A Brief Tangent

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I’m not sure if platonic love necessarily has a place on this tumblr, but it’s making a guest appearance tonight.

This evening, I got together with one of my best friends. He and I have known each other since we were very young. We’ve been through a lot together, watched each other grow and mature, experienced some crazy highs and major lows.

While we were catching up earlier on, he kept being playfully critical. He would raise his eyebrows at something I’d say before immediately dissolving into laughter. I would tell him I wanted him to guess something and he would refuse just to get a rise out of me. And so when he told me he wanted to show me a view he found but needed me to read directions, I was snippy back.

“Oh?” I replied, “now I’m suddenly useful to you?“

He laughed and started to drive. “You’re beautiful and you mean the world to me. Now tell me where I’m going.”

We drove until we reached a lot, where he parked his car and we started walking towards the woods. “Shit,“ I announced, “I have to pee.” I looked around before shrugging, “I’ll just do it in the woods.“

He grinned. He had been doing a stupid thing in the car where he now was overcompensating and delivering all sorts of stupid platitudes to make up for his previous infractions. “I like that you’re the kind of girl who can just pee in the woods.”

Once we were away from the road, I made him turn around, reached up my dress, took off my underwear and crouched. Just then, I saw the lights of a car in the darkness and freaked out.

“There’s a road over there,” he explained, “they can’t see you. Don’t tell me you’re getting piss shy.“ He continued to heckle me until I had handled my business, replaced my underwear, and joined him.

The woods got steep fast and I was hardly prepared, wearing a sundress and flip flops. After using branches to haul myself up, I joined him at the top. As we were technically trespassing, we kept fairly quiet as we neared the edge and looked down.

Before us was a view absolutely indescribable. Lights, buildings we’d known since we were young, even little towns sprawled out across the landscape, the rush of cars over a bridge.

I looked over to my friend and realized in how much I enjoyed sharing this view with him how much I loved him. Not in a pitter-patter way or an easily just infatuation way or a soul mate sort of way. It was more a deep appreciation for him as a person, for what he has meant to me and for what we have been to each other.

I think society does not place enough emphasis on platonic love in an overt sense. We’re quick to say we love this and that, describing anything from a flavor of ice cream to the demeanor of a reality television star, but the idea of a “great love” always seems to center on a typical romantic relationship. There’s such a trope of “loving your best friend until it becomes romantic". Aside from an occasional reference, such as the scene in Superbad where the boys declare their love for each other after their grand adventure (a scene mostly intended for comedic effect), we don’t really see the love of friends glorified in comparison to the love of a significant other.

Maybe I’m just rambling. But it got me thinking what it really means when I say I “love" a person in my life and how deep that love actually goes. It’s an astoundingly profound thing whose power, unfortunately, is often downplayed in the wake of the celebration of romantic love.