Fluttering Friendship
It was cold, and it was rainy, and it was November, so naturally, everything that could go wrong on a Tuesday morning went wrong. “The banana I was saving for lunch got squished in my backpack,” I cried out to Rebekah, one of my best friends. “I’m sorry,” they whimpered and stared at the mush of chunky banana bits smeared over my Kanken. But, of course, there was no reason for Rebekah to apologize since they did not do anything wrong; crummy things happen, bananas get flattened, and we must move on. Yet, in their reaction to my grief, I was comforted. Here was a person, someone who had no obligation to be in my life, empathizing with my frivolous fit about an annoying banana. And though it was only 7:36 in the morning and the dizzying orange lockers of my high school building felt suffocating, I took a deep breath and understood the beauty of friendship in its most unconventional form. Right, when I needed to talk to someone about my snack exploding, a friend appeared.
I’ve had an overwhelming amount of these “I’m so grateful for friendship” moments in the last six months. Moments, where I’m in the middle of laughing with my friends and time slows, I realize how lucky I am to be in a space where I am loved and can love others. After spending the better half of my adolescent years in my bedroom due to a global pandemic, merely seeing my friends in person, not through crappy FaceTime calls or Snapchat videos, is enough to make me tear up.
Of the laundry list of things Covid has flipped upside down and turned over, the way we form friendships is one of them. When cases started to rise in America during March of 2020 — what seems like a lifetime ago — suddenly everything and everyone around us posed a Covid-induced threat. We retreated into quarantine, watching the death toll of our states thicken as our morale grew thin. It took tremendous effort to even get out of bed in the morning with the world looking so dim. Most people could only watch from the sidelines as essential workers carried the enormous burden of survival on their backs, saving our community one beat at a time.
The pandemic blew up everything in our world to a grander scheme of things. We could no longer bake cakes without ignoring that throwing ourselves into making food was a coping method to distract from the pain of living. We could no longer go on walks without thinking about how the precious air we inhaled may not be ours to exhale a month from now. On top of that, we could no longer interact with everyone and anyone who passed us by. We had to make a conscious decision and choose what friendships we wanted to hold onto. Who will I text every day? Who will I call once every couple of weeks? Who will I DM once in a blue moon to check that they are alive?
My social circle shrunk during the pandemic, but I strengthened the bonds with my best friends. We talked in circles about the shows we were watching, the crazy new meals our moms were making, and which people from our school were ignoring lockdown mandates. We kept each other sane. What more could I ask for in a time where everything around me was unrecognizable, frighteningly so?
I did not know when the world would return to “normal,” if I would ride the train to 42nd street, walk the ashen streets of Manhattan, and enter the halls of my high school ever again. However, during the summer of 2021, the signs pointing to a return to in-person learning in the fall flashed brighter and brighter. A somewhat everyday life was on the horizon.
I started to get excited. I would get to be in a classroom and see my teachers outside their zoom boxes! I would not be in my room 24/7! I could get Shake Shack after school! I would get to see my friends outside of our weekend hangouts and Netflix parties!
Of course, there was the fear of being thrown back into the swimming pool of social interaction, Covid spiking again, and general back-to-school anxieties. Yet, for once, I let excitement suffocate the noise of nervousness.
On September 13, 2021, I walked back into my high school for the first time in eighteen months. My mom insisted on taking a photo of me with one of those chalkboards that say your grade on them. I told her I would only take the picture if we stood on the block across the street from my school. No matter how many smooches or snuggles my mom gave me during the darkest periods of our world, I was still a teenage girl who did not want to be embarrassed.
As I smiled at the photo, text messages from my friends made my phone vibrate in my pocket: Where are you, bae? Omg, there is such a long line to get into the building. LOL, did you see how different (insert teacher) looks now?! I cannot believe we are back in this hell hole. So many other anxious, happy, nervous musings breezed through my screen. Then, I kissed my mom goodbye and trotted to my school’s entrance.
With butterflies in my stomach, I re-entered a pinnacle of adolescence I thought I would never see again. Inside the building, I saw Rebekah and my friend Emerson following behind. In the (smelly) sea of high schoolers, seeing Rebekah and Emerson’s smiles, the same uneasy/ joyful/ what is going on, smiles on their faces let me know everyone and everything would soon be fine.
