I should have friends by now. The kind you take trips with and tag on Instagram with the caption: “Love these girlies.” The kind you huddle with on the sofa during playdates, clinking glasses of rosé, talking openly about Botox so they can tell you, “Shut up, you’re gorgeous.”
I should have friends by now. IRL friends, not “friends” you wish happy birthday to when Facebook reminds you, not “friends” who are really just work colleagues, not “friends” who are people you used to sleep with and might have again once, if you were bored enough, drunk enough, sad enough, or all three.
I know what a friend pack looks like. I’ve been studying them since I was 12, wishing desperately to be a Brenda Walsh, a Rachel or a Carrie. How I longed for a place like Central Perk, for a round of cosmos, for intimacy, for belonging, for being witnessed, for being wanted.
It’s not like I didn’t have the opportunities. I’m in my 40s now and can see them clearly: the roads not taken, the people not loved or even liked. All those birthday parties that never happened, all that undeveloped film, all the secrets that only spill out for the ghosts in my backseat.
The more I live, the more oppo...
English (US)