the romance of friendship
"House right, toward the back. You looked kinda scared,” Danielle told me of our first meeting when I asked her recently. It was the first day of school. I was 17 years old and I was the new kid. I’d been attending the high school in my local district for 9th-12th grade and slowly, then all at once, realized that I wasn’t getting out of this school what others were. As a teenager, I’m sure I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, but I knew a high school that boasted a graduating class of over 500 students, and valued Friday night football games so much that I got kicked out of student council for not sharing that value, made me feel like I needed to shrink. I was very aware of what I wasn’t and saw other girls my age enjoying their high school experience because of those qualities I didn’t have. They wanted to go to those football games and cheer on their team and flirt with boys and I couldn’t pretend to want that. Friends I’d made at that point in my life I’d met in the various dance programs I was in, and though they were nice girls who I enjoyed spending time with, there was a side of me that begged to be let out that I felt wasn’t welcome in their company.
My brand of teenage rebellion looked a lot like isolation, but was really nothing more than a depression I couldn’t name. I wanted to break free of the identity I’d felt forced into, but had gotten so used to being what everyone expected me to be that I didn’t know how. So I spent a lot of alone time with those feelings. I’ve always felt safe in my own company, so this didn’t prove too trying, but I can’t say it wasn’t lonely. Girls at school attended dances and pep rallies while I stayed home, wondering where the friends who shared my Big Feelings might be. I craved intimacy in my friendships and the understanding of myself that could only come from being myself fully in a friendship, so my senior year of high school, I switched schools.
Cincinnati’s School for Creative and Performing Arts is a K-12 arts school in Downtown Cincinnati. Its original location was on Sycamore Street in a building with no air conditioning or modern amenities, a stark contrast to the I’d been attending for my first three years of high school. Everyone was a stranger to me and it was exhilarating. I’d been surrounded by more or less the same group of kids since Kindergarten and here I was at 17 years old, suddenly at liberty to be whatever and whoever I wanted because no one would know any better. There was a kind of freedom in being rid of what others thought they knew about me. This isn’t to say the switch was easy because it wasn’t. The freedom my anonymity gave me always came with a responsibility to decide who I was and how I might prove that to other people, quite an undertaking for a teenage girl.
Enter: Danielle Adams. She was introduced to me by two students, Jonathan and Maria, who had very kindly noticed the vulnerability that was likely seeping out of my pores, and asked me to tag along with them. I have such a clear picture in my head of a teenage Danielle, because I remember right away being equally in awe of and intimidated by her. She’d been attending this school since Kindergarten and was one of the most talented singers in the voice program, so everyone knew who she was. She never seemed to place any personal value in that reputation; she knew she was talented, but instead of letting her talent or charisma wear her, she knew how to harness it the way not many people I’d met could. Though she’d likely argue with this point now, Danielle knew who she was and what she wanted. I quickly became adopted by Jonathan, Maria, and Danielle and for the first time felt chosen, not simply someone’s company because we were a part of a shared group.
