volume one hundred and thirty-four
we have been friends for this many
📍Written from the spare room of my best friend’s home in Yuin Country, Bermagui.
The soft jingle above the chatter of teenagers gossiping could be heard. The sound of the tiny bells drew nearer and when they passed us, I saw they were wrapped around the ankles of someone from the other school. An outfit of homemade tye dye took flight as she leapt onto the sand and the smell of patchouli lingered behind. Hair to her waist flowed in the wind. “I like your anklets!” I called out. “Thanks!” she called back, in a high-pitched and delicate voice, just like a fairy.
I watched on in awe, cross-legged on the still new and therefore too stiff carpet of the school hall. This is the place where we read prayers, presented awards, were disciplined in the masses when someone messed up in an embarrassing way and where we sat in silence aside from the scratch of pencil on paper while we took tests that we thought would make or break the rest of our lives. This day was different. The silence was different. She sat up there, proudly and without fear, shaving all of her hair off, raising money for charity — just one of the many selfless acts I would witness from her over the years.
She told me her friend had skipped town and left with no warning, leaving her wondering what to do because she had nowhere to stay that night. I jumped at my opportunity. “Stay at my house!” I told her. “We can go to the party together!”. We had our first photo as friends, in our dress-up clothes before we left the house. Our small toothy grins and fake innocence were captured on film by my Mum, as we stood on the dated brown and orange laminate floor sitting under turquoise blinds of the window, in my home I was too embarrassed to bring anyone to before then. My teased-to-the-sky-beehive Amy Winehouse hair was a hit.
I dropped out of my final year of school because I was being bullied, something I thought I had left behind as a child but apparently had not. She assured me until I believed her, that I could sit with her and she promised me that she and her friends wouldn’t allow anyone to treat me unkindly again. She made sure I would finish my education, and that I was worthy of that. My final school photo says “Vice School Captain” underneath, and my beaming face says “I came back and finished school with wonderful friends beside me”. I am sporting a fire engine red mullet I cut myself, with the help of those friends.
She returned to town with a pixie cut. Despite being apart, both of us had matching home-bleached dye jobs, overused hair straighteners clogged with product, split ends, enough hairspray to start a fire and a new love for too much make-up. I was so happy to have her back while we partied in nightclubs with boys who didn’t deserve us. We could easily — and sometimes angrily — demand better for each other but it took a long time to accept that for ourselves. We had each other’s back before we had our own.
My bowl cut scooped itself backwards over my head with the motion of me emerging from the warm salty water, slicking itself down. “Your hair looks so sick like that, too!” she told me, after already complimenting my new, shorter do. “Thank you, it feels euphoric,” I replied, feeling where the hair met the shaved undercut at the base of my skull with the tips of my not-yet wrinkly fingers. These were the first whispers of what I had discovered while left by myself in my home and kept away from this home.
I crouched into a squat so she could reach the top. I watched our reflection in the large bathroom mirror, standing in the home she and her love worked hard for many years to build. Daisy the dog sighed with bordom watching us and sulked away to the loungeroom to wait. My best friend held the poised scissors firmly in her hand inspecting the mullet in the making. Hair fell like snow onto my shoulders and my chest. We pause the snips to giggle about how much everyone would love the haircut and how every hair stylist would cringe. She grabbed a paper bag to put all of the trimmings in. “It’s been with you for so long! I will put it in the compost. It’ll become a flower!”
Lovely reader, head into the comments and tell me about your best friend.
hi, lauren deborah! will always be free and by clicking this cute link, you will get full access to your inbox each week as well as to the archives. If you would like to support my work, you can buy me an ice cream. 🧡🧡🧡 Comments and likes on this post or sharing it with someone, jumping into the chat, listening to my podcast or submitting a question are all other ways you can support me, too, and I love them all!
here are three things i struggled with this week:
⏰ Amazing that I have somewhere I want to be as soon as possible at the end of my work day (with my besties) so I’m easily finishing work hours earlier than usual. I am wondering why can’t I/don’t I do this always, besties or not?
🫸 Being here, present and in the moment and not thinking about the fact that after here there is no ocean for six weeks. Just enjoy this, LD.
