old girlfriends

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I have always resisted friendship rankings: my best friend, my second best friend, my best friend. This may be because as a child I did not have enough girlfriends to count them that way. For a long time there was only one. We shared a love of reading. After school we used to go to her house because she lived closer. Each of us picked a book from her shelf, sat down on the rug next to us, leaning our backs against the hard bed frame, and began to read. Later, together we drove the local librarian to despair, because we always tried to borrow more books than we were supposed to, or those for which we were too young. (Of course, love stories between city girls and New Zealand sheep farmers, as far as I can remember.)

Later, a second one appeared, who was several years older than me and therefore could not help me on the playground. Later, she taught me how to smoke and how to pronounce the lyrics of English songs correctly. We spent hours imagining our future. At that time, I hesitated to express my secret desire to become a writer. I did this a few years later with a third friend who was placed next to me when I changed schools in the middle of the year. She had to help me find my way, and she did. Far beyond the classroom.

I saw all three again last week. We are still friends. Our relationship has changed, sometimes falling asleep or rusting, our lives drifting apart and then together again. But the thing is, we know so many versions of each other. Shy child, clumsy teenager, dreamer, rebel, in love, desperate. A young mother and an empty nest. Successful, broken. Resurrected Woman. We don’t need to explain anything. If I mention my mother, who is no longer alive, you will understand who I am talking about. And vice versa. I read somewhere that the deepest desire of every person is to be famous. An old friendship grants this wish in several ways. We get to know each other through the years, we see who we are today and who we were yesterday.

Last week I was sitting with one of these friends on the terrace when she suddenly said that she still had some of my old poems, do I remember them? I would have given them to her when I was fifteen or sixteen. I shook my head. I also knew that at that age I wrote mountains of poetry, especially when my heart was broken. Which was almost always the case. But I couldn’t remember any of the content. She jumped up and found the folder. Here they are, neatly filed under M, printed on carbon paper by a mechanical typewriter, documents of a bygone era. My throat tightened, my eyes burned, I was surprised by my own emotions. There was a part of me that I forgot. The part I no longer had access to. The part she kept for me and has now given back to me. I took the pages and began to read…

Source: Blick