#70 Platonic soulmates
An ode to the coziness of friendship
Hello, and thank you to everyone who voted in my June comic poll! Here comes the winning topic:
One of my favorite Valentine’s Day celebrations went like this: Two friends and I went to see a movie at the theater in our small college town — Fifty Shades of Grey, of course. Afterward, we walked outside to find snow blanketing the streets. It took us thirty minutes to drive the mile and a half back to campus, a ride spent shrieking with laughter (and slight terror) as we inched along the long country roads.
At home, we baked double chocolate brownies from a box and ate them straight from the aluminum tin, spooning vanilla ice cream on top and watching it melt into little rivers across the crusty brown surface. The night ended the way so many of them did back then — us on the couch, talking, laughing, toggling between our favorite Youtube videos and Omegle* until our eyelids drooped with sleep.
Such were the loves of my early adulthood — strictly platonic, cozy and safe and insular. While my romantic pursuits (or lack thereof) felt like treading in uncertain waters, my friendships buoyed me, fastening me into my sense of self like a life jacket.
Of course, I didn’t see it that way back then. I felt deep insecurity in my lack of romantic prospects. Looking back, I wish I could shake my younger self. “There is nothing like this,” I’d tell her, pointing at the photoshoot my high school friends and I did in my backyard, or those Friday evenings after my first desk job when my roommate and I would pull the futon out into a bed and watch another episode Broad City, or the autumn night I drank warm beers in a parking lot with new friends in Seattle before a concert. Simple moments. No dizzying whirlwind, but rather solid ground beneath my feet.
Solid – that’s what platonic love feels like to me. I’ve seen it time and time again in my own life as well as art centered around the beauty of deep and intimate friendship.
I’m not sure how to end this newsletter. My inclination is to tell you to hold your friends close. To see them as relationships as dear and valuable as romantic or familial ones. For now, I’m cozying up in the patchwork quilt of the platonic loves that have kept me so warm over the years (especially when I wasn’t doing a good job of caring for myself).
Truth!! Friendships lasting over 25 years and still going strong.