🔍 I am too close to the project. A fresh eye never hurts.
here are three blessings from this week:
🌊 Salt water healing me inside and out.
🪡 When you casually mention you’d like to find a robe at an op-shop to wear around at night because pjs are heavy in your suitcase plus you sleep nude so what’s the point AND YOUR FREAKING AMAZING AND TALENTED BEST FRIEND MAKES YOU ONE!
🐾 Falling asleep to the sounds of the waves and waking up to soft sniffs at my door from my four-legged friend wondering if Aunty Lauren is awake yet.
here are three goals for the coming week:
☎️ Make more phone calls. Send less texts.
✨ Remember when I wanted what I currently have.
🧴 Wear sunscreen.
pics or it didn’t happen:
I love you. Now I am off to participate in Passata Day and I am excited, to say the least.
That’s so lovely I love that you had a best friend like that in your life ❤️
I met my best friend in high school. However I didn’t like her because my friends didn’t (they are not my friends anymore while she’s awesome)
First day of uni I reluctantly started hanging out with her and others because we were from the same high school but I was still skeptical.
We decided to sit on a bench outside that day and a few minutes after we sat, we witnessed a gigantic bag of mayonnaise fall from the sky and being splashed on the head of the students underneath it. To this day we still cannot explain what the heck happened (I mean….. mayonnaise falls from the sky???) but it was our first (nervous - confused) laugh together.
A few weeks later, she invited us to have lunch (soup and coco pops) at her place after school. I hesitated but agreed.
I never left.
I love that robe, so very colourful, so very you 🙂
My best friend is...Cuddles, of course.
But aside from Cuddles, my best friend is Matt.
I met him in 2009, 2 weeks into 26yr old me beginning Uni. We both did Philosophy (I also did History, he also did computery design stuff). I'd see this guy, black hair, slight stubble, often in a long Matrix coat, just quietly reading an endless series of Star Wars books. And I'd see him sit at the front, with his notes and dictaphone to record the lectures.
I'd also be at the front doing the same. So, one day, I just slid in next to him and said hi. We spent most of the next 4yrs attached at the hip.
I introduced him to Cuddles the following year, after we met, and encouraged him to ask her out when I saw he liked her.
Don't get me wrong I also liked her, but I didn't figure her for liking me, so I did the best thing I could think of and got my two friends together.
As a couple they were really just friends. Cuddles now understands that she's ace, and she's never had feelings for anyone but me. He's still unsure of himself (I think he's somewhere around the demi but 🤷). He came to me for advice a couple of times, and he got my honesty, as always, and eventually they decided to just be friends.
It was a while later when Cuddles and I got together, and he was just happy for us; there was never any bad feeling between them and they never stopped being friends. In fact, he was in both sides of the wedding party 😁
We chat and play games with him every Thursday, when he's not working in various different countries.
He's a kind, gentle guy. Smart, funny, full of well-worn and oft-repeated puns. He often uses those as armour. For us, he opens up. He doesn't do the awkward things he does with other people.
He grew up fairly privileged. Not wealthy, but decently off, and he's a cishet white guy. He's spent years learning from me and Cuddles about everything. He was right by my side when I came out as trans, learning and supporting. He's open-minded, so he asks questions and he learns and I love him for it.
I know that while it's usually Cuddles he plays with - their game tastes being more similar - if he needs to open up, or if he needs a butt kick to stand up for himself, or something like that, then he'll listen to us both, but it's me he needs to hear. I do my best to make sure I always empower him, and remind him of all the goodness and strength and skill he has to offer. And I'll happily tear to shreds anyone who is mean to him.
He lived so much in his shell when we met, I love seeing how well he does. He has his own sole trader business and is constantly in demand because he's the best at what he does. But every week when he's at home, he shuts everyone out so he can spend time with us, and we always have a fun time, whatever we wind up chatting about or doing.
I have a wide variety of friends, from all over and all walks, and I adore them all and the wonderful things they do. Matt isn't the shiniest of the bunch, but he's my favourite one. We have a very deep friendship, we understand each other, and I trust him almost as much as I trust Cuddles. And it's very rare that I feel I can't deal with spending time with him, whereas everyone else (bar Cuddles) I get quite shaky about.