Episode 15: The Tapestry of Female Friendships
HANNAH: Welcome to another episode of Friends Missing Friends. Today I talked to a good friend of mine, her name is Jaymie. I actually met her over zoom in these crazy times, in like 2021 I think? And the first time I saw her zoom square, which is a crazy sentence, she smiled and I swear I felt a jolt of electricity run through my whole body. It was my entire body telling me in an instant, oh my gosh, I want to be her friend. Fast forward, now we’re friends, and I did tell her that story and she wasn’t weirded out, so that’s a good sign. [laugh]
In this episode we talk about friendship what that means to us, what it means to miss friends who are still alive. And also, we do discuss the topic of suicide. So please please take care of yourself, and if you or anyone you know needs help, you can call the suicide hotline at 988.
I hope you enjoy my conversation with Jaymie.
HANNAH: I remember like last time we talked which might have been a couple of weeks ago, you were saying that your idea of “best friend” kind of shifted. I'm just curious, like what does “best friend” mean to you?
JAYMIE: Ooh I love that you asked me that question and I think part of that reframing for me has been a function of a couple of things: it’s been a function of my age, in turning that new chapter and season where I'm not fresh out of school, I'm an actual adult, not a “baby adult” is the term that our friends use. And I think a lot of it has been meeting you because in your manuscript, this is, it impacted me and it changed my thinking on in such a beautiful way.
In your manuscript, you reference “best friends” like a category, not like an ultimate position. And I love that because I think, and maybe this is my competitive background or my athletic background, but like in my mind, best friend was always this like top of the podium that your friends were competing for that position, and there was only one. And so when you reference the idea of best friend being a category, like a bucket of people that are that special circle for you that you can have as many as is true for you—that was just like a Brain exploding emoji for me.
HANNAH: Oh my gosh. I'm having a Brain exploding emoji right now.
JAYMIE: So it was definitely that, where it just made me feel like my beautiful friends that feel like my best friends. Like I got to put them in this special beautiful bucket that they deserve to belong in and they didn't have to compete. At that point in my mind of like, it's a black and white thing to think of it like a competitive first place, second place, and on so on. That idea that being a category, it resonated for me. I love it.
HANNAH: That warms my heart so much. I think that it's also been an evolution for me, because it's like very Elementary school to kind of keep track of your friends and their ranking. Even maybe subconsciously, maybe not even consciously. And yeah I don’t know, just as I've grown older, I may have shared this with you. But I've discovered that the heart has no bounds. It continues to expand and expand and expand. And as we go through life, we're just naturally going to meet more and more people. So the heart continues to expand as we meet more and more people. And no matter how many people we truly love, it doesn't mean we have less love to give these new people that we meet. So it's kind of infinite. And that's something that I’ve kind’ve been discovering recently, like the past couple years. I kind of thought of that metaphor and I was like, oh my gosh, it just gave me this feeling of peace. I don't know why, it just did.
JAYMIE: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's also kind of that idea of, you talked about evolution and maturity. I do think that it's interesting that the pieces of our little girl that we keep, you keep those pieces until it bumps up against something, a struggle or a triumph in your adult life or in your chapter and then you really have to kind of process that and think about that. And I think you're exactly right, for me that idea of the ultimate best friend was absolutely something that I carried with me as a little girl onward. Of like, okay, it only has to be one and so now, this person is it today that person can't be, when really it misses the point of how we define it and then I never reframed it because I really didn't have language to think about it. I needed a way to reframe it.
And I think the idea of it being categorical, it gives it room to be expansive. Yeah, and it gives you room to grow as a person and not be bound to that point in time that you were really close to that friend in those ways. It gives you room to breathe and grow and change and become your most true version of yourself. But it also gives them I feel like the same opportunity to expand and know that it's less like a single point of failure at that point and more like a pie, like a lattice pie. It's interwoven at that point, the way that your support network looks like in your community versus like, this is the single tie and if you cut this then I'm done, it’s broken and I’m on an island by myself.
HANNAH: Oh, I love the image of the pie, the lattice pie. That's so beautiful.
JAYMIE: I think the other thing that has really helped me in kind of that, I would say it's the categorical piece, but it's also that idea of your friendships being a tapestry in your life. Where that tapestry starts in one place and it continues and it tells a story, but that also gives room, maybe an expansiveness—I'll go back to that for just a second of like—if my best friend in college, if we were attached at the hip and just had such a beautiful chapter together, then if we move and grow apart and she gets married…we might not have the same picture in the tapestry, but that doesn't mean that she's not going to come back later and weave in and out of my story. I think that has been so liberating, because I think part of the grief that I've suffered with friends that have been living is not knowing how to make those transitions. And feeling like that loss of like, oh, it used to be that way. And I want that back. And it's not that way, because life has kept going. We've gotten older, we've gotten new jobs, we've gone new places, all of the things that just organically happen with life.
