Wherein Your Humble Narrator Fills in Some Blanks (+ thoughts on adult friendship)

2023 saw a lot of me writing about a thing without writing about it. That is what felt right at the time. Now that some time has passed, I think I can say what I’m about to.

You see, last summer there was a birthday. A birthday I might’ve been embarrassed to have even remembered. But then, things like that are so easily cast in different lights, depending on others’ responses. A gesture received well would make me feel clever. One received poorly would be a cringe fest.

I’ve never been the greatest at suppressing my “what the hell” impulse.

In the end, the reception was neither, but rather a near-nonexistent, icy formality, a bare minimum that spoke volumes.

And…it was what I needed. To yank me rudely out of fiction; to ground me firmly in the present; to illuminate the scantness of that which had never been filling.

(Speaking of scantness, it occurs to me I took in two things on New Year’s Eve – one being a carbonara, the other being a documentary on Dinosaur Jr. – that could each be described as “much too thin”. But I digress.)

I have always coveted the kind of friendship where you can pick up where you left off after years. The kind where you’re tipsy in a room bursting with music and you think of them and write them spontaneously. Also, the kind where you can each think the other is full of it re: one thing or another and may even verbalize that, but it’s okay, because there’s still a foundation there, built on a shared history.

Obviously there can be room in a life for different varieties of friendship; the above is just one kind I find both deeply appealing and near impossible to achieve, particularly past the age of 30. I know these friendships exist – in fact, my partner has a couple – but much like my birthday gesture, this sort of thing is dependent on total buy-in from both sides. This is rare because distance between humans tends to breed strangeness.

As for the gesture I made: it was honest, so I stand by it, and I have reclaimed it for myself.

Happy New Year, Dear Readers. May 2024 – sweet bahookie is that a high number! – bring you full-bodied substance that feeds you well.