I am not alone

Lifelong Friendship is the greatest gift…and the greatest journey…

I stood on the corner of Broadway and Thomas in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood considering my options. I could take the depressing bus ride back to the dingy motel on Aurora Ave or I could call the phone number in my pocket.

A near-stranger had slipped me the number two nights prior; a young woman who worked at the same telemarketing place I did. A friendly, boisterous young woman with hazel eyes and a riot of curly dark hair; she didn’t walk, she bounced, she didn’t smile, she shone at you like a light in the dark. She terrified me with her liveliness and curiosity.

My family and I were homeless. We’d endured a tumultuous period of struggle, poverty, danger and loss (a tale for another time). We’d washed up on the shores of Seattle, shipwrecked and broken. We were trying to remake ourselves one step at a time. But it wasn’t going well.

I was (and still am) reserved and introverted by nature; the last few years of my life had been so hard and dark; I was used to rejecting people before I could be rejected. This girl, this unicorn of a person had gone out with my brother (who also worked at the telemarketing place) once or twice, but she had shown kind interest in me and one night, after work, she’d given me her number and told me to call if I was on Capitol Hill, to call ‘anytime’.

The thought of returning to that awful motel filled me with despair. As an introvert the thought of calling the shining girl filled me with dread. Dread won over despair, and I fished the number out of my pocket, found a phone booth (yes, those still existed then) and called the number.

A cheerful voice answered, I said who I was, said I was on Capitol Hill, said I was sad and didn’t want to go back to my motel. I heard my voice revealing all this to the friendly girl whose name escaped me, and I thought I sounded like such a pathetic mess.

“Oh my god!” the girl gushed, “you come right over!”

And I did.

That shining girl is KL Simmons. I went to her apartment twenty-five years ago with no expectations and found a lifelong friend. A friend who saved me from despair that day, to whom, I hope, I too have been useful over the years. Our friendship is now a quarter of a century into its journey, I assume we’ll still be trekking along together in another twenty-five years. We’ve seen each other lifted up, torn down; we’ve carried each other through hard moments and celebrated joyous events. We’ve annoyed each other, disagreed with each other; offered each other competing perspectives which changed us both; we’ve been each other’s sounding boards for so many choices in life. We’ve roomed together, we’ve lived a few doors down from each other, we’ve lived on opposite sides of the country and now separate continents. We’ve said goodbye so many times I’ve lost count — never knowing when we’d meet again in person. But we have never lost each other or let each other go.

When I reflect on my seminal friendships there are two people who come to mind; one is the first friend I ever made when I was a tiny child, who is still my friend forty-one years later; and the other is my dear friend KL Simmons — the first friend I ever made as a broken, messed-up adult, who is still my friend today.

I could fill volumes with tales of our journey as friends. Today I simply want to offer gratitude. I’ve made it through this life partly by relying on the comfort, wisdom and validation of the friends who stuck by me; I am honored they found solace in me too. I thank the universe for them.

What friendships sustain you? What journeys have your friendships endured? I’d love to know…