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03072023 - female friends

a part of this break up meant that i was lonely for a period of time. logically, i am not alone. ive always had wonderful friends beside me but ive never been great at being a constant presence with in-person, platonic relationships. part of this can easily be attributed to the fact that most of my deeply formed relationships are elsewhere in the world - cross borders, coasts, and even the earth. but… i always felt alone in vancouver. most people have heard my rants about how impossible it was for me to make friends in this city. i still think this is true - it is harder than most other places ive lived in to spontaneously meet others and form a typical, life-long bond beyond multiples of 2. yet, the last two weeks have proved me wrong over & over!

i reached out to my first heartbreak from a decade[!] ago. i had felt so unbelievably empty and only had my experience from years prior to anchor onto. i read through my adolescent diary entries of mourning and ache and found solace in my 13-year old self's capability to somehow get through undiscovered angst alone. besides the point, my old first love told me he slowly forgot about our silly little spark by surrounding himself with friends, both old and new. such a simple piece of advice, and yet it never occurred to me to rely on others… to surround myself with brand new faces and to overwrite my old memories of vancouver streets once full of love.

when i thought of people, i would text them. i would send notes of love and photos of adoration. i called people and heard voices i haven't listened to in a very, very long time. i kept talking and absorbing and soon enough, i left no more time to cry and sulk alone in our bedroom.

but the topic of this little ramble isn't about overcoming my brief period of utter despair. instead, it's about how ive slowly rekindled a type of relationship that i haven't felt in years.

i think my first attribution of a pure platonic, female-first relationship was meeting michelle in grade 10 science. ive had many female best friends along this path (ryleigh, theresa) but they differ in the sense that they are my lifelong friends because of the longevity and proximity we've spent together; we grew up together and share an unbreakable bond no matter our differences and distances.

butttt meeting michelle and us going for food randomly (after admiration from both parties afar) and instantly making a wonderful connection through shared interests: now THAT was a spontaneous, beautiful-friendship-at-first-meet! and today, i have rediscovered this glorious feeling…

i hosted a co-working session in vancouver and shen registered and, ofc arielle being sane of mind, stalked shen's personal site and instantly felt like we would be best friends. i sent her a silly email about green grapes and morgan&aadill told me i sounded insane (and looking back, it was quite crazy) and yet, she replied with the same energy and i was just even more excited to see her!

when we met irl, she was a little shy and i was a bit anxious just from the event in general, but once we got to chat with each other 1:1 at lunch afterwards, it felt like all of our neurons were intertwined in silly, magical ways. we made a little notepad of activities to do together this summer and we planned to go to a farmers market the following day (which we did!)

today, we spent an hour at kits farmers market trying delicious berries and hummus dips. we have extremely similar tastes in food and drinks and life and hobbies and it just felt SO GOOD!!!! in my apple notes, i have a separate checklist i always refer to when it comes to my ideal partner. until today, i mainly assumed this list was for my romantic life partner. in many ways, it most definitely is - i wrote most of the points with my future children and my inevitable old age in mind. but many of the qualitative points overlap with my ideal partner, generally speaking, irregardless if it is platonic or romantic.

one of the points is a bit silly - someone who appreciates my taste, specifically my frivolous addiction to dried fruits and luxury teas. today, shen and i spent hours at a tea bar where she painstakingly listened to my little pretentious tea ceremony facts and we shared a bag of dried apples we bought at the farmers market. we ate some free samples from a dried fruit and nut store and also washed our hands at aesop to smell good on a budget. we tried funky teas and smelled so many candles and walked the corridors of overpriced homeware stores. at the end of our little outing, i genuinely felt upset that we had no more time to spend together and instantly began planning for our next outing.

in a life full of seemingly mundane moments like eating dried apple nuggets under the sun with a brand new friend, i am reminded of how wonderful new, sporadic friendships can be!

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