codependent female besties, pseudo romantic relationships, and how i (platonically) fell in love with my best friend
besties 4 life until it becomes toxic and we want to kill each other haha!
(Note: this has been sitting in my drafts for months. I’ve rewritten for what feels like a hundred times, hence how long it is. This acts as a memorial of this past friendship, a commemoration of my grief.)
The first and last time I fell in love was when I was 16 years old. Well, platonically.
I vividly remember the first time we met as if it was just yesterday. Funny, as my lack of memory is a running joke amongst my friends and family. But this exact moment, I manage to recall so clearly. She sat across from me in a group of 10 other people. We looked at each other and gently smiled, realizing we were the only Muslims in the room. A silent comradery and understanding between us. Little did we know that years from now, how loud and explosive this silence would become as we would sit in separate rooms, one of us holding a phone waiting for a reply and gently sobbing, while the other clutches a fist, rage pumping out. Both of us wanting to scream in agony, nothing coming out but silence.
They say the worst pain one can experience is your first heartbreak, but I think wrong. Not that I have ever been in a romantic relationship, but I still wholeheartedly believe that nothing is more gutwrenchingly painful than a friendship breakup.
For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted someone to call my best friend. A ride or die. Matching shiny medal of honors for us, the perfect duo. It was all I saw on movies and T.V shows. Thelma and Louise, Lorelai and Sookie, Jess and Cece, Paris and Nicole. Fuck, even Jerry & George. It was all I desperately craved for.
I imagined slumber parties, watching indie coming of age movies, shopping together, spying on our crushes, and whispering about our deepest fantasies. In middle school, I even embarrassingly drew a diagram of what I wanted in a best friend. A prototype for the “perfect best friend”. Funny, smart, artistic, creative, spontaneous. Looking back at it now, I realize just how pathetic and even more so neurotic it was.
I felt empty and as if I was truly missing out on life. Or perhaps a part of myself was missing. A gaping hole waiting for someone to fill to make me feel whole.
But that changed once I met her. It was as if everything I dreamed of came to life. Over the next few years, our bond became stronger as we’d go on weekly trips to Washington Square Park, get high for the first time in Prospect Park, run away from cops at Central Park (parks were our thing), and eat at Popeyes because we were broke 18-year-olds.
There wasn’t a day that passed by where we didn’t facetime or text (usually both) for hours, sharing every single detail of our lives. Every night before going to sleep, we would say to each other, “I love you to the moon and back”, our conversation not being able to end without sealing it with this expression of love.
Eventually, people would refer to us as pairs. When invited out to a party, it was obvious that if you invited one, you’re inviting the other. Naturally, everywhere we went, we had to notify each other. We were a duo, after all. We believed that this was a proclamation of our loyalty to each other. Because how dare we go somewhere without including the other. That would be cheating. Except we weren’t in a relationship. Right?
Sooner or later, we became an extension of each another. I never truly understood the expression “joined at the hip”, but here we were. Except it was not only the hip, but our entire beings merged into one.
Calling her my sister felt compelling but not satisfying. She was more than that. We were a part of each other, a reflection. Our souls intertwined together, our devotion devouring each other whole. Her presence became so large, almost larger than my life itself. I was estatic.
It was one afternoon that this became evidently clear to me. I was sitting on the floor of her room, doing whatever teenage girls did. She was in her greek mythology phase. She flipped open a book and pointed at a drawing of a peculiar-looking person.
“Did you know that according to Greek mythology, people originally had four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces? But Zeus was afraid of their growing power, so he split them into two separate parts. So they have to spend their lives in search of their other halves. Isn’t that interesting?”
I nodded, admiring the drawing. Two bodies in one, but one beating heart.
“Hm,” she said. “It’s sort of like us. We’re each other’s halves.” We gazed at each other and smiled. There was a small distance between us, our limbs and two hearts working on their own but still feeling as though we were one. We didn’t realize how much we would eventually resent this curse.
It was when we started college that things began to deteriorate.
We both started to embark on new chapters of our lives as she went to college in another state and I went to a local one. But we’d still manage to talk every day, updating each other about every little thing possible.
