Click and Connect

Okay, but can we talk about forging alliances in adulthood?

The tools we use to carve the cavernous rocky cliffs of potential and circumstance.

Quests that can take a huge leap of faith to embark upon,

but once traversed are so worth the eggshell stepping on your own heart and the joyous vunerability in your voice.

The constant check ins - is this too much? Too little?

Are they bored? I think they might be bored, why don’t you just ask them? No! Go on! Okay,

Hey, are you having a good time?

Me too.

When did we lose our nerve? The gumption, the bravery, the open spontaneity of childhood, where we threw everything we had at any and every spark or familiarity and said

Hey, it’s me: all of me, I’m here,

Do you wanna play?

The in-the-moment friendships where women meet for the first time in low-lit bathrooms and laugh over slipped-up selfies, ride-or-die wing women and lipstick shades.

Over idiotic, no-chance-if-sober-partners on the dance floor, that someone else has their eye on and honey, they’re all yours!

Please take them!

I’m with…

sorry, what’s you’re name again?

Sorry! And?

Of course!

I’m with my girls right know.

The feeling when you’re bursting for the loo, but that conversation with your new bestie is far too important to interrupt and cut in line.

The ones where you feel that in another life they could be you!

Not quite you, but a lot of you and you them and actually, how has it taken this long for us to meet!?

But also, this is exactly the right time.

And.

I wasn’t even going to come to this party.

…

I’m glad that you did.

Friends.

With whom you share familiar past patterns and nights full of sequins and truth serum that pours out of you like fairy dust.

Trickling into how we forge new ones.

Forming connections with magnetic people who feel like old friends with new beginnings.

Where we spend precious time we feel we don’t have building up respect,

Or just click and connect

And see what comes of it.

Friendships were never forged from the sidelines.

So that time is spent because life may be short but the years are long and friendships can be formed and destroyed in minutes.

We search for life partners in later life.

We give them a chance, we make compromises and sacrifices and sometimes lose a little of who we are, because we love so deeply, with everything we have and on some days that’s harder than others.

But friendships are relationships.

And we can come to them with all that we are,

All cards on the table, older and wiser and ready to endlessly love.

I miss child me.

Because if they said no, or walked away,

We just got on with our day,

Making friends with some beetle we found on the ground

Or chatted to some mystical creature we saw in the wind.

And we were happy

adventuring alone or together, with a crew of misfits or a shoal of sisters.

So maybe it’s time to give her a seat at the table again,

Child me.

Gathering around fire pits and gazing at the stars.

But this time we can drink wine.

(Or smoke.)

So here we go.

Hi, it’s me: all of me, I’m here if you are.

Do you wanna play?