The Uncharted and Quite Frankly Often Complex Waters of Adult Friendship

Friendship is a ship that sails with you all throughout your life, and that might be the corniest most millennial metaphor I’ve ever written but bear with me here. The ship exists with you throughout your life, but it navigates many different waters, and the boat sails on by sometimes and crashes against rocks at others as time goes by. It also sometimes navigates a pre-planned route that can go awry; and at others ends up in uncharted waters that leads to unexpected smooth sailing. It is very possible that I have in fact just been watching too much Below Deck with that metaphor, but all of that is to say that friendships are hard and somehow as we get older, they become both simpler and more complex all at the same time. They are essentially the ultimate juxtaposition.

Now, I have to be honest with you here because if there is one thing I am always on the internet it is honest and perhaps too vulnerable at times. I am in my luteal phase and right now burning my toast could send me into a full spiral, and if there is one thing I love to spiral about it is friendships. As a zillenial I grew up with social media and because of that my boundaries with the internet are complicated. I vividly remember the days that Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook became a thing in my pre-teen and teen years. I was fortunate enough to grow up throughout primary without these things that manage to connect and pull us apart at the same time so seamlessly.

 However, long gone are the days of phoning the landline or whispering to each other on the classroom carpet when you definitely should be listening to the instructions for a task: ‘want to climb trees at the park after school?’ I can still recite most of my primary school friends’ landlines, but I couldn’t tell you my high school best friend’s mobile number. No more nudging each other on MSN or making an over-the-top Facebook event for your birthday party (we should bring this back though). Gone are the days of like for l, p, c (looks, personality and closeness) and honestly thank god for that because why were we inviting in judgement. Sayanora to the days of anonymous.fm and Yik Yak and hopefully see you never because who needs that level of rejection therapy ever.

Now, life is filled with rain checks, ghosts in the group chat and forgotten plans. In adulthood we sometimes get so caught up in our own things that we forget that everyone else has the same thing happening in theirs. Most of us are battling to balance our work-life balance whilst fitting in the time to cook a meal or two, try to exercise in some way and remember to put on washing before we need to wear our bikinis under our work clothes. Sometimes a friendship in adulthood is new and exciting and time consuming but that never lasts, and the real test comes when life gets busy and you both have to choose to catch up when you can. You have to try and have the perfect balance of I’m here if you need me, I know you’re busy and just call me when you can.

 In a world of connectedness, we have gone probably more than a step too far. Now we can see every wedding we spoke about as kids before we drifted apart, every lost invitation, every single birthday celebration and funeral dedication. Our minds doomscroll on these events and convince us that we are living in isolation. Even if we have 3 unread texts asking us to catch up, a coffee date later that same day and 1 or a handful of friends who consistently show up for you. Comparison is the thief of all joy is an overused term in today’s day and age but sometimes things are mainstream because they are true. My favourite author and Tiktoker Eli Rallo recently said ‘stop comparing your sip to someone else’s full cup’ and boy did that ring true. I made the decision to move to the other side of the world from everything I knew a year ago in September. To leave the community I spent 27 years building and start anew.

There are a lot of reasons why I made this decision but if you were to tell 2018 me studying abroad in Toronto having quite frankly an incredibly miserable time she was going to live abroad again. She would probably laugh first because she wouldn’t believe you and then she’d try to shake the decision right out of you. Living here has not been like living in Toronto for so many reasons, one probably being that although the quarter life crisis is still very much happening I’m more settled into it now.  

 Now that tangent aside, the hardest thing about making adult friendships no matter where you are in the world or at what life stage isn’t (for me at least) the initial interaction and the beginning of the friendships it is knowing how to navigate the waters as it gets stormy and your boats can no longer sail side by side (look at me full circling this corny metaphor). The best friendships are and always will be for me the ones where you can sit comfortably in silence and go for weeks without speaking because life got too busy and always know that one of you will eventually get around to it. Those are the friends that you will sit with on a bench outside the nursing home, people-watching as the world goes by. So, just know if you too are in your luteal phase or just feeling lost af that your people are out there, even if you haven’t fully gotten to know them yet. Also know that your life isn’t defined by singular moments but instead by a collection of many and how friendship exists for everyone as we navigate this complex world is everchanging. Next time you feel like spiraling maybe invite a friend to do it with you too or say yes to something you would normally say no to and maybe you too could find yourself at an extremely fancy house party at 3am enjoying old friends whilst also meeting new, even if it’s only for a fleeting moment or two.