I have been thinking about my friendships, and that they should be listed in the loves of my life. These people have been with me through multiple stages of life and have seen me through my worst and know that I’m still trying to do my best. And isn’t that a quality of love?
I’ve known Deno since college, about 18 years. We worked together at a restaurant and fled for the SF Bay Area after graduation. I liked Deno as soon as I met him. Everyone likes Deno. It's easy to make him smile, and he knows how to really show up in a conversation, no matter how casual. Whenever I was in a one-on-one conversation with him at work that was interrupted by someone else, even if I was talking about some boring shit, he always reoriented his attention back to our previous conversation before it was interrupted. I didn’t know it then when I was 20, but that’s a sign of a really, really, really good person.
Was it mercy or grace to make friends with someone so attentive?
We smugly joked about this couple who were regulars at the restaurant where we worked. They came in, talked very little until they ordered, and then when their food arrived, they ate in silence, reading their respective books or newspapers. We used to whisper to each other, “Oh my god, how depressing to be in that relationship.”
Like our careless, stupid, angry, drunk, awkward, and jealous relationships were better...
Their silences were, perhaps, not the silent treatment. Neither had a waiting quality in their interaction, no need for more of something from the other.
Recently, I caught up with Deno, and we laughed at our stupidity. It’s funny to think about how someone could even like you in your early 20s: desperate for attention and hoping that someone sees you the way that you want to see yourself. But they see something. Or maybe it isn’t a matter of seeing as much as it is experiencing. We went through moves, break-ups, and deaths (and even sometimes placed each other on a figurative “15-day DL” when we needed a break). And that’s enough to hold you together and remain connected even when you are worlds apart.
When I tell Deno bad news, he holds the heartbreak as much as I do. And he never responds with the cliché “I’m sorry.”
“I’m laying on the floor right now trying to process this.”
Because I can sometimes reveal secrets to a complete stranger, but can also guard them from the people I care about most, not many of my closest friends have read my writing. I don’t share it with them directly. Yet, when Deno and I talked about sharing our writing with each other, I did it that very night (where I might smile, nod, and say "okay" to other people and then never share it). To know someone through their thoughts is just as intimate (maybe more) as seeing someone cry through their grief.
To concretely place your thoughts on a page is raw.
Deno is someone who has seen every version of me and tenderly allows me to stumble into the next version knowing that we’re so different from, yet essentially the same as, who we were when we were 20 and 21. I have to remind myself to not be scared of whatever it is that I become next because I know that he’ll be in that version, too.
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