To A Dear Friend (Who Is Sorely Missed)
I wonder oftentimes if you were right all along. To leave the country. To stay single. To be childless. I don’t know what your life is like over there, halfway around the world. Knowing you, life must be glamorous. Fast-paced but worry-free. And full of adventure. You have had your share of heartaches, I know. But again, knowing you, you just scrubbed your hands and washed your hair of the mess the morning after and moved on, didn’t you? Have you ever even needed a good cry?
I remember when we used to be inseparable. I wondered, even then, how it could be possible that someone like me, who finds it difficult to warm to new acquaintances, much less build true friendships (until a friend’s loyalty and dependability are proven by years of constancy), could have been taken in so easily. Maybe it was your honesty. The often brutal way you put other people in their place. Or the way you inspired me not to waste my time on hollow things, or hollow people.
You were always the tough one. The toughest friend I have. There is no more compelling image, even then, and up to now, that signifies independence, hard-hitting candor, and feminine strength to me than that of you smoking a cigarette! Nothing ever fazed you!
By all accounts, you are living the life you said even then, more than 10 years ago, that you would live. There would be no husband, you said, to drag you down, to get used to whose noises and smells, to compromise to, to grow old and neglected and bored with. And there would be no kids to raise badly, to assuage the guilt of a life lived without purpose. How liberating it must be to answer only to yourself. To be judged only against the standards you yourself set and live by, are familiar with. There would be no self-reproach. No unfulfilled expectations of the kind of person, wife, mother, you should be; how you should behave. There would be none of the usual recriminations that follow each failure to meet the goals set for you by other people. How I yearn for this life!
I have no friends now. Not one of them is like you, anyway. Not that they could ever be. And oftentimes I am lonely. And ache for someone to tell me the awful truth, the way you used to. Simplify things for me in the way only you seemed to know how. Offer practical, frank counsel. And snap me out of my melancholy and madness when I need it.
Will you write me often? Tell me about your life? Tell me that it’s not as fabulous as I think. That it’s a daily grind. That it is not exactly how you imagined it back then. That the pain and loss of what could have been are beyond words. Tell me, please, that there is no right path. That perhaps it is I who made the right choice.
Then write to me about the small joys of being a single woman in New York. Though I will never own these joys, they might somehow find their way across the oceans and through your pages to me. And give me hope.
Will you, Sister?
I remember when we used to be inseparable. I wondered, even then, how it could be possible that someone like me, who finds it difficult to warm to new acquaintances, much less build true friendships (until a friend’s loyalty and dependability are proven by years of constancy), could have been taken in so easily. Maybe it was your honesty. The often brutal way you put other people in their place. Or the way you inspired me not to waste my time on hollow things, or hollow people.
You were always the tough one. The toughest friend I have. There is no more compelling image, even then, and up to now, that signifies independence, hard-hitting candor, and feminine strength to me than that of you smoking a cigarette! Nothing ever fazed you!
By all accounts, you are living the life you said even then, more than 10 years ago, that you would live. There would be no husband, you said, to drag you down, to get used to whose noises and smells, to compromise to, to grow old and neglected and bored with. And there would be no kids to raise badly, to assuage the guilt of a life lived without purpose. How liberating it must be to answer only to yourself. To be judged only against the standards you yourself set and live by, are familiar with. There would be no self-reproach. No unfulfilled expectations of the kind of person, wife, mother, you should be; how you should behave. There would be none of the usual recriminations that follow each failure to meet the goals set for you by other people. How I yearn for this life!
I have no friends now. Not one of them is like you, anyway. Not that they could ever be. And oftentimes I am lonely. And ache for someone to tell me the awful truth, the way you used to. Simplify things for me in the way only you seemed to know how. Offer practical, frank counsel. And snap me out of my melancholy and madness when I need it.
Will you write me often? Tell me about your life? Tell me that it’s not as fabulous as I think. That it’s a daily grind. That it is not exactly how you imagined it back then. That the pain and loss of what could have been are beyond words. Tell me, please, that there is no right path. That perhaps it is I who made the right choice.
Then write to me about the small joys of being a single woman in New York. Though I will never own these joys, they might somehow find their way across the oceans and through your pages to me. And give me hope.
Will you, Sister?
posted by Heidi Glitterridge @ 9:13 PM
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