I don’t remember much of the plot of Slaughterhouse Five anymore. I read it in Boston about 10 years ago, and I remember that as the winter I kept ordering this brilliant crispy-skin duck dish at this restaurant in Harvard Square, close to the building I worked at. I remember walking home in the snow, and searching for an apartment to move into in Somerville (where the Boston Marathon bomber had hidden), and this shade of cold blue-light in a kitchen in a house I didn’t take had. I remember walking back shuffling in the snow, listening to Friday I’m in Love, feeling very old. I was 22.
The point is I don’t remember much of the book anymore but I vaguely recall who I was, the things I ate, my commute to work when I read it. I lost a really big friendship in my life this year, and I’ve been wondering now if long friendships, where you live far away from each other, are not a little like recalling these books you’ve once read. I know the vague outlines, I know who we both were, and who we were to each other. I mean I know the year I called my friend at 3 am saying I needed her to be on the phone because I couldn’t stop thinking about the knives in the drawer. I have this photo I took of her and her partner sleeping under a mosquito-net in the house they shared for a year before she left the country. On my bedside table I have a book she gifted me last year, and from my wardrobe hangs a yellow stuffed toy monkey that I bought us as doubles from Ranthambore. I guess I haven’t really processed the end of this relationship, and find myself wondering at how calmly we lose people and forget things. What was our friendship like, I catch myself thinking. (Having lost another friendship earlier with memoir, I’m trying to evade details about my friend’s life. Or is it a monstrous narcissism that in talking about our friendship I’m only talking about myself? No, it’s the former.)
In that relationship I was needy. She advised me. We sparred a lot. We outgrew whatever skins it was that our dynamic kept us in. It’s not a tragedy this break-up but it still makes me sad. I have been very income-insecure these last few years, and not a prolific gift-giver. I had a few gifts I wanted to give her when I saw her next because I couldn’t afford the overseas shipping. Earrings modelled on Howl’s Moving Castle because she loved it. It rots in my ‘buy’ folder on Instagram now. I don’t miss squabbling with her at all but I do miss our banter in the groupchat, and oh I miss when we all thought the same things were absolutely hilarious.
I didn’t fight for our friendship at the end, maybe because I felt in my bones the finality of her dismissal. I cried over it, and decided to send a long email once I’d settled my feelings, but in the end I didn’t even send a text message countering the leave me alone, too busy for you. As a common friend put it, it was shocking but not surprising — consistent with the contours of my beloved once-friend’s particular personality. See I could feel that it wasn’t a disagreement to be mended. My friend wouldn’t have hurt me with such ease otherwise. Contempt is the death of trust and vulnerability. That sad thing happened where you love your family but you don’t like them. I’ve been casually telling people my friend ‘Banshees of Inisherin-ed me’ — one because it’s funny and two because its true. ‘I just don’t like you no more.’
I am better at being a friend in-person than long-distance. I am good at throwing parties, and picking up small things that reminded me of you, popping over on a hungover day to watch something silly. Taking you to the dentist even when we’re fighting, because you’re afraid. Bringing glitter, and making our friend-groups kiss and hold hands. Saying of course you can stay over, no you should not send that insane text message, you can do it obviously. Messaging overwhelms me and with this friend in particular, the last few years had me feeling like I never knew the right, most useful, or amusing thing to say to her. I guess that should have been a sign. Nervousness and trepidation around how to be a pal to someone who you are already friends with. Hesitation that you’re being a bother.
A friend said to me the other day that we’re the ones who get dumped. It’s true. I’m not the one who breaks up with you. I cannot fathom letting go after you have become beloved to me. I think this has been my least ambitious year, and in some part this is because when the year started I was reeling from certain floors falling away. I mean I didn’t even send my annual end-of-year newsletter. My nose bled for four days straight. My birthday party was belated. One year later, that situation is… girliepop, by which I mean I’m not sure what’s going on but I’m vibing. If you cannot be the one who leaves, does that make you fated to be the one who is left? My old friend would have scoffed at this — maybe. Stop narrativising your life like a stupid romcom, she might have said. The saddest bit is I won’t know whom she grows into or watch her in her happier years. I hope they are coming for her, I really do. I owe her my life in my twenties.
This year I was painfully slow. This morning I checked my Costar for 2024 and it said: Amor fati, bitch. Next year I will be fast. Next year I will shoot like an arrow into the unknown and the person drawing the bow will be my fate waiting for me, impatiently. Hurry up, she will be saying. I can just about hear her. I’m coming.
xx R
Recs
If you’re in the USA/UK especially, joining an action to demand a ceasefire, and free Palestine. Israel is scum and fuck you very much to all the racist celebrities and cultural figures who outed themselves.
George Abraham and Noor Hindi’s poetry. In particular Abraham’s ars poetica in which every pronoun is a Free Palestine
My friend Aritry makes sweet crochet things. You can order here.
I read Deborah Levy’s living autobiography this year. Her writing had a profound impact on my own prose-style at least in my head.
Patricia Lockwood on meeting the pope — her prose style is kind of like a demented Deborah Levy.
Mariana Enriquez’s ‘Our Share of Night’ was the BIG fiction book of the year for me. Amita Baviskar’s ‘Uncivil City’ was the highlight of my nonfiction list. I’ve also been reading Josy Joseph’s ‘The Silent Coup’ which is depressing and essential.
Staying at Sparrow’s Song cottage in Fagu, Shimla and making friends with Cookie the best dog. Eating cheese-Maggi because it tastes better in the cold hills, when it is so dark outside and you can wriggle your warm toes in your socks inside. (I was there for a writing residency in July.)
Whiskey sours. Or in a pinch (good) whiskey on the rocks.
The colour lavender. Especially as eyeshadow. Applying eyeshadow with your fingers.
Wearing wigs just because you want that hairstyle. Naming your pink wig Rosie.
Learning how to ride a bicycle in a week, even if you’re very bad and keep crashing.
Learning the names of flowers where you live, by season. Having access to a bathtub. Living in a neighbourhood with 5+ of your friends.
Neutering or spaying your street-cat. Loving a cat named Leatherface even if he leaves suddenly one day.
Forcing everyone to adhere to a dress code on your birthday and making the dress-code suits.
Considering seriously whether you want to be a girl who poops or a bitch who SHITS.