HANNAH: Yeah, it's the grieving of the changes of the seasons of life and of friendships and I am so much like you, I have deeply grieved every change of season. Just like to the point where I think embracing the metaphor that you just described, would help me to also see the beauty in it, because also that tapestry that you wove with that friend or that friend group, and maybe now it's a different season, that tapestry that you wove together still exists. It's not like it's gone or like it never happened. You still made that beautiful art, that beautiful life together. And I love what you said about how their thread may weave in and out again as you keep going, but yeah, there's that whole friends missing friends, like there's so many friends who also are alive that I really miss and I miss what we used to have.
JAYMIE: Yeah, absolutely. That has really enabled me to be more graceful with myself and with others and I think to have a more forgiving and understanding perspective of how to navigate those changes because I think for myself, I have a tendency to cling, when I really miss things or don't want them to end. I cling to them like they still exist, even though they're in the past and I’m in the present; that never facilitates you being present if you're always trying to clutch for things that used to be that don't exist anymore. Like I have learned, or it's been my lived experience that that just hasn't served me very well. So it has been even just painting that in my brain of like, what did that look like? Or are there things in my house or my environment that are that tapestry that remind me of those times? I think before I had that metaphor, it made me kind of sad and kind of resentful and kind of bitter that it was and isn't anymore. That idea of like the thread weaving in and out really enabled me to feel like I can trust the universe enough to let go what is not currently for me. And I think before, I was so controlling because I knew best what was for me and who should be here, that it really was a matter of not trusting.
HANNAH: And that is so hard to do. I mean, I'm also a clinger.
JAYMIE: Stage Five, stage five clinger!
HANNAH: [laughs] Yes and it's like that was hard for me too because I know that I'm like that. I feel so deeply to the point where people are like, why are you so upset, or like why are you laughing? Nothing's funny, or you know, just so many times people are like, why are you reacting so strongly in any type of situation. I know that I cling to friend groups when that starts to fade and everything like that. So I really struggled with that so much when Lauren passed away, because I knew that I am a clinger and I know that I feel deeply, and I felt the grief so deeply. And I was like, is that because I feel too deeply or is this normal and real? Or is my grief me clinging to the friendship that we had? I couldn't parse out what everything was, and because I knew that I “overreact”, according to the world, I kind of just thought I must be overreacting. I must be crazy. Like, no normal person would react this strongly to this happening, which is ridiculous now that I say it because it was extremely traumatic and of course I would react strongly. But when I was in the midst of it, I was like, What's wrong with me? Like, why can't I move forward? Why am I so stuck?
JAYMIE: That makes so much sense, I can attest to having similar feelings come up for me. And I think there's a few things with that. I think to your point, a lot of it is the messaging that the world’s given us. For insert the “too” adjective—too much, too emotional, too sensitive, whatever. I think there's that description that you give to yourself of whatever that “too” is that you've heard or felt from somewhere else external. I think it has been fascinating as I have learned to navigate my grief. And just understand that the places of you that feel deeply are beautiful and part of your gift. And I think that I am a very linear thinker because of my background, right? I think engineers, literally the pendant of engineering schools is to think very linearly. And so many of the embodied things are circular and grief is circular. So I would also get very frustrated with myself and was like, Okay, I had this shit sandwich. And I dealt with it and the next day, there's some of it that's still there. It's deeper. It's more, it's like a cavern and not just a closet.
And I think that idea of letting go gently, as many times as you need to over and over and over and over is something that is so part of the grieving process. And it took me so long to be gentle enough and kind enough to myself to let myself roll with those cycles. And I think it's that in the finiteness of the grief. You're being frustrated with it or wanting it to be over doesn't decrease its presence any less. I mean, to have a music analogy—you have to finish the note. It's just really sad stuff and you have to finish it before you can go to the next movement, you have to go through it. You have to feel it.
HANNAH: You have to feel it.
JAYMIE: Something that has really been on my mind this week has been Cheslie Kryst, Miss USA, from 2019. She died by suicide earlier this week. And what has particularly just really weighed heavy on my heart, other than just how much I feel for her family and her friends has been, on Monday there was a news segment in which Gayle King was talking about her dear friend Cheslie, and she was pretty broken up about it. But what she said was basically, “I talked to her last week, and she had this full calendar of all of these things that she was working on.” She was a media consultant, I think she was getting some modeling, she’s a lawyer by schooling. So she had this appearance of having means and having success and having all have these wonderful things happened to her. She was young, she was 30, she was beautiful, all of these different things. And so she said “what really troubles me the most,” and I'm paraphrasing, “is that when I talked to her she seemed fine, and there was nothing that I picked up on that thought that I should check in deeper or further.” And so she said, and this is the part where she got really upset, she said—"what has troubled me so much about that is how do we know to be checking in on the people that seem happy and strong?”
