The Magic Light of Friends

My mother Elena (seated) and her Girl Squad, circa 1957

“I got all I need in a world of doubt. We got our champagne dreams in an endless drought. We are the kings and queens seeking our aces out. We got all we need, no new friends now."

“No New Friends” ~ by Sia, Diplo, Labrinth

There is nothing extraordinarily new about what I am writing about today. So if you want to click away and get back to playing Candy Crush I totally get it. But what I have to say is hopefully a wonderful reminder how great life can be and sometimes don’t we all need a little reminder?

Friends. They are our personally hand-picked, chosen-by-us family members.

From that very first day in kindergarten when I joyfully skipped home after school and said to my mother with a gleaming, elated face, “I have made a friend” to this moment right now, I have never lost sight how incredibly necessary and wonderful friendships can be.

Sometimes you might go ages without seeing or talking to those friends that if required, you’d willingly break out of a Turkish prison.

The ones that always tell it like it is, question your fashion choices or pull you up by your hair when you have fallen into a domestic Upside Down alternative dimension ala Stranger Things. For someone who has battled with depression, had her share of disastrous, never to be repeated relationships and endured the painful passing of people I’ve deeply loved, I have sometimes wondered why even leave the sanctity of my warm, safe bed? But in the words of Rihanna, “everybody needs someone beside em’ shining like a lighthouse from the sea” and true friends are not going to let you stay in the dark hiding beneath your duvet too long.

I feel that the lens we use to look at our lives is often distorted to reflect our current state of being.

When you are too sad to eat nothing but Miss Vickie’s potato chips and Häagen-Dazs or you are so deliciously happy when the boy you like sends you a red heart emoji with a simple, “can’t stop thinking of you” text, it floods all I see. I take on those intense emotions and it distorts or colours everything around me in either brilliant, colourful, fluorescent rainbows or black and blacker.

Living in London and separated from a world I grew up in I was recently reminded about just how incredibly special friends can be and trust me, I don’t usually need reminding. No, it wasn’t one of those times where we were actively plotting the death of an ex-lover, but rather when everything was OK, ordinary or do I dare say… uneventful.

It is about finding people that are your kind of crazy.

We all know the incredible importance of friends. Being there for you when tragedy strikes and celebrating the highest highs, thank God for them. But this week, being with a variety of friends, old, new, imported and exported I learned something about myself and friendship that I thought was worth sharing. I think it is what my mother called an “Ah-Ha” moment (I am pretty sure she stole that from Oprah).

Friends are most clearly visible in the light of the ordinary day. Where no one is trying to fix something, or someone, or no one needs rescuing.

Nor is anyone celebrating an insanely great, sexy new job or an engagement to the “world’s greatest guy”, where honestly you can’t help and feel a tad, weeny bit envious. Then you feel guilty for feeling a tad, weeny bit envious, so you ponder your own single-ass, unemployed life and decide this type of deep reflection goes better with vodka. The moments come from a long walk in the park or a museum stroll, a catch-up lunch at a cafe, a sing-a-long at a pub or my personal favourite… dancing with complete abandonment in my kitchen. It is there and then, in those little ordinary moments of life the magic light of friends shines through. I can see my friends clearly and… they can see me.

Anyone can look at you, but it takes a friend to really see you.

So to the wonderful friends in my world that “see me” thank you for letting me see you too.

Cheers!