Is one I’ve never had to download an app to find. It’s one that’s been there since I was about four years old – and it keeps blossoming, whether the sun’s shining bright or the rain’s coming down hard.
It’s not the love we read about in books. It’s not the love that’s full of passion (and what we’re all set to witness in “Wuthering Heights” come Friday). It’s not the love that keeps you up at night, butterflies in your tummy because you’re seeing them TOMORROW.
It’s a different kind of love. One that’s steady, solid, and quiet – the most important love of all. It’s the love that keeps your head above water when it’d be much easier to drown. The love that makes the tears better and the laughs louder.
It’s friendship.
I love the love I get from my friends
My friends are the true loves of my life, the people who show me every single day what it means to be loved. Like, genuinely loved.
How lucky were we as kids and teens when we got to see our friends every day? And how lucky are we now that despite how busy we all HAVE to be, how difficult work can get, how much family stuff we have going on, and how many miles or time zones there are between us, that we still get to surround ourselves with these people?
Very lucky, I’d say.
And I’d go as far to say that I have needed my friends more than ever in the last few years – really needed their giggles, their spontaneous trips to the pub, their awkward hugs when things get a little topsy-turvy.
Their honesty, when another guy hides behind the old ‘I’m just not ready for a relationship’ message. Their middle-of-the-night texts when I’m voice noting them in tears about the fact I STILL CAN’T SLEEP. Their texts at the crack of dawn after they’ve been on a date with German man – and all the details that come with.
God, they’re good
I started drafting this in bed on Sunday night. Remember how I’d started the year with my all-singing, all-dancing Hinge campaign? Well, it got off to a flying start. But now it’s more of a flat, disappointing pancake – just in time for Shrove Tuesday, so every cloud and all that.
My friends are yet to even HINT that I should dial down the energetic WhatsApps and calls I shoot their way whenever I date someone new – and even more admirably, yet to complain about the tears, anger, and “fuck it, I’m never gonna date again”s that irrevocably come their way soon after.
I’m finishing this draft on a soggy Tuesday evening after a run in fog and drizzle (pathetic fallacy, how I love YOU). A run where I came home to a two-sided handwritten letter from a friend. I mean, no-one bothers to write these days – particularly not more than one side of a standard card – so if that’s not case in point about the depth of friendship love, what is?
Sometimes, you just need a Sunday arvo in Saino’s
Walking around Sainsbury’s on Sunday afternoon just gone and being surrounded by a barrage of pink and red cards, heart-shaped chocolates, and price-inflated bunches of flowers (who’s really laughing?) was enough to make anyone who’s single feel a little naff.
Try being the one who’d been dumped the day before.
No, actually – don’t.
Try being the one whose friends had taken her on a wet and stupidly muddy walk earlier that day to pick apart how she was feeling about the situation until she understood it, and then gave her the hard truths she needed to let it all go. (I’m ‘the one’ in both these scenarios, by the way. And this is what my friends did for me after I’d been dumped, while laughing at the chaos that was me slipping and sliding through every field we walked across. Note to self – if in doubt, wear your walking boots.)
I love a slow Sunday afternoon in big Sainsbury’s – and let’s just say this Sunday just gone, the shop didn’t know what hit it.
Nor did the freezer full of Ben & Jerry’s.
You get a friend, you get a friend, everybody gets a friend
ANYWAY. Enough about me and enough about men. This is meant to be a long overdue piece on the loves of my life that no guy will ever be on par with. And it’s so overdue because quite frankly, I’m never going to do them justice.
But God loves a trier (or so we’re told). So I’ll give it my best.
They’re the ones who reply within seconds to the ‘I’ve just been ditched’ WhatsApp that gets sent just after midnight, followed by voice notes of reassurance and love.
They’re the ones who listen to you wang on about trivial peeves, even though they’re juggling things so, so much worse in their own lives.
They’re the ones who listen to you repeat the same word-by-word recollection of a first date, last date, all the dates in between – even though none of us will ever be closer to knowing what any guy has ever really meant EVER.
But above all, mine are so much more.
Shoutouts to the best
She’s the four year old I sat down next to on my first day at primary school, a happy coincidence that both our surnames start with P. The one who calls me out when I’m being a dick, who picks up a Facetime the first time it rings when she knows I’m alone in my flat, who I spend 99% of time with in hysterics, who leaves me feeling lighter and freer after even a minute with them, and whose dogs are the only ones I’ll happily snuggle. (I’m not the biggest dog person – come at me.)
She’s the girl(s) I met at 16, who are now teachers, doctors, vets, accountants, girlfriends, fiancés, wives, mums – and who never make me feel like I should’ve taken the corporate route or like an unwanted third-wheel.
She’s the naïve young woman I met in Paris at 18, who I spent many weekends with scoffing down three croissants and a basket of bread in one sitting. (We wondered why we put on weight.) Whose hand I’ve held through grief and on the night before she walked down the aisle, and whose little ones now hold mine back.
She’s the other young, but less naïve, woman I also met in Paris – whose unwavering advice and perspective on life means so much to me, even though she’s on the other side of the world. (And probs represents most views on this site from Aus.)
She’s the girls I got to know on my ski seasons (d’uh, don’t you know I did, like, three?), who bring out the best in me every single day. Let’s just say you form a special type of bond when you spend six months working with people so hungover they can’t talk, but you all still managed to pocket three-figure tips each week. Oi oi.
She’s all the ladies I met in my mid-twenties as I moved to a new city and had to find my feet, pronto. The ones who’ve shown me friendship doesn’t have an age limit – younger, older, or the same as me, but who all made Leeds feel like home much sooner than I thought possible. The ones who set up and convinced me to join a ladies’ tennis team – and share my passion for one, two, ten pints at the end of a match (or before training). Big up, the D team.
She’s the housemate come guru who taught me SO MUCH about myself. Who shaped so much of the value I now see in little old me, value I’d forgotten I had. She’ll never really understand what she’s done for me – but I hope my banana bread deliveries show it.
He’s the other housemate who I took a punt on (because who wants to live with a guy?) – and who showed me how much the punt was worth it. Oh, and how much chaos you can cause midweek in the pub.
She’s the colleagues turned friends who were on the craaazy ride that is your first proper adult job – and though you may no longer see them from 8.30am to 5pm every day, they’re a constant in another way.
The best love of all
We’re surrounded by books, films, songs, dating apps, marketing campaigns etc that tell us romantic love is the greatest love of all, that life’s goal is to find your ‘other half’, your person.
But I’m not convinced.
Finding your people is just as core – if not more so – to a content, joyous, properly fulfilling life.
It’s the love that doesn’t choose someone else over you or dilly-dally about whether they want to be in your life. It’s the love that accepts you as you are and knows you’re enough, just like that.
It’s love that’s not a flight risk – it’s stable and it’s constant, and if you have it, oh how lucky you are.
I’ve still never had a Valentine
So this week, while shops are a shock of pink and red and restaurant windows are lit up with idyllic silhouettes of couples, acknowledge the love of the friends in your life. It’s said they’re the family we choose for ourselves – and, if mine are anything to go by, what a remarkable family it is that I’m fortunate enough to call mine.
(And if, like me, you’re in for a solo V-day, remember this: It’s England vs Scotland in the Six Nations, and that’s enough to put a smile on anyone’s face. But more significantly, there’s a big, HUUUGE difference between being alone and being lonely.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it until I’m six-foot under (and probs still single) – you’re SO much better off alone than with the wrong person.
And it’s even better to be alone, without the wrong person, but surrounded by the best people.)
To my friends – I love you.
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