Like check in on your friends, the happy strong ones that you think are fine and even more than that. I think what has really like been on my heart is, how do you check on your friends or stay connected to your friends and offer them help or support if they don't know how to ask for it, if they don't have language for that, or they're in the darkness and they're not ready to share yet.
HANNAH: Yeah. I have no idea. I didn't know this happened. That's so sad. And that's such a good point. Yeah, how do you know what to say, and…That’s so hard so hard.
Yeah, that's such a great thing to bring up because it makes me feel like perhaps it should come up in conversation before there's any signs of darkness, so you know, maybe you're forming a deeper connection with a friend. And maybe you're like, hey, let's have a conversation about this—if we're in a dark place, how should we ask, what should we say? What kind of support would we need? Maybe even like, have a code word if you need to code—
JAYMIE: I knew you were gonna say that! Like what if it was like, “rainbow sprinkles”?
HANNAH: Oh my gosh, I heard someone had like a code with their hand it was like “pineapple”. And one time she woke up and she had like 50 texts from a friend that just had pineapple, pineapple pineapple. Luckily, everything was fine. So they laughed about it afterwards, but I would be so scared if I like woke up and had like that code word over and over. Like, oh my god.
JAYMIE: I think you're onto something though. Like proactively, how do you establish that psychological safety to have that place to go of like, “okay friend, like how are you really?” Like, not the crap like “how are you” that you're telling the person that you pass by in the office or on the street or wherever we were actually social interacting with people, but like the deep “how is your soul?” “Like how are you actually?”
HANNAH: I don't think I have ever had that conversation with anyone. This particular conversation that we're talking about. I don't think I have, maybe I should start doing that.
JAYMIE: I think it's an interesting thought, right? Because I think with the current climate of the world, in the environment of the world, like I don't think it's an exaggeration to say or to share that my observation has been that it seems like there's a lot of people going through a lot. And so I think as we have more friendships that are long distance or through a screen or working remote, or you know, all of these different things that are honestly less face-to-face interaction on a frequent cadence, I think there is kind of that like—I don't know, it's interesting because I think there's so many different places. Do you ever really get like that point of really being in your truth and really being like, “well, actually, no, I am in it” and like, here's all the things.
HANNAH: Yeah, that's something I'm gonna have to mull over, I think. And really think about it. Have you ever had a code word with a friend about anything? Doesn't have to be this specifically.
JAYMIE: I think to add some levity. I think so. It's more not in this context at all.
HANNAH: It doesn’t have to heavy, It can be like, code words for boys you like and stuff.
JAYMIE: Oh, yeah. So we're gonna go with levity right now. There's definitely been times where like, if back in the day you'd go to a dance hall or to a bar or something, but I would have a codeword with a girlfriend of like, we need to get out of here or like, this guy's creepy or you know, it would be like, “tequila shot” or just, you know, something like, “Mayday. Mayday.” Yeah, “let's move,” but it was definitely more like that.
HANNAH: Oh, that's so smart. Next time I go out, I don't know when the heck that's gonna be, I never really went out to begin with, I’m totally gonna do that. You just started grinning so wide when I mentioned “Have you ever had a code word?” There's something so beautiful about having like a secret with a friend or whoever. Like an inside joke or like a secret language. Like my friend Lauren and I at summer camp, we would come up with code words about boys, of course. That’s a lot of what we talked about, I was obsessed with boys. I was probably like 17 and then we would change their name if like, I was mad at them. And I would of course would be mad at them if they were flirting with other girls. So it's not like they did anything wrong. But just like, stupid stuff like this one guy played the saxophone and I liked him. So we called him “sax man”, as if that's like, secretive at all.
JAYMIE: Yeah, that's top secret.
HANNAH: And then I was mad at him. So we called him douche man, because he was being like a “douchebag” because he was flirting with this girl. So stupid. And then I was like, oh, douche in French means shower, So let's call him shower man, and then we called him shower man. And then he changed back to douche man and then back to sax man and was just like, so silly. And so fun.
JAYMIE: But yes, so fun, right? Because you could be speaking out loud in public but in code.
