In These Moments I Know

In These Moments I Know

Once a week, Alicia and I meet on Zoom for an hour of Write Club. To call it a club is a bit generous, as it is only ever the two of us that attend. We started Write Club as a form of accountability, a way to carve out time from each week and dedicate it to writing. Separated by a two-hour time difference and nearly 2,000 miles, we created a virtual “offerings” page, into which we copied whatever scrap of essay or novel or stream of consciousness we had managed to type out that week. At first, we tried to initiate monetary incentives and penalties to motivate one another to write something, anything, and provide it as an offering. At one point, we lived with the fear that, if we failed to produce something for the offerings page, the other would donate $2 to the Trump campaign in our name. The threats didn’t work - neither of us could ever stomach making the donation, so the danger never felt particularly real - and eventually we had to accept that 15-minute prompted exercises and sporadic offerings were still a success.

Really, the point of Write Club is less about creating written pieces, and more about creating and protecting the writer. Every week, Write Club begins with life updates. We discuss our hectic work schedules, difficult co-workers, the various ways our partners have been tender or careless or frustrating. We discuss the state of the world, the state of our country, the state of our community. We listen to each other, we ask questions. Sometimes we cry, usually we laugh. Recently, I mentioned to Alicia that I couldn’t use my blender. I joked that, while I’d gotten to keep the blender in the divorce, the blades had apparently been left behind, rendering the entire appliance effectively useless. While still on the Zoom call with me, Alicia pulled out her phone and ordered a new blender directly to my house. I tried to protest, but her rebuttal was plain and inexorable: “I want to do this; this is how I want to spend my money.”

Now, when I throw together my frozen fruit and oatmilk, I think about how Alicia sent me a blender because she could, because she wanted to. She heard me, not when I complained that I was missing my blender blades, but when I complained that I was struggling to eat enough fruits and vegetables because I was working so much. She heard me when I said that I find it difficult to take care of myself. She heard me, and she made my life easier, because she could, because she wanted to. Now, when my smoothie is finished, I sit at my desk and set a timer for 15 minutes, writing for the offerings page while I drink.

* * *

Chelsea is my oldest friend, and she has been a witness throughout all phases of my adolescence and early adulthood. Somehow, she has chosen to stay through all of them. This staying power of hers was no more evident than the moment I told her I was getting divorced, when I described in excruciating detail the worst things I had ever done, the hurt I had caused. I heard her exhale from the other end of the phone, and I waited for her admonishment. She would not be the first person to wash her hands of me in the wake of my own destruction. “Well,” she said calmly, “that was really shitty of you. Anyway, I guess he’s dead to me now. What do you need?” Years later, my therapist will still reference that line. She can never remember Chelsea’s name, but she remembers the friend that told me I had done something bad and never implied I was inherently bad because of it. Just as she had at every crossroad for the past two decades, Chelsea chose me.

* * *

At the end of their second year, medical students in the US enter a period of “dedicated study” in which they spend nearly every waking moment studying for their first board exam. For six weeks, I spent sixteen hours a day reading, highlighting, and rereading passages on disease pathophysiology, pharmacology, and biochemistry. Every day was scheduled to the minute: fifteen minutes for breakfast, ten for a midday snack, thirty for dinner. At one point, fearing that I was losing too much time in the shower each morning, I drew out and laminated biochemical processes and taped them to the shower wall. This period of time is infamous amongst medical students, and the feelings of isolation can build to intolerable levels surprisingly quickly. My non-medical friends were supportive and patient, bringing me snacks and dropping off coffees, but I knew the reclusive nature of the dedicated study period was foreign to them. Though they indulged my anxieties, they thought them silly demonstrations of self-deprecation. Surely, a smart woman studying sixteen hours a day for six weeks didn’t need to fear failure as obsessively as I did. Surely, her passing was an inevitability, not a precarious possibility.

As the weeks carried on and my practice exams seemed to stagnate just behind the passing score, while many of my friends had already crossed into safe territory, the loneliness and isolation of dedicated study felt futile. As I started to sink into my spiraling thoughts, lamenting my obvious inadequacy, my impending failure and humiliation, my ringing cell phone interrupted my descent. Mei, another medical student and friend suffering through dedicated study, was on the other line. I tried to sound upbeat when I asked how she was holding up, but she affected no such disguise as she told me she was feeling lonely, and anxious, and inadequate. She said she was worried that her practice scores weren’t where she wanted them, that she was spending every waking moment studying and it didn’t seem to be enough. She said she was comparing herself to friends that had already taken the exam, had ended dedicated study early because they were so confident they’d pass. For the first time in weeks, I felt seen. I told her I felt the same, that the loneliness was the worst part, this self-imposed seclusion that didn’t seem to make up for whatever internal deficiency was keeping my scores firmly behind the finish line.

The next morning she texted me, “Good morning,” and I felt less alone. For the remainder of our dedicated study, I would receive a text from her each morning, always “good morning.” Eventually, our test days came and went, and, following an interminable wait, we received our passing scores. Still, we texted each other “good morning.” Some days, it would be evening by the time we remembered to text, but still we used the old greeting. “Good morning” was never about the morning, anyway. It was a reminder that someone was thinking about you, that you weren’t alone in your loneliness. Now, with our lives ever busier and our texts fewer and further between, still we send a good morning message whenever we think of the other. And still, just as it did those years ago, those words make me feel less alone.

