what's lost.
mid 20-something loneliness, and the loss of girlhood
Two weeks ago I turned 26. I’m now officially classified as mid-to late twenties. I’m no longer privileged to the ‘under 25’ category, which allowed me heavy discounts on the Royal Opera House tickets and 1/3 off rail card prices. Not that I ever went to the Opera or splurged on travelling via rail, but that’s not the point. I’m no longer feeling like that cool, young adult, fresh out of University. In fact, University ended four years ago and I’m rarely the youngest person in the room anymore; something I used to hold onto like a badge of honour: “Yeah I was born in 1997. Sorry, I don’t know what a pager is.”
With age comes the onslaught of questions over marriage and children. But I think little of it because right now female friendships, or really the lack thereof, is all I can think about.
According to movies, TV shows and every piece of fiction ever written, the bonds you create with your two or three childhood friends stay with you until old and grey. If one of you moves to New York, well… then all of you have to… and you all must live in a tiny apartment where one of you uses the living room as your bedroom. That’s just a fact. They are your rock, your girl gang - think of Molly and Amy (Booksmart), Annie and Lillian (Bridesmaids), Emma and Liv (Bridewars), Rachel and Monica (Friends), Sutton, Kat and Jane (the Bold Type).
The transitional periods I’ve had - from Singapore to Boston to London - were adult-ish; the first move for education, the second for a job. Friendships stood a little to the wayside as I was determined to excel at “adulthood” - whatever that meant. The further I travelled, the more distant I became with my old friends - thinking it’s all part of adulting. Now, at 26 years old, in a happy relationship, a stable job, and looking to set long-term roots down, I find that the one box left unchecked for too long is friends.
I’ve never lived with my best mates, except for a short two-year stint at University. Acquaintances made in University quickly solidified into friendships. But graduation and the hunt for jobs easily split us apart. We grew up, which was an inevitable fact, and some of us moved. Then we had the pandemic, and it suddenly felt that these baby relationships that I wanted to nurture more, fell apart.
Since then, I’ve made fleeting friendships with people I wish I had time to get to know better. I’ve attended friends of friends’ parties and secretly hoped that that would be my path to developing a wider group. I have a handful of people who I share a group chat with, but the closeness is missing. The sort of bond where you have someone to text at 2am, someone who is your first point of call and who knows you inside out. Someone who, when you get engaged, is the first person you would tell and you could automatically say, “yes, yes you are my maid of honour.”
Right now, I can’t imagine anyone really being there. And that solitude can feel really fucking lonely.
Some friendships grow steadily and the paths you take are taken together, moving within each other’s orbit. Others are like love affairs; a whirlwind of excitement for a few years, or maybe just a summer. But I often find that friendships we have as young adults are more vulnerable to cracking; perhaps because it’s a fragile time. We enter a period of change. We move. We make new, better friends. Hearts break. Eventually you find you share nothing in common with the people you were once inseparable from. Connections increasingly devolve to brief chats with people in club bathrooms, online, or through drunken trips to McDonalds.
I’m deeply jealous of the friendships that B has. He has friends that he’s known since secondary school; boys who’ve become men, who have become husbands and dads. And though he could easily be dubbed ‘best friend’ material, he isn’t quite what I’m looking for - there’s a girlfriend-esque quality that a partner can’t really satisfy. Girls I went to high school remain close friends with each other - I only know this because of some late night Instagram stalking (which I’m embarrassed to admit). My cousin moved from Ireland to London, two of her best childhood friends moved with her. When she held her housewarming, nearly every single person there was Irish. She later told me that they’re a part of this large Irish cohort that’s practically taken over the Finsbury Park area. They even have a Whatsapp group.
Rationally, I know the answer to making new friends is to take initiative. But my shy personality lends itself to forming friendships slowly and with some fantasy hope that they will like me enough to be the outgoing one and to encourage me from my shell. If they’re spontaneous and exciting, maybe I would be too. Perhaps modern life doesn’t lend itself to this attachment style.
I often think of the friends who I’ve grown apart from; those last moments together at graduation. I hope that our time has simply been put on pause until, maybe one day, we’re reunited again.
I’m still wrapping my head through a lot of this, in all honesty. I’m reluctant to watch any movie that has close best friends because part of me still, in a way, grieves for girlhood friendship - one that I don't think I’ve had time to mourn. I think sometimes watching these films magnifies not really what I lost, but what I never had. A jealousy and sadness broods away inside of me, leaving me lonely. I’m not ready to see another television creation that beautifies and romances female friendship - always golden and beautiful - especially when I can't relate.
I’m trying to make an effort to connect with the few friends I have. I hope that if I put in the effort, the universe will, in turn, grant me what I’m looking for. Or maybe it’s all just banal and this is how life and adult friendships are. Maybe having a weekend of non-stop socialising and adventuring is overrated and fantastical. I don’t know. I’m only 26. And I guess that’s it - I am only 26 and this is what I know: Life is not perfect, and the world is far from a perfect place. And perhaps the harder I look for things that are not perfect, the more I force unhappiness upon myself. Maybe I just need to be around people, who aren’t perfect and who don’t all have to be best friend material.
There’s maybe new beginning here, but right now it only feels like an ending.
Thoughts from an old lady of 65:
1) You never lose girlhood, it will always be somewhere within you. For example, I feel like I am 17, even though I have snow-white hair.
2) Deep friendships that enrich and inspire you are the best. They are also kinda rare. And they never happen overnight. My husband thinks nothing good happens right away. Not sure I agree. But with friendship, yeah.
3) You being more introverted than extroverted is a plus. I am the opposite, and have often found that I have a hundred acquaintances, but nobody I could call at 3 am. My guess is that you listen more and talk less - a plus.
4) It will happen. I have seen this movie before. It will unfold quietly, and you won't notice it at first, kind of like the signs of spring I see out my window.... peepers (frogs in our pond) first, then red tips on the maples, then geese flying back north, and then, suddenly, one morning: Spring.
It will happen. Keep writing. It will help, and you are a good writer.
Ohh I loved reading this, thank you <3
This may not be particularly enjoyable to hear coming from someone 8 years further along the road (not that these things are linear, but it would be nice if someone was all "this goes away!" wouldn't it?) - I really relate, and it's not easy.