Text Me When You Get Home by Kayleen Schaefer

Author:Kayleen Schaefer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

Our BFFs, People, and Soulmates

You are my best friend! Don’t you ever call anybody else that!

—Ilana in Broad City

Ruthie and I call each other soulmates. The kind of lifeline I have in her—“I feel exactly the same way” or “Same, exact same” is something we say a lot to each other—isn’t one I ever expected I’d find in my adult life. Other women have soulmates (or “queens” or “ride or dies”) too, and these heightened friendships, these connections, make us feel less alone, no matter who else is in our worlds.

We now have big stakes in each other’s lives, trust established through things like me going to Ruthie’s childhood home for Thanksgiving and being enamored with her immediate and extended family, or her walking through the apartment I’d bought without anyone else seeing it and being confident that, even though it was filled with rubble, it was going to be a perfect place for me to live.

The time we spend together these days is less restricted by formal plans. She walks by my apartment hoping to see me, and I do the same to her. She’s invited me over for dinner after we’ve run into each other on the train. I’ve answered her text in the middle of a post-work run to say that I could meet her for an impromptu drink in an hour. We text each other from our separate couches about what we’re watching on television.

I always try to be kind to her, in a way I have a more difficult time being in romantic relationships. She’s that way too.

We’re purposeful about protecting and caring for each other. A few months ago, I called her in tears and asked if she could meet me at a bar near our apartments. When she did, she gave me flowers she’d bought from the bodega and hugged me while I bawled. “It’ll be okay,” she said. “I love you so much.” Strangers stared.

—

Little girls are encouraged to have best friends. They’re often asked by nosy adults, “Do you have a best friend?” I had one, named Sarah. We played Barbies, built backyard forts, and were average at gymnastics together. I passed her notes in school and saved the ones she slipped me. If we weren’t at each other’s houses, we were probably riding our bikes, which had matching streamers on the handlebars, around our neighborhood.

We’re supposed to seek out best friends when we’re young. The relationship, our parents hope, will teach us how to play nicely with others. And kids have all kinds of ways to show how proud they are to be in a best friendship: Sarah and I wore matching woven bracelets and parted our hair the same way.

As we get older that prominence that a best friend holds can fall away—adult women are more likely to be asked if they have a boyfriend than a best friend and to wear an engagement ring instead of a BFF charm.

Because of this, it can be frustrating for some women to get across how fundamental their attachment to their best friend is.

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