The most significant relationships in my life have been platonic.
Sometimes I think about what a miracle it is that I've had the opportunity to love and care for the people that I do- to have grown up alongside my childhood best friend, to be there when my brother needed someone while he was in the hospital.
In a funny way, their regard for me is strikingly similar- and yet, distinct.
My childhood best friend and I aren't in constant contact. Inevitably, we fall back into each others' lives like no time at all has passed: there's always a door left open, always room in our lives where the other fits. I could walk in five years from now, throwing open his front door- and he would welcome me with arms spread wide, only taken aback long enough to ask how I've been, and how are things?
Whereas, with my brother and I- we're constantly bothering each other (lovingly, of course.) It's sweet, (if sometimes a little stressful) how we're both the person that others would, and do, turn to immediately if the other one is suddenly missing in action: because of course they would know, of course they would prioritize getting word out to them. Like I tell him all of the time- we're two little cats stuck in the same basket, so it's far too late to try getting rid of me now, we're a twofer kind of deal.
For both, there's a sense of truly seeing the other, in loving them as they are, how they come- with a flexibility built inherently into the latter.
With my childhood best friend, it's comforting to know that no matter who we become, there's still a tenderness for the other- some intrinsic core that is so irresistibly, irrevocably us, that we would recognize each other in a sea of strangers: no matter how far, or how long we've been apart.
There's a shared history of awkward teenage fashion choices, inside jokes that've long grown faded thin and known backwards and forwards, anecdotes of outgrown lovers and friends: a graveyard of bodies we've outlived, staying the course in each others' lives even when others drop out of the race.
It's a little like falling in love all over again, and a pleasure to see who we've grown into since we saw each other last. I may not know you yet- but I can't wait to love who you've become, who you are.
And on the other hand: there's someone who sees you with a searing clarity, who understands intimately what it was like to be broken into the shape that you've been bent. Someone who cuts through the quick of facade and pretence effortlessly, who recognizes himself in you, and holds a tender understanding for what it was like to learn those very same lessons, a grace that's born out of compassion. It's being loved for who you are, not what you do- not for a hypothetical person you could be, or 'should' be: just as you come, as you are. A fierce loyalty, and blunt honesty: softened by deep affection.
People carry small pieces of the people they love with them, everywhere they go. I think about it often, how their words will resonate in my head, rattling around as I notice someone with similarly bright eyes, or stompy boots, or a long, wool coat in a sensible dark grey. How I see ghosts of the people I love in the world around me- and how comforting those midnight visitations are, how my dreams are haunted by spectres wearing the voices of those closest to me: how it's a comfort, a balm over otherwise terrifying night terrors.
A therapist I was seeing once, -to cope with the grief of a situation wracked with the unknown, grappling with how to support someone through something that paralyzed me with fear to even think about, the nauseating waves of surgical outcomes and uncertain injury- told me in session, that it was heartwarming how evident it was that we cared deeply for one another. She ended our sessions by expressing that she'd loved getting to know my brother through the eyes of someone who loved him- and that he seemed like a great guy, to be loved so much.
I think about that, a lot of the time. How you can love someone so much, that other people grow to love them too, even through secondhand recounting alone. How you're a haunted house full of the ghosts of the people you love- a museum not just of loss, but of loving memory.