A Little Life List: When You Need a Friend
Do you have a friend you can call right now?
Little Life Lists are for the complicated, unruly things life throws at us. I encourage you to write your own, too. With coffee. xoxo
Over the last few years I had a friend I could call anytime. Ideas, sorrows, anything funny, gossip, outrage, despair. We went to restaurants and chatted on the phone, set up meetings, drank with other friends, planned. Sent texts and plotted big things.
Until we didn’t.
When we ran into each other a couple of days ago, we hugged and promised to catch up. You know the words, you’ve said them.
Notice
My partner made a small comment that caught at my fragile skin and snagged, so I said: “I should go for a walk,” thinking I’d call a friend and calm down.
As my boots trudged through melting snow, blue shadows as puddles in the setting sun, I cast through the people I loved. A question came to mind: Do I have a friend I could call right now?
Life is wildly full. It’s a season. And.
Anne Helen Petersen describes your thirties and forties as The Portal.
Reckoning with the state of friendship, attempting to rekindle ones that have gone fallow or let go of ones that feel toxic, a little more time and space to figure out how to show up for existing friendships. A bunch seismic events (big losses, aging parents, divorces, illnesses) that challenge and clarify friendships….but still just not a ton of time/space for cultivating new ones. It’s more like: this is the time to figure out how to cherish and prioritize your existing ones.
I noticed that I have a lot of people I love, and many I name as friends, but no-one I wanted to call to air my tiny sorrow.
When you look at a kaleidoscope and spin, bright shards of colour shift and shift again. This is friendship as we lose and gain its gifts through our lives. If “this is the time to figure out how to cherish and prioritize your existing” friendships then, first, I need to notice my kaleidoscope has spun. Space, shards, colour.
Needing community is a good thing. Sometimes.
The chatter of my friendships means I don’t hear myself. On this walk, when I realised I’d let many friendships fall fallow, I didn’t call anyone. Instead, I walked quietly. For my noisy inner voice, it took time for peace to come. A lot of snowy steps.
Community is essential. I’m embedded in a small city where we have fabric and connections and I’m deeply grateful because I know not to take that for granted.
Yet. Sometimes, when I am hunting for someone to call, I actually just need myself. And sunlight. And a quiet path.
New friendships are bedazzling.
While I’m old enough to know that friendship doesn’t have to be forever, when I meet a new friend, I cling. Just a little. If you know me and love me, you realise this phase of being my friend doesn’t last. The reason for it is because I’m already losing you a little, even as we first spark. Soon, I’ll settle, I promise. I’ll enjoy the adventure we have, the time we will get.
Because I’ve learned that:
Friendships have their natural length—different for each.
And that’s okay. Some friends are for short seasons. Some for many years. My best friend from childhood is my friend still, now. We’re different, yet the years have shaped us and we can talk straight through to the heart of something pulsing and true. My friend from university checks in on me through Whats App. We spent a golden afternoon together with our children last summer.
My friend who I danced with died and I gave her eulogy. I stopped dancing for years.
Friendship can be beautifully fragile. Like a bone it can withstand great weight, but snapped the wrong way, it’s over. Those breaks hurt, sometimes for years, wounding although less raw. Some friends are gone and you’re not sure how. Some ghost. Some depart. Some hug you goodbye.
But this friend, the one I could call anytime and now don’t, didn’t leave my life because of a break or schism. That friendship just changed. Perhaps, we both learned from each other, then moved on to the new lives that we could encounter because we’d been friends. The kaleidoscope shifted, new colours but also space. A portal.
Cherish
This story ends when a good friend called me. As I walked home, leaving the tiny hurt by the river, my cell rang. My friend talked about her work day, I talked about mine. She told me a funny story about her daughter, and volleyball, and then about her husband. We planned to take a walk, although we say that often and don’t find the time.
I reached the back door, my mind easier, the flash of colour a gift from my friend. I didn’t need to call.
I needed her to call me.
Slowly, I’m making this space a small community of people who love words, of people who need a short break in the wild and wonderful. I’m grateful for those of you already here with me. Please comment and tell me a book you love, or a Substack post about friendship you’ve read, or link to your Substack so I can read your works.
And please share this with a friend.
Xoxo
Alice
Reading: I finished The Hunter by Tana French in three days (well, late nights) and now I’m reading
’s book The Way of the Fearless Writer. I have it by the bath with a candle that cost far too much but smells divine. Have you read either of these authors? Tell me…I’ve also lined up several Substacks to read beside my kids’ various sports practices, especially
and which always fuel me. And I’ve enjoyed a workshop from the lovely this week, with one from lined up for next.Oh, and I really enjoyed
Sparks from Culture this week—about a fight in a marriage. Excellent!xox
If you’re new here, my name is Alice Kuipers and I’m a writer, mother and dog-owner transplanted twenty years ago to the Canadian prairies from England. I’ve published fourteen books in 36 countries and my writing has been described as: “For storytellers and story lovers,” by Kirkus Reviews; ‘Gorgeous, heart-ripping, important,” by VOYA; and “Intense and wonderful” by Bif Naked.
Join me for a coffee break.
Xoxo
I read this and wanted to think about my response and then it got put aside. Friendship is such a deep subject. It can fill us up or tear us down sometimes. I have a friendship than span 65 years and although we don't see each other often we share a deep connection that can never be broken. Despite what happens around us. I have let go of friendships and I have tried to revive some friendships but it didn't work. But it is work and it is a two way street and sometimes we all just get busy living life. But I know for me the pandemic made me push hard to stay connected. Then I used the word connect last year to up the ante to actually seeing people in person. And somewhere in all that are the OL versus IRL friendships and how they work. Which is a different kettle of fish -- and leads to the story that you were just getting into your car the other day as I was getting out of mine at Sue's (did you hear how fast their house sold?) and I almost called out to you. But then I thought she's probably going to pick up kids or something and I don't really know her ... see the line? Does one every really met up with an ON friend IRL and not feel awkward. Bernie.
I read your words yesterday. But I couldn’t respond because I could feel the need to have this sit with me.
I recently let go a friend who I found leant in for advice, to share gruelling situations, and gather strategy for work/writing with. But I recognised this person always disappeared when great things happened for me. I love celebrating wins for friends so this felt out of whack. The other clue was that sharing finds in life from potential business through best pit spray for tweens was not reciprocated. An imbalance of sorts hung about.
I’ve been learning about what friendship means now which is different than how it was in the past. It’s fun!
I found your piece refreshing and triggered loads of thoughts I’m still digesting. Meantime, hugs to you.