Our new separate group of friends knew what we were to each other without actually ever meeting them. I felt a sense of proudness of our iconic duo. Heck, even people I didn’t know recognized how strong our friendship was.
When she got into a relationship, she would tell her boyfriend, “if you’re dating me, you’re dating her.” We’d laugh while he chuckled nervously.
We were inseparable because we were one.
Before we knew it, a year passed by and we both found ourselves trying to recollect after enduring traumatic events, which I won’t get into. But we coped by burying our sadness into each other. Burying and deeper like a grave until we hit the core of the earth and couldn’t dig any longer, until we hit our breaking points.
We desperately held on to each other by our nails to set ourselves free from our misery. Or atleast a temporary release from the wounds.
“I really need to talk, can I please vent?”
“I want to die, can I please call you?”
“I don’t know how any longer I can do this. Can I see you tonight? I really need some air.”
I need you I need you I need you.
Months passed by of us crying on the phone to each other, our roles flipping back and forth of coaxing and crying, reassuring and sobbing, cooing and howling. But the more we craved each other, the more we began to resent. We hopelessly gripped on while the need to get rid of each other grew.
Was it exhaustion of each other? Was the pain inside of us too much to bare, morphing into revulsion? When was the exact moment this obligation to each other became a burden?
Sooner or later, I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Between dealing with my own depression and figuring out how to be there for her constantly, I felt numb. Detached. I simply just didn’t have the energy anymore. Am I a bad friend? I thought to myself. She has been there for me since the beginning. But I just can’t do this. So I decided to ask to take a break from the friendship.
She was still in her college dorm kilometers away from me but bringing myself to ask for a break felt agonizing. I knew this meant that the everyday facetime calls, texting memes, sending pictures of myself asking which is good enough to post on Instagram, counting down days until she’d come back for breaks, and the trips to the parks would be gone. I was terrified. What would I do if all of that vanished? Who am I going to talk to? What will I do?
But I knew it had to be done. For my own sake and peace of mind.
Days passed and I would have to nudge myself what felt like a hundred times a day to not call her or send her a snarky text whenever a old man with a handlebar mustache hit on me. But my fingers would always end up hitting her name on my phone screen before I reminded myself of our break, sighing, and putting my phone away, wondering who in my life would want to hear about this.
One day, I suddenly received a flood of texts. It was her friend from college.
“Fabliha, I’m sorry to bother you. But she’s not doing so well. I know you have your own things going on but you’re her rock. She needs you. Please.”
Rock. The word echoed inside of me as I reread the text. I suddenly thought of the moon that became the symbol of our friendship. The distance between ourselves to the moon was a profound depiction of our love to one another. But somewhere along the way, perhaps we had become each other’s moon. A giant ball of solid rock. Following each other wherever we went, something that was once reassuring but now suffocating as we no longer can escape it as it loomed over us.
Who were we without each other? I imagined us as two halves of a person that Zeus created. A sentiment I once looked at in admiration but now seemed disturbing. I wondered about the glorious magnificent creature that resided the best of us. How it had morphed into a hideous, self-loathing resentful monster.
Was it possible to want to run away from our other half? Could we survive, one without the other? I wasn’t so sure.
2 years passed by and we always ended up finding ourselves back to each other. I’m not entierly sure if it was because the friendship was healing and growing, or if we just couldn’t end things.
I remember dwelling to my other friends about how toxic this friendship was and how I’d roll my eyes everytime she texted. But still, I continued on. My friends became bored of how much I’d talk about her, the same boredom I’d have of someone that couldn’t stop talking about how horrible their boyfriend was. Just end it! I would want to scream at them. But for some reason, I couldn’t say the same for myself.
There were clear problems and tension that we had with each other, but we felt as though our love was stronger. Or perhaps the issues were too deep that it was no longer repairable. So naturally, we decided to ignore it. We told ourselves if we stayed loyal, the malice would surely vanish. We continued on, our love sealing over the bubbling tension until one day, it had no other choice but to explode and we can no longer disregard the ugly truth of what we had become.
