Do you have a best friend? I do.  I’ve never met her though. She lives on the other side of the world and we met ten years ago in a chat room. I do this thing sometimes where instead of a person’s name or what they look like I sometimes think of other people in the way they make me feel.  And my best friend? To me, she feels like the sun.  She makes everything brighter. 

Right from day one we’ve had a friendship that was based on really open and honest communication.  There’s never been judgement between us. We’ve supported each other through new jobs, new houses, new relationships, sex with strangers, stints in hospital, through complicated family dynamics, her marriage, my end of marriage, her children being born, mine leaving the nest. 

Whenever things are tough in my life, at work, with my family, within my relationships I think of escaping and I’m often online to find out how much it would cost to fly to Melbourne. That I might text my best friend to say ‘I’m coming to you, pick me up at the airport at 8pm on Thursday?’ And I know that if that ever happened, I’d walk out at arrivals and she’d be there. Whenever things are really great in my life I want to share things with her too.  

I’m currently in the middle of a divorce and I’m often thinking of what it would be like to spend time with her.  Quite often I imagine us just lounging about talking and laughing.  Having the longest catch ups ever where we fill each other in on every single detail of our lives. Or walking around in the nearby park, walking with her small children running around us, swinging one of them between us as we’re talking.  

Before she was married and had children my thoughts of her were different.  I’d think of us in her kitchen, perhaps. She’d be cooking and I’d mostly just be standing around keeping her company.  Or maybe we’d be on the sofa together watching a film together, the both of us pressed against each other, my head on her shoulder, her hair falling into my face. Sometimes the thoughts would take other turns where she’ll be talking to me and time slows down and I end up hyper focusing on her mouth, the way her lips form words as she’s speaking. Or smiling. Or laughing. 

I often think of watching her. Touching her.  Sometimes it’s my thumb on her lips, sometimes I touch her cheek. Or brush her hair out of her face.   It’s always just been something between us.  This question mark of what would happen if we were ever in the same space together.  What I have never questioned, and will never, is the impact it would have on our friendship.  Which is that there wouldn’t be one.  I might be naive in my feelings but I just feel a sense of acceptance that we were always meant to be friends, found family even. A friendship that also strays into more physical intimacy given half a chance.  I find the lines of my friendships are often blurred and with her, I welcome it.