This will last
I recently cut my hair. It’s been two years and I had outgrown the long blond ponytail with its frizzy ends. I actually went to the hairdressers after lockdown measures had eased. It was a clean cut. Without a doubt, cutting one’s hair after a break-up has become a tale as old as time – a metaphor as dead as ‘a tale as old as time’. Though I broke up with my most recent boyfriend just before lockdown struck, this did not affect me much. Call me cold-hearted, at best, but there are break-ups more severe than this.
It’s been a day since I left my old flat. I’ve been living there with my best friend for over a year, sitting outside on the balcony in a daze of smoke and booze, proclaiming whole-heartedly, like clockwork, every night ‘Those are the nights!’, screaming wildly at each other when playing cards, and calling her out for waving around with the crust of her pizza when giving me advice, reading stories to one another, and being shushed by the neighbours.
Now I’ve packed up my life in three suitcases and will move over to London in a couple of weeks. I yearn for the vibrant metropolis, even though the ghostly absence of the crowd flocking the streets and squares has carved out its heart.
I’ve been reading Traister’s All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation and there’s a chapter on female friendships, which, taken from a letter by Charlotte Bronte, are like Lucifer’s Matches. They’re dangerous and unsettling to the traditional, patriarchal view of the nuclear family and heteronormative expectations of marriage and childbirth. I want neither of these things. Essentially, the idea is that female friendships are sometimes more formative than actual relationships, because they offer different systems of support, of sharing experiences, of stimulation.
“Female friendship was not some consolation prize, some romance also-ran. Women who find affinity with each other are not settling. In fact, they may be doing the opposite, finding something vital that was lacking in their romantic entanglements, and thus setting their standards healthily higher.” (Traister 100)
In this light, love’s labour’s lost on me; the perils of flicking through humourless and idiotic tinder bios, or tinder bios that try so hard not to be humourless and idiotic; or staying in an unsatisfying relationship out of comfort. All of this is lost on me. Don’t get me wrong; I miss the thrills of going out, I miss flirting, and I miss sex. But I know that all this will come back, in a new city, in some months, whenever, wherever.
In relationships, I look for temporary companions, with whom I can share a span of my life, but for whom I’d never sacrifice even the slightest portion of my freedom. Since I do not want to marry, or bear children, or fulfil any conventional life path that seems set in stone, this is exactly my deal. But friendships, such connections, such love, such chosen kin, transcends every boundary, even the big sea between a small German town and the Big Smoke. We might continue our studies in different countries, start our career in different cities, publish books at different times, will scream at other people when playing cards, we might settle in relationships, or start families and defy all of our rebellious stances from now, but none of that matter, because if lockdown has taught us all one thing, it’s that our dearest people, whoever they may be, are only a video call away, whenever, wherever. And from now one, I’ll be sharing my bottle of read with my gal from across a screen, because I know this will last. A lifetime, to female friendhips, cheers!