The ending of our friendship was incredibly dramatic. When we removed pictures of each other from social media and stopped hanging out, dozens of people reached out to me asking what happened.
The last conversation we had over the phone, she screamed while sobbing,
“You always said you loved me to the moon. Was all of that bullshit?”
No, I wanted to say. I still love you but I’m not sure if that’s enough anymore.
Weeks after we finally broke apart, a conversation I had with a friend stayed with me. I was so heartbroken that I felt like the only way to shun our past from my life was to burn a picture of her, Jab We Met style, and tape the remains to my diary, scribbling FUCK HER FUCK HER FUCK HER. Dramatic, I know.
“I can’t explain it. This relationship was just so deep. It felt like she was my wife. And I was hers. No. Even deeper than that. Am I making sense?” I wasn’t. Because there wasn’t anything more intense than a marriage…right?
“Did you have feelings for her?” she asked.
No, I immediately explained. I mean we shared our sexual fantasies with each another, changed our clothes comfortably, and even showed each other our favorite pornos, surprised each other with gifts, but I never felt any sexual or romantic urges for her. But it was still just as passionate, even without the romance and sex. It was so much more, I tried to explain. Realizing how crazy I sounded, I quickly changed the subject.
We haven’t spoken or seen each other in years. Maturing, I’ve come to understand the intensity of our pseudo-romantic female friendship. Every femme in my life had experienced one, and expressed how it was even more painful than their first breakup.
Even though I’ve grown older, I find myself still subconsciously seeking out the similar feelings of my friendship with her. Or dare I say, a replacement. As I reflect on my past relationships with my previous best friends, which all ended worse than the other, I realized it felt like I was recycling through them. While I was slowly maturing each time, becoming aware of what red flags to avoid and how to communicate better, I was still craving the intensity.
I tried to figure out what was wrong everytime. Wallowing in self pity, I would ask myself am I unlovable? Is there something wrong with me? Perhaps I just can’t hold deep meaningful friendships. Yes. That’s just it.
But I never once asked myself what I was doing each time and how perhaps it contributed to the train wreck. How each time, I would come out of the friendship burnt out and drained by how overwhelming and heavy it all became. But would still begin the relationship by burying all of my emotions into them while they also did the same. Relying on them for every feeling I had.
How each time, everything would revolve and warp around them. As if the complete devotion was a testimony of our friendship. It was the only way I knew how to love. To consume. But the outcome of the friendship would go down in flames, becoming predictable and identical each time.
After this realization, I began asking myself, am I toxic? Did I destroy all these friendships? It was easier to villainize someone in the relationship, whether it was myself or the other, but it was much more complicated than that. It always is.
When I was a teenager and watched movies and shows of the most iconic friendship duos, I remember seeing how loyal they were to each other no matter what. Willing to sacrifice everything and anything for each other on a whim. I looked at that and told myself, yes. That is what I want. That is what I need.
As humans, it is our natural instinct to yearn complete and unadulterated love from others. That is what we live and die for. But perhaps to love the other is not to only make room for them but to also make room for ourselves.
While we haven’t spoken to each other in years, I think about her from time to time. I wonder what it would’ve been like if I continued being friends with her. Would my life be more like hers or would hers be like mine? I wonder why I felt the need to choose between the two and if we could be friends while being entirely different people.
I convinced myself that a true deep friendship is feeling as though they are my other half. But why must the friendship be proved by devouring one another? By morphing each other until there is nothing left of our own selves? Does love mean giving ourselves up and be willing to merge into theirs? Why must we conjoin?
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how to move forward. I don’t have all the answers or how to love someone without giving up my entirety and expecting the same.
But perhaps Zeus had it wrong. Maybe by splitting us into two and wanting us to crave our other half, it has set us free. By being our own, allowing our heart to beat without permission and dependency. To just be.
Thank you. For these words. I feel this so deeply, and I will be reflecting on this for a while. Much love to you Fabliha ❤️
You are such a gifted writer. This essay really moved me, your prose is written beautifully . and I felt like I was reading my own feelings