As I write this six months later, I can confidently say I would not have made it through this school year and the jumbled mess of a pandemic we are living through without my friends. The memories that they have poured into my life are invaluable.
Memories. The greatest thing about them is that you don’t know which moments will jump in your keepsake until the experience has long passed. What I remember today will not be what I remember ten years from now, but even if your brain forgets some memories, your soul won’t. Covid trapped us all in a bubble of nostalgia and forced us to recall “the good ole days” (even if they weren’t that great.) Since then, I have seen myself hold onto all the minuscule moments with my friends a lot stronger than before. Letting myself dive into the fountain of sheer gratitude has allowed me not only to appreciate so much more but embrace the little things that build the foundation of love, joy, and respect in my world.
Last October, my BFFSPK (best friend forever since pre-school, if you didn’t know) Arielle came to a sleepover at my house for the weekend. During the day, we went shopping in SoHo, talking about everything and nothing. As we sat in an over-packed restaurant for lunch, sipping hot chocolate as the autumn breeze tickled our toes, merely looking at her auburn mouth crinkle every time I made a joke and her eyes twinkle at each little remark I shared, made my heart grow three sizes. Here we were — my best friend of 14 years and me moving like independent young women in New York, sipping hot drinks, and enjoying the presence of one another. For the next hour and a half, we sat and laughed when a colossal glob of ketchup plopped out of my burger, smiled as we played with the cute black pug on the sidewalk, and forgot about our phones and the AP Biology test we had on Monday. We were in the moment, a moment that still blows around my mind like an autumn leaf whenever I miss her.
Then I think of the following month when I got to see Harry Styles at the final show of his Love On Tour with my best friend, Olivia. Dragging our moms to the concert box office early that Sunday morning, we waited in the cold November wind to get tickets before the show that night. After an hour of sitting on matted picnic blankets with a line of other teenage girls, the security guards of the arena told us the box office was closed and to go home. We could have sulked, but Olivia’s mom told us to brush off our shoulders because we would be in that show by the end of the night. So, we returned to my house and refreshed Ticketmaster for the rest of the afternoon as our brains got dizzy from the fog of $2000 tickets popping up on our screen.
Two hours before the concert, we were sick to our stomach at the thought of not seeing our beloved Mr. Styles. We didn’t know whether to cry or laugh at how thirsty we were to attend this show, so we danced instead. We swung our arms in my bedroom, letting the setting sun illuminate our long tired limbs and aching hearts. We finally found tickets an hour before the show, but they turned out to be fake. My dad still drove us to the arena to see if we could somehow get real tickets. Olivia and I sat in the backseat, and our I Heart Harry Styles shirts crackled as we sat in apprehension, hoping that with some miracle, we would make it into the stadium.
As we pulled into the arena, we ran into the Ticketmaster booth and explained the scamming scenario, how we were two teenage girls who wanted to see the light of their lives together on his last show. Sharon — I will never forget her name — the ticket concierge found us two tickets five minutes before the show began. We cried as she printed them out, running up the flights to our seats, screaming that we had made it in. For the rest of the night, Olivia and I danced in section 104 and enjoyed the love we had found in each other over these last two years and the love Harry Styles has spread in our world.
Then how could I forget about the time I hosted Friendsgiving and had all of my besties, from Olivia, Rebekah, and Emerson to Anna, Wendi, and Theodora, come to my house. As we ate, someone came up with the idea that we each go around and tell everyone what we call our grandparents— Mimi and Papa for me, Nonna and Nono for some. I passed everyone the roti my Guyanese grandmother, Mimi, made for the occasion — they couldn’t get enough of it. Hearing my friends share stories of their culture while they dipped the roti into chana was beautiful. Watching my gift — my culture’s gift to my best friends manifest in such admiration was special.
There are so many other moments like this, such as when my friends came to see me perform a poem I wrote for my school’s Black Excellence Show. When I saw them after the show, they screamed in such happiness and pride at my performance that we all collapsed into a bundle of hugs.
I can not wait for all the joys to come with my current friends as we tackle our last years of high school together. The thought of many more coffee dates with Anna at Vanilla Gorilla where we hype each other up, days where I lounge in the pool with Gabbi, my middle school best friend, and museum dates with Rebekah is the cause for the blissful smile across my face as I type this. And to think that I still have so many other friends to make!
Needless to say, I love being a friend, having friends, and the great space I can create with them to feel okay in this messy world we live in.