HANNAH: Yes. Although if we said Sax Man next to him he might know we're talking about him. But part of me kind of misses the days where I was like, always having a crush, even though those crushes were very tumultuous and childish. But it was also kind of fun.
JAYMIE: It was I um, I also went to music camp. And actually, interestingly enough, I played alto sax.
HANNAH: Oh my gosh.
JAYMIE: But my version of that was, I was I was in the band section. The Symphonic Band part of the music camp. And so the guy that I crushed on, oh, gosh, this is middle school maybe I don't even think I was in high school yet. Maybe that's even too old. Maybe I was more like in elementary school. So I don't know, I was old enough to be a girl with a crush. And so I was crushing on this guitarist named John. And it was very much like I would like, wait to get out of rehearsal so that there was this place that you go get a candy bar and I'm like, if I time it right, I’ll be going to get a candy bar when he's going to go get a candy bar, then obviously, we're going to have this meet cute and then he'll realize he's perfect for me. And then we'll like spend the rest of our lives together, the end!
HANNAH: Oh my gosh, that line of thinking is so funny when you say it out loud. But it's totally how my mind worked, too.
JAYMIE: For that version of you in that chapter, right? And maybe it was also that we grew up on VHS Disney movies? I don't know.
HANNAH: Yes. I think that probably plays a part of it. For sure.
JAYMIE: Right. But it was very simplistic and I mean, it's such a novella type of narrative of like, meet-cute, love of life the end, happily ever after. There's something beautiful about the simplicity of it. But then it's so oversimplified that also, like your more adult version of yourself is looking at it like, oh my gosh.
HANNAH: Any story or anecdote, or anything about a close friend you had? And/or still have? And maybe the way you met them or like your happiest memories together? Anything like that.
JAYMIE: I have a couple that come to mind and the one that I'll share with you is about how I met one of my very best friends in this world. If I have ever felt like I had a kindred spirit it’s her. And this was in 2012. But at the time I was in undergrad, I was pre-med, I was studying biology, which was mostly a big large matrix of classes that was basically I didn't know what to do. And that sounded pretty good. I was headed in a general direction that didn't feel like pure panic. And so I was taking a horse application class, it was a Western equitation class. And in that class, everybody gets a horse to go through all the tack you learn. In this case, it was all the Western riding type of stuff like how to saddle, how to bridle, how to all of the different things. There was this girl in there, she was probably 100 pounds soaking wet. And she had big rodeo hair and like a huge belt buckle. And she just, she caught my attention right away. I think it was her presence. But it was also that she had her nose in a MATLAB book.
And for anybody that doesn't know what MATLAB is, it's like a big icky language that you can code really amazing things that have lots and lots of applications for. So I walked up to her and she was already a juxtaposition that just had my interest. Like she was so interesting. And she was also hands down the best rider in the class like just when she got on a horse, it seemed like she was just meant to be there. Like way more than when she was just walking around. And so I watched her and I was kind of fascinated by her. And we ended up talking and she said that she was a chemical engineering undergrad and she wanted to go to medical school. So at the time, we kind of had a similar path. And so interestingly enough, I ended up kind of doing a 180 in my life and the next semester I was also a chemical engineering undergrad.
And it was kind of a union that was just supposed to be from that point forward. Like we took all our classes together. We worked together, we studied together, and she was just, I mean, the yin to my Yang, in so many beautiful ways. She made me feel like I belonged in a time that I never really felt like I did. And so that partnership, just that that ability to feel like I was forging into this impossible future doing this impossible thing. It just felt not lonely and it felt doable. And it was just the coolest way to meet somebody. And then to know that that type of just casual interaction turned into one of the most profound and deepest, closest friendships that I have.
HANNAH: That's so sweet. I'm like actually crying right now. Because it's just so beautiful. I think, especially when you said just her presence made you feel like you belong. It's just amazing to me that it only takes one person to make you feel like you belong. And it could be that you feel like you belong in a group of 100 people. And only one person there is needed to make you feel like you belong. And I think once the really intense magic happens, like you're describing—I just as I get older, I appreciate it so much more. Because it doesn't happen all the time. Like it is kind of rare. And I would roll my eyes whenever my parents said it. But it’s actually true, like, you know, as I meet more people—just for everything to line up so perfectly, their energy, their personality, the timing, the path, like all this stuff to line up so beautifully—it really is like a kindred spirit. And I just have such a deep appreciation for it now.
JAYMIE: In Spanish, what we would say is regalitos da la vida. It's literally like how you talk about friendship and what that means is like these little gifts that life gives me, and like they are like those connections and those friendships that are just so, so deep and so pure and so easy and organic. They are little miracles, they’re gifts.