An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity. It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us. — Adrienne Rich
After Kurtis died, K walked with me. When temperatures were frigid, we wore our snowsuits and boots. During one of these winter rambles, we were passing through a concrete tunnel, a passageway linking the north of the park to the south. Our voices echoed and the circle of brightness at the end was painful to approach. It was here that my friend told me something that surprised me enough to stop walking.
We had known each other well over a decade—our friendship beginning twice.
By K’s account: beginning at night inside a bar where we were the only two people on the dance floor for hours.
By my account: beginning in the late afternoon at the edge of a crowd, K seeking me out, fixing her huge, blue eyes on me, saying: We’re going to be friends. I can feel it.
Since those beginnings, K and I have road tripped to sleep in small, sweaty tents, let our hair go matted and tangled in the wind, moved in and moved out of apartments, spoken late into the night about our hang-ups, about text messages we don’t understand, helped each other apply for jobs, walked down narrow alleyways in small mountain towns, listened to each other cry.
There was so much between us that afternoon I paused in the tunnel, that afternoon she told me—
Until now, I haven’t known exactly how close we are.
How? I wondered. How could you not know?