* * *

Jenna has never once made me feel like an inconvenience, despite the myriad ways I know that I am inconveniencing her. She makes thoughtfulness seem innate, like a reflex she engages without noticing. Whenever we meet at Grace’s apartment for a movie night or crochet club, Jenna drives me home afterwards. Jenna lives half a block away from Grace; I live two and a half miles away. Still, she drives me home, treating the entire endeavor like a forgone conclusion. Never mind that she is basically already home, that I live ten minutes in the opposite direction, that I could take a bus or grab an Uber. Every time, Jenna drives me home.

* * *

When I first met Nadia, I thought she was the coolest woman I had ever met. I was so intimidated by her coolness, I felt afraid to talk to her. She was a few years younger than me, and she used slang I hadn’t heard yet. She is nearly six inches taller than me, with gorgeous curls that radiate around her face like a halo. Her makeup was always perfectly applied, with techniques more advanced than I had ever attempted; her hands, ears, and neck always bedecked in gold and stone. Today, I still think she is the coolest woman I have ever met, but I am no longer too intimidated to talk to her. Now, I talk to her about every thought and insecurity that runs through my head, and she does the same to me.

What started as casual workplace bitching has evolved into council-style meetings about every major life decision. In one of these hours-long sessions, Nadia referred to me as her “wise wizard” friend. It sounded offhanded and playful, but there was no mistaking how earnestly she applied the moniker. Nadia is one of those rare friends that will ask for advice on a situation, not because she wants to be validated in her own opinion, but because she genuinely wants to know what I think. She not only asks for my advice, but she listens to it. She accepts criticisms and alternative perspectives, and she sits with them long enough to let them really sink in. She not only places value in what I have to say, but she trusts me, implicitly. Whenever Nadia asks me to proofread a text, or asks what I think about a fight with a friend, I know she’s asking because I am someone whose instincts she trusts. Lately, when I want to ignore my gut, I remember that Nadia trusts me, that maybe I can trust myself, too.

* * *

After fifteen years of friendship, Heather and I have found that our laughs tend to fall into a matching rhythm, like two wavelengths landing in sync with one another. Sitting side-by-side on a couch in a crowded living room, a dozen other friends with their heads thrown back in laughter, and we will suddenly hear the peals of our laughs fall into perfect unison. We are often caught in jinx, saying the same thing, at the same time, in nearly identical intonations. She will cut her eyes to mine across a crowded room, and I will know exactly what she is trying to tell me. I have cried on her couch until my stomach hurts from the sobs, and her touch on my shoulder is more comfort than any spoken word. After so many years shared together, it sometimes feels as though we are merging into one shared mind.

I feel confident that Heather can read my body language enough to know when I can tolerate a difficult conversation, and yet she has never once left it up to chance. Before discussing anything difficult or stressful, Heather will ask if I am in the headspace for emotionally heavy conversation. This person who I have known for more than half my life, who I have called in hysterics without forewarning more times than I can count. Every time, without fail, Heather will gauge my emotional temperature before she divulges anything I could feasibly consider too intense. It seems so simple a gesture, a good habit she picked up from a therapist friend, maybe, but it stops me in my tracks every time. That simple gesture is a reminder that she feels my pain just as deeply as I feel hers, that she knows the weight that these conversations hold. She is asking my permission to be vulnerable, and she is reminding me that I can say no. I have never taken her up on this offer to avoid the difficult conversation, but the question is a calling to mindfulness and intentionality. She doesn’t have to ask, but I know that she always will.

* * *

I have dozens of photos of ice cream on my phone. Photo after photo of rounded scoops of ice cream melting over the sides of a waffle cone, a plastic spoon sticking out of a paper bowl, a generous heap of whipped cream perfectly dolloped atop a milkshake. In each of these photos, Grace and I are standing in the background, faces squished together and pulled into bright, showing-all-your-teeth smiles. We get ice cream together for every major occasion, and every minor inconvenience. In some of the photos we are sweaty and red-faced after a hike, in some our eyes are smudged with purple from sleep deprivation. There was a brief stint where I was vegan, and we had to buy dairy-free ice cream in the grocery store to keep up the habit. Whatever the circumstances, if someone mentions ice cream, the other makes herself available.

Two years ago, while standing in line for ice cream at our favorite neighborhood creamery, I got a call from my mother with bad news. I stepped out of line to take the call, trying to calm her and myself as I paced back and forth across the parking lot. When I returned to the line, Grace and a few of our other friends looked concerned. When I explained the situation, Grace boldly asserted that tonight needed more than ice cream; tonight, we needed eggs. The four of us stepped out of line, piled into her car, and headed to the grocery store. Suddenly, there we were, a group of people whose collective age was well over 100 years, buying armfuls of eggs, firecrackers, and beer. We looked comically deviant, like teenagers set loose with $20 and no parental supervision.

As we headed to the hiking trail just off the main road, it started to drizzle. Undeterred, Grace divvied out the contraband and bade us all to follow her into the woods. As we walked along the darkened path, lit only sporadically by large overhead lampposts, the sky opened up. At this point, we were too far from the car to avoid being drenched, and too committed to this endeavor to abandon it. We walked on, swiping at the water sluicing down our foreheads and into our eyes. When we reached the bridge, Grace handed me the first egg and gestured to the stone bridge. I took aim and stretched my arm far behind me, arcing the egg through the air and over the bridge with as much force as I could muster. We all rushed to peer over the lip of the bridge wall, where we watched the egg disappear into the darkness of the night, the sound of its splatter swallowed by the rain. Impressively anticlimactic. Suddenly everyone was laughing and and shouting and throwing eggs in every conceivable direction. I looked around at my sopping wet friends, everyone’s eyes bright and faces flushed, and felt immeasurably grateful for Grace and her eggs.