Female friends
Lately, I've been enjoying the luxury of having extremely wonderful female friendships. I was reminded of this today while Chuk and I made a chart of the past four years of our lives while lunching my favorite drive-thru Mexican joint. Starting graduate school in southern California also meant starting my life over, since I knew all of zero people in this region of the country when I moved. And since starting graduate school I have been living with two male roommates. But there is nothing quite like a close friendship with another woman. I've had a series of them over the past four years. But while each was valuable in its time--providing an ear, companionship, second opinions on purchases--I have also reached my point of saturation when it comes to drama.
I always thought of myself as the kind of person whose warmth is only veiled by the thinnest of cold exteriors--and even that only in some circumstances (professional, new social scenes, I always opt for a more emotionally austere form of identity management). I was always the kind of person to sit and listen for hours and hours. I thought this made me warm, loving. But over these four years I have learned that I only have limited tolerance for other people's drama. It turns out that I like to fix things, and when I'm asked to just listen, I'm not so good at it. And when I try to help and nothing ever changes, or new problems just keep coming up, I get frustrated.
Of course, when your friendships are based on providing therapy to your friends, therapy becomes the script by which the friendship operates. And to participate in such friendships, I found, I either had to entirely embrace being the therapist or try to weasel my way into the patient position. Most of the four or five closest friendships I've had in grad school have taken this form.
Since the beginning on this school year I've been blessed to have an awesome friendship with Cyn. While we can talk about anything, the primary thrust of our friendship is actually doing things: hula hooping, cooking, making, drinking. I have felt very lucky to have this kind of friendship--a kind I have really missed since living so far from my college friends Emma and Sunaree, and since no longer having female roommates.
In March, my joy increased when Stephanie moved in, taking Matt's place in Casa Jackdaw. A classmates of mine and Chuk's when we took quantitative methods in sociology, Stephanie is a second year. She also has a calico cat (Cuzco to my Rio), bellydances, loves to cook big dishes and feed everyone she can find, sits around drawing, takes walks, and the infrequent cigarette break. And all of these, she is more than happy to invite me to join her in. And unlike past times when I've had multiple female friends over these 4 years, Stephanie and Cyn get along. Stephanie has even declared to me, almost out of nowhere, "Cyn is awesome." It's enough to bring a tear to my eyes.
Don't get me wrong: I have met some awesome women. But they are never very close to me. Maybe we make plans to hang out a couple times a year, or run into one another on the shuttle and have a great chat, but they're never quite mine. It's always clear that we are not in one another's inner circle.
For the first time in years I am extremely grateful for my female friends.
Anyway, for the past several months I've been lighting a shabbat candle and just taking a couple minutes to reflect on what I'm grateful for. This was one I just really wanted to share.
I always thought of myself as the kind of person whose warmth is only veiled by the thinnest of cold exteriors--and even that only in some circumstances (professional, new social scenes, I always opt for a more emotionally austere form of identity management). I was always the kind of person to sit and listen for hours and hours. I thought this made me warm, loving. But over these four years I have learned that I only have limited tolerance for other people's drama. It turns out that I like to fix things, and when I'm asked to just listen, I'm not so good at it. And when I try to help and nothing ever changes, or new problems just keep coming up, I get frustrated.
Of course, when your friendships are based on providing therapy to your friends, therapy becomes the script by which the friendship operates. And to participate in such friendships, I found, I either had to entirely embrace being the therapist or try to weasel my way into the patient position. Most of the four or five closest friendships I've had in grad school have taken this form.
Since the beginning on this school year I've been blessed to have an awesome friendship with Cyn. While we can talk about anything, the primary thrust of our friendship is actually doing things: hula hooping, cooking, making, drinking. I have felt very lucky to have this kind of friendship--a kind I have really missed since living so far from my college friends Emma and Sunaree, and since no longer having female roommates.
In March, my joy increased when Stephanie moved in, taking Matt's place in Casa Jackdaw. A classmates of mine and Chuk's when we took quantitative methods in sociology, Stephanie is a second year. She also has a calico cat (Cuzco to my Rio), bellydances, loves to cook big dishes and feed everyone she can find, sits around drawing, takes walks, and the infrequent cigarette break. And all of these, she is more than happy to invite me to join her in. And unlike past times when I've had multiple female friends over these 4 years, Stephanie and Cyn get along. Stephanie has even declared to me, almost out of nowhere, "Cyn is awesome." It's enough to bring a tear to my eyes.
Don't get me wrong: I have met some awesome women. But they are never very close to me. Maybe we make plans to hang out a couple times a year, or run into one another on the shuttle and have a great chat, but they're never quite mine. It's always clear that we are not in one another's inner circle.
For the first time in years I am extremely grateful for my female friends.
Anyway, for the past several months I've been lighting a shabbat candle and just taking a couple minutes to reflect on what I'm grateful for. This was one I just really wanted to share.