There are a handful of connections in my life that have made me feel at home in another person very quickly. My friendship with Danielle was one of those connections. I clicked faster with her than any other friend I’d had until that point and felt like the side of me that had been hiding was allowed out. Until that point in my life, my sister was the only person who understood the intricacies and disfunction in my family. I distinctly remember having a very popular Lindsey (all the popular girls I knew were named Lindsey or Lindsay) over to my house in middle school. At the time, two of my cousins were living with us because the court had decided their own parents weren’t fit to care for them. I remember lying to Lindsay, telling her I didn’t know why they were living with us, even though I knew exactly why. She and all the other girls I knew came from cookie cutter families who likely did have disfunction but who did a damn good job of making it look like they didn’t. I didn’t think she’d understand and if she did, there would surely be some identity placed on me because of this new knowledge. I didn’t need to lie about any part of myself or my background with Danielle. The intimidation I felt for her upon first introduction melted away quickly when I learned that her own anxieties mirrored many of my own. She made me feel like I wasn’t crazy for feeling everything very deeply; I was actually quite sane because being a teenage girl is overwhelming. She listened to Tori Amos and wanted to talk about song lyrics and knew what being in a constant state of just a little sad was like. I’d met my match
When Danielle and I graduated high school, I went to New York to train with The Alvin Ailey School and returned to Cincinnati two weeks later, when my eating disorder had become something I could no longer ignore. I couldn’t explain the complexities of my experience in New York. I didn’t want to admit that the life path I thought was clearly laid out for me with nothing more than a flimsy gauze that was becoming thinner with each passing day. Danielle didn’t need an explanation because she saw what was happening. She and I had always shared a deep well of insecurity and knew that talking about it without being ready would do little but create catastrophe out of a situation already riddled with confusion and a need for control. I spent a lot of time with Danielle the summer before college. She was constant and I felt a little less ashamed around her because she saw my illness and knew it wasn’t all that I was, unlike the many doctors I saw on a weekly basis. She knew I was sick, but I was also the friend who wanted to drive around the west side of Cincinnati and sing along to loud music. She knew I liked to talk in silly voices and make up words and how when I made her laugh, it was the most beautiful sound I could hear. I was experiencing an intimacy with her from being known inside and out and not having to explain any of it.
The only normalcy I experienced in my first year of college was the friendship I shared with Danielle. We both attended the University of Cincinnati and while I lived at home with my parents while I was in outpatient treatment for anorexia, Danielle lived in a dorm and attended parties and by all accounts had a very typical college experience. She introduced me to her friends and asked me to come with her when she would go out. She also understood when I needed to stay home and was more than happy to come watch movies in bed with me. When I was healthy enough to move out of my parents’ home my sophomore year of college, I too began to taste those first sips of freedom that come with young adulthood. I’d never experienced romance until that point in my life, but because of my friendship with Danielle, I knew what I needed in those relationships when they did happen. My love with this friend had allowed me not only to learn who I was, but was also the barometer by which I measured whether any of the boys who I spent time with were actually worth it. The raw version of me wasn’t too heavy for her but it turned out to be far too heavy for all the boys I met in college.
Danielle and I were both extremely stubborn teenagers and young adults and because our bond was so strong, we had our fair share of fights. We didn’t hold back our feelings because we cared too much to allow each other to be treated as subpar, which depressed people like us tended to do quite a bit. After some time of particularly icy feelings and non-communication with each other after a fight, Danielle made me a mix CD. The only person who’d ever done that for me at that point was a boy who I’d dated very briefly in high school who worked back of house at the pizza shop where I hosted (yes, I’ve always had a thing for boys who cook). While the CD he made for me was filled with songs he loved and wanted me to hear, the CD Danielle made for me was all songs that she said reminded her of me and of our friendship, complete with a written note of why each song was included. I didn’t know it at the time, and wouldn’t know for many years, just how much someone sitting down and writing their feelings for me means. It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me.
As a society we put so much value and work into our romantic relationships and the intimacy of knowing another person fully in that context, but the romance of platonic intimacy is unmatched. That kind of intimacy has taken on a new meaning after the fortune of having a great love and the misfortune of losing it in such a tragic way. The intimacy of knowing me fully is a task that requires more nuance than ever before and the people who have stuck it out, spent time with me in the hole, then followed me out when I needed it, deserve all the romance I have to give. These are people like Nate, who I want to dress up to drink wine and eat caviar with in the West Village because they’re the ones who’ve seen me through those endless days in sweats when all I eat is hummus and carrots. These are people like Danielle, who has been witness to the great tragedies of my life and has been constant each step of the way, reminding me who I am at each turn. The intimacy I have with them looks like tears and asking why I am the way I am; they know the answer and know I do too. Intimacy is telling them I’m scared to become the container for someone else’s feelings like I was at 21 and them being the conduit for the strength they know I have. Intimacy is sharing in painful detail what it was like watching the love of my life die and knowing the person I’m telling shares my pain. Intimacy is watching The Bachelorette and even though we know it’s bad, we enjoy it and know that most of these men will never share an intimacy with this woman the way we do and we feel sorry for them. If that’s not romantic, I don’t know what is.
