NOTES ON GIRLHOOD AND FRIENDSHIP

My best friends and I are having dinner. Our high school graduation is five days away. The air is heavy with questions about the future. Will we stay this close? When will we see eachother again? We ignore it for now. We are present. We order buckets of wings. We eat like men. We trade lip gloss. We make fun of the boys we have crushes on. We talk about everything and nothing. On and on and on. I want to bottle up this moment. Drink it forever. Wear it like perfume. My girls. We talk about the future. We can’t believe the next chapter is here. We don’t really want to turn the page yet, but we know we have to. We laugh at ourselves for dreaming big, but in the future we’ll look back and wish we had dreamed bigger. Eventually, the restaurant had to clear the table and close. The waiter had to go home. Our time was up. That’s life, I guess. 

My best friend and I are playing dress up. We’re six years old. Our princess dresses are halloween costumes and our tiaras are made of plastic. But it feels real. We slap on shimmery eyeshadow and twirl and twirl and twirl around the room. I didn’t know it yet, but she would be by my side every step of the way. Every stage of life, she was there. I was there, too. When she got braces, I was jealous. I thought it made her look cool. She was embarrassed. Now, she has the most beautiful smile. When I broke my arm, she was first to sign my cast. When she got her driver's license, she drove me to school. We felt like adults. She turned the music up, and I rolled the windows down. We screamed our favorite songs. Neither of us can sing, but the comfort comes in knowing neither of us judge. 

My best friend and I are getting ready for a party. The bedroom floor is hidden under our wardrobe, as we try on every item of clothing we own. She tells me she feels ugly today. My heart breaks a little. She’s so beautiful. She’s wearing a jacket, even though it’s hot, but she feels insecure. I insist she leaves the jacket at home. I remind her again and again how beautiful she is. She points out that I’m wearing a jacket too. Oh. I guess I felt a little ugly too that day. We vow to be confident today. We’ll be confident together. Solidarity. We’ll leave the jackets at home. She lets me borrow her perfume. I let her borrow my eyeliner. She plays me the song she’s currently obsessed with. It’s my new favorite song. We keep getting ready. We make TikToks and laugh. We’re having more fun getting ready than we will at the party and we both know this because this is what happens every time. But I like patterns, and we both don’t mind. 

My best friend and I are texting. We’re always texting. We talk about Taylor Swift way more than the average person does. We FaceTime when the new album comes out. We listen together, we freak out together. We send eachother memes we find funny. We overanalyze conspiracy theories. We say we should start a podcast. We genuinely believe people would want to listen to us if we did. We decide to start a blog together. We bounce ideas off one another. She’s the best writer I know. We’re always texting. She’s halfway across the world but I’m laughing hysterically at something she said. I’m counting down the days until I get to see her again. People always tell me “you guys are like the same person”. I always call her my twin flame. That’s when you know you’ve found your platonic soulmate. 

I think, as a rule of life, you have to be at least a little bit in love with your friends. I’m in love with all my friends. They’re the best people I know. When they call me sobbing, I want to kill the person that hurt them. When they tell me their secrets, I lock them in a vault. When I’m having conversations with strangers, I can’t help but bring them up, because the world deserves to know how cool they are. There’s something sacred about being girls together. It’s like survival, in a world that feels unwelcoming at times. Because the girls, they just get it, and even if they don’t, they will sit there and listen, and care, and ask all the right questions, and offer the best advice. I’m in love with us. I’m in love with friendship bracelets and giggles and sequins and secrets. I’m in love with being seen as silly, because that way, only we get to know how powerful we are.

To my girls, I love you, I love you, I love you more.

By Nazly Elbosaty

Published April 29, 2024.