IN SEARCH OF MY BRILLIANT FRIEND
As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to have a best friend. Someone to share my wired headphones with in the backseat of my mom’s car, listening to Avril Lavigne on a weekend drive to the mall. Someone to compare training bra sizes and school crushes with in the privacy of my tween bedroom, covered in magazine tie-in posters of Zac Efron. Someone to share the conventional joys of life’s firsts with: first kiss, first time getting inconsolably drunk (followed by the first crippling hangover), first heartbreak… As the resident only child in my family, with not even a cousin third or fourth removed to compensate for my lack of siblings, more than romantic intimacy I first and foremost desired a closeness, that could not be reduced to the fickle whims of adolescent limerence. I wanted the consistency of secrets shared under the bed covers and the juvenile inside jokes that stood the test of time. I wanted someone I could count on to feel my absence when I was out sick from school and I wanted to be the first choice of that same someone when it came to choosing teams for dodgeball even if I couldn’t’ hit a ball straight for the life of me. It was a special kind of unconditional intimacy I longed for independent of who I’d turn out to be. I wanted to be molded in the shape of someone who wanted me.
But as is their nature, these impassioned daydreams of a life shared with my platonic other half did not end up coming true. I never stayed in the same place long enough to cultivate the kind of friendship I longed for. By age 13 I had changed schools twice and continents once. Making friends became considerably harder as I went through the motions of an emotionally isolated adolescence. I started doubting my ability to approach people. My natural forthrightness and wide-eyed naivete became personality defects, definitive markers of an immaturity I didn’t know how to remedy; to be concealed from the prying eyes of my peers in shame lest they declare me a social pariah.
By the time I got to high school my chronic diffidence had impeded my growth as a teenager. I spent days on end not talking to anyone and cried on the bus home. It was a prison of my own making that had barred me in. Still, I never quite gave up on my dreams of finding a twin flame, who’d lock me out of my cage, grab me by the hand and guide the way out. The seed of forlorn optimism rooted in me since time immortal kept me believing against all odds that my person was somewhere out there waiting to be found.
I thought I’d caught the pearlescent glimmer of that rare treasure of pure intimacy a couple of times in my life. And every time I took the plunge and swam against the current to get my hands on its fissured shell, careful not to crack. But when I split open its valves I’d inevitably find that what I had thought was the most precious of gemstones was nothing more than a speck of sand trapped within the crevices. I’d fallen prey to a cruel trick of light, momentarily blinded by its refractions in water. I would watch as best friends I had once claimed as mine moved abroad and my international calls when straight to voice mail; one half of a matching friendship necklace hung forgotten on the mantelpiece. I would feign nonchalance in an effort to seem adult: That’s just the way things go I’d think to myself. It’s a part of growing up. But eventually I’d have to confront the reality of the situation I inexplicably found myself in, time and time again: They didn’t care as much as I had. I was a romantic. A believer in the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ encounter that was worth sustaining through halfhearted catchup sessions and the annual happy birthday text. To this day whenever I make a new friend, I hold out hope that they’re the one. The one I won’t be able to imagine my life without. The one who won’t leave me behind for someone indubitably better at being a person. The one whose eyes I will seek out at a house party, grateful for the momentary comfort the recognition of a familiar face provides.
I thought my irrevocable desire for an emotionally anchored companionship would wither with time but as what they tell me are the pivotal years of my young adulthood pass by I can’t help but yearn even more for the kind of codependence Frances Ha dedicates a poignant monologue to: wherein two people – bound by an invisible string that remains intact even when they, succumbing to the powers that be, eventually drift apart – create an entire world of their own in the space between the stolen glances and the things left unsaid. But what if the foundations of that world you think you’re building remain shaky? What if you hold on tight to the hands that pry yours open, forcing you to let go? What if you are not the person of your person?
It’s the unspoken recognition of a kindred spirit in a crowded room that makes life bearable. In the attempt of understanding someone one in turn dares to be known as they are and that as the fates will contend is the only source of unadulterated magic in this world. And so it seems that in my unrelenting quest for a chaste partner in crime I’ve devoted my life to putting into words this inborn longing for the one who will give me enough of a reason to believe that platonic love, like all its other variations, cannot be earned. It just is.
Elif T. Erisik , 25, Berlin - Germany (currently) & Istanbul - Turkey (originally) ✯ IG: @elif308 ✯ www.catchairintherye.substack.com
“I'm a 25 year old digital marketing manager in the film industry who's also in the process of getting her masters in Media Studies from the Humboldt University of Berlin. Originally from Istanbul in my spare time I freelance as a writer and pitch ideas on contemporary media culture to independent online magazines. (My work has been published in various publications like PolyesterZine and Little White Lies among others.)”