THE LOVE LANGUAGE OF FRIENDSHIPS
It is its own kind of love. The kind of love that is ever-changing in its shape, shifting and moulding itself to life’s ebbs and flows but never breaking apart. The kind of love that is messy in its honesty, a vulnerability that crawls out of corners of ourselves we let each other into. The kind of love that doesn’t demand anything but knows its boundaries and respects them without fear of losing one another. Our friendships speak their own love language that keeps us afloat and bound to each other, a language that communicates the kind of love that cannot be explained through the simplicity of words.
In my twenties, friendship has taken on a different meaning. We’ve all had our fair share of friendships; the fleeting, non-committal friendships that made up the fabrics of our teenage years, the friendships that we never thought we’d lose, the kind that we once believed to be lifelong and broke our hearts in a way we didn’t think they could break, the ones that faded as lives expanded beyond the four walls of where we grew up, spreading across varying miles they couldn’t endure. Growing up, friendships come and go like phases and losing and learning from them is our first real experience of heartbreak. Coming out on the other side of the chaos of our teenage years, life starts to settle in new ways and the friendships that lasted through all of it and newer ones that feel as though they were around for that long are the ones that gain our unwavering admiration.
The love language of our friendships is multifaceted, manifesting itself in subtleties and vibrancies that punctuate our lives with details of each other. Each friendship is different but each one expresses its loyalty in its own way, without expectations and with an understanding that life sometimes gets in the way. It’s a text checking in that everything’s ok and if not, we’ll do whatever is needed. It’s a Facetime call to ask a question we can’t be bothered to type. It’s a ‘yes, of course, we can rearrange babe. No stress at all, get a good night’s sleep ok?’ text because we all know the feeling of getting home and realizing you don’t have the energy to go back out again. It’s texting the most irrelevant pieces of information but knowing they’ll still care. It’s having two families because theirs feels like yours too. It’s updating each other on our most recent bowel movements and period disasters, completely unfiltered. It’s having that ~one bitch~ you dislike on behalf of the other person. It’s messaging each other with more affection than we ever show in relationships. It’s a daily good morning text, followed by an outline of the day’s plans. It’s being miles apart and sending old videos to reinforce just how much we miss each other. The threads of our friendships are woven with expressions of love that are not always declarative. They are the small acts of love that symbolize our loyalty, our patience and our enduring gratitude for each other’s presence in our lives.
As our lives evolve and get more complicated and busy, our friendships mature with them. No longer reliant on seeing each other every single day without fail, we find comfort in each other in new ways with a new appreciation for the stability they offer that other areas of our lives can’t. We’re navigating our lives at different paces, exploring avenues of the world and of ourselves that no longer entwine with each other in the ways they used to. We all have our own lives that can take us away from each other for months at a time, but we never leave each other behind. As we get older, we commit to our friendships unequivocally. When it comes down to it, our friends are the ones that are always there. Through all the questionable boyfriends and heartbreaks, and all the shit our families put us through, and all the crises of confidence and insecurities and uncertainty, it is our friends that are there. They see us through everything life throws at us and they still love us afterward. We commit to each other and carry with us the patience and understanding that friendships are different now than how they used to be but they are the same in their faithfulness. We go through and feel each other’s pain as if it is our own while understanding that we often need our own space to heal and sending texts to check in is enough. We are patient with each other and the lives that no longer leave room to be available 24/7, understanding that when we sometimes have to prioritise responsibilities, it is never personal. We are gentle and forgiving with each other but we’ll still kick each other’s arses into gear when one of us talks ourselves down. We are the quiet constant in each other’s lives that ages but does not tarnish. Instead, it is an ongoing reminder that we love and are loved back every second of every day.
My friends are the foundation of the years ahead of me. In my twenties, they are the constant in my life that I can rely on. The love language of my friendships is the concrete of who I am and what I am grateful for, the gestures that show me I am never alone. Though our lives are only getting busier and the distance between us is indefinitely getting bigger, our friendships are the quiet hum of our lives, the soundtrack of the years and the way we will remember them. As we get older and our lives bend and break and fix themselves into what they will eventually become, our friendships will be the sliver of moon above our heads guiding us back home, to ourselves and each other.