lil wobbly, and your sight was a lil mirky, and all you needed was a strong hand up and firm push through. I like making new friends. No, I fucking love it. I don’t move countries to hang out with other New Zealanders; you’ll never catch me on a Kiwis in wherever Facebook group. Not my bag. But what I’ve come to realise as I’ve grown up is that this appetite of mine to share my life with more and more people isn’t always shared. It’s a double-edged sword. Friendship can hurt just as much as it can heal. The love you give won’t always be reciprocated, and you’ll have to sit with it and accept it.
My first year living in Sydney felt like I was walking the lonely halls of my mind more often than not. I felt excluded by people who didn’t even know me. I found it painfully hard to make real friends. You know, those friends you could call at all hours to shoot the shit about anything and everything without anxiety chewing you up the following day about something you said.
A few weeks ago, I was sprinting around a gay rave, and I found myself vaping in the bathroom cubicle with a loose acquaintance who cautioned me that a few people had insinuated I was a social climber. You move too quickly, some people might think you’re not being genuine, he slurred. Words don’t often stick to me, but I woke up the next morning thinking about that, and how it bled into my brain. It wasn’t so much that it upset me; it was the realisation that my eagerness could be jarring. I didn’t know if my inherent openness was coming off as cringe or, even worse, fake.
This concept of making friends as a grown adult has perplexed me. All I know is that as children, we’re more often than not relatively unscathed; those watershed moments in life aren’t even a blip on our radar, our confidence isn’t as bruised, our walls aren’t as high, and our opinions aren’t as definitive. We’re open. As we grow, life happens, we shut down, lay down and create moats around us to ensure that whatever happened before won’t happen again.
The truth is, my sense of belonging is sometimes determined by the people around me. Because of feeling alone or whatever, I’ve often put what I thought of myself on the back burner and focused on what others thought of me. When you spend so long living for someone else’s thoughts, chewing gum, daydreaming if you’re floating through their head too, you’ll forget that the whole point of friendship is for it to exist beside you instead of being the endpoint in the road.
It’s heartening to know that I am not alone here with these thoughts. I’ve read about others feeling disassociated with their sense of self because it’s not being understood how they intended. Making friends gets harder as we grow harder ourselves. I know I am strong enough to ride this life out alone, but I also know that some of the best moments that make my blood sprint when I reflect on them have been shared with another. And all of this, well, it’s called learning. There are no rules for finding new friends. You’re allowed to tweak yourself, you’re allowed to flex and bend, and sometimes you might just snap. There is no one right way. But if I could offer one piece of advice on friendship, it would be to lean into it. Friendship makes you laugh harder, cry deeper and grow further. And if you’re open to it, the right people will find you, or you just might find them.
Words — Liam Sharma
