NS March 12th, 2007

Over the course of my life, I’ve had many friendships. Some were short-lived and mainly insignificant, surviving only on sharing a fleeting interest in something, but some were (and are) truly special. Like water slowly dripping onto rock, good friendships don’t exert a palpable pressure in an attempt to plow through substance. Rather, the rock doesn’t even notice that the water has changed it until the steady reassurance of that constant drip changes rhythm and the minerals and particles that shape the rock find that they have been formed, irreversibly and wonderfully, into a beautiful canyon through which the water runs freely.

When someone’s presence in your life is immutable, when their friendship never ebbs even after the tide washes you far from their shore, you know you’ve found something extraordinary. Together, your friendship grows and changes, even under pressure, to flow together. Sometimes, you’ll be the unmoving, sturdy rock and they’ll be the fluid, emotive water — inspiring, changing, soothing, smoothing — and at others your roles will reverse, imperceptibly, when one of you is standing still and needs to feel that water rushing over you, lifting you up and propelling you forward when everything feels unmovable and permanent.

There’s one friend in particular who has always been my rock, since we met in a hot and stifling dorm in our freshman year at college. Her vapid blonde roommate and mine, a sheltered, shy artist with an amazing music collection and a raging case of eczema, had met and bonded in the first few days and soon after that I ventured down the hall to hang out with them, seeing as I hadn’t formed my own friendships yet. There sat Drea, tall, statuesque, a Marlboro Red dangling between her long, elegant fingers, her brow knitted in concentration as she leaned over a book and scraped her hair back from her face with her free hand, exhaling a cloud of smoke with a sultry sigh. The words that came out of her mouth were so adult, so smart, so sarcastic — I was in awe. I felt like a kid, a puppy, a star struck fan that runs into a celebrity at a party and doesn’t know what to do except try to keep their jaw off the floor.

She must’ve thought more highly of me than I did of myself because soon we were laughing (that was my saving grace — being able to make people laugh) and talking about music and discovered our shared love of Bob Dylan and Ani Di Franco. We became fast friends and the following year, roommates. I won’t go into the details, the ins and outs, the loveliness and the occasional ugliness of that time we spent together, but when I left the US, I wasn’t sure if we would stay in touch. I’d been an idiot, hurtful, irresponsible, irrational — I wouldn’t have blamed her if she ran a mile and never bothered to answer emails I sent from across the pond.

But she did, and she does. And the words we write are the most real exchanges I have, no bullshit or fake niceties, with little small talk. We discuss and share our innermost thoughts, fears, dreams, loves and aches, all without drama or judgment. We each play the rock and we each flow like water, constant in one another’s lives and prepared to carry the other forward if they were to ever get stuck in between those hard places in life that won’t budge until pushed.

Once again, Bob says it much better than I ever could. From the scratchy album we wore out in that threadbare living room:

You breathed on me and made my life a richer one to live,
When I was deep in poverty you taught me how to give,
Dried the tears up from my dreams and pulled me from the hole,
Quenched my thirst and satisfied the burning in my soul.

The tune that is yours and mine to play upon this earth,
We’ll play it out the best we know, whatever it is worth,
What’s lost is lost, we can’t regain what went down in the flood,
But happiness to me is you and I love you more than blood.

• Friends , Life's Lyrics , Squish Squish
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