Friend. Ship. When you read these words separately they hold a sort of benign place. One is a noun that means, “ a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection” and the second is also a noun and means, “A vessel of considerable size for deep-water navigation” (Thanks, Google).

So if a person I feel a connection to, or have an affection for, is the friend… than I suppose my heart is the ship, who’s job it is to navigate the calm and sometimes treacherous waters of this life.

I have friendships that have lasted decades,  they are deep and thick…they tangle and untangle, they ebb and they flow. They are the touchstones I have tucked deep into my heart-ship.  They have filled my weaknesses, they have literally lifted me up off the floor after my father died and held me like a child. They have endured my tears, my joy, my fears, my fantastical adventures, my panic, and my sometimes too-loud-laughter. They have transcended the “me” and become part of my history,  part of a collective, part of a “we”.  The we has become my lineage, long and steady,  full of late night conversations and within our collective history there has been profound joy and unimaginable loss.

Standing in my wedding dress with all of their love and light surrounding me, I felt safe. We toasted Champagne in a tiny room above a garden and I looked at the gorgeous women and men in my circle and felt joy that is life changing. Less than ten years later we all stood together again, making the journey from many corners, to honor the life of the tender one we lost, her life we couldn’t bring back from her battle with grief and depression. We faced her transition from living to light together, we grieved together and our hearts ached together.  And today we remember her… together.

These friendships have filled me with a give and take; they have found me in strip mall bridal dressing room forcing one friend to try on wedding gowns. This freshly after she had the pleasure of finding her boyfriend with another woman in her bed; their children outside unloading the car.  That “fancy” dressing room was a rebirth;  I wanted her to see her beauty and her strength, I wanted her to envision a white dress, to really see herself in that dress and to visualize a man who wanted to marry her… not shack up with her. I wanted her shitty day to have some fun and as we sent her dress choices to the new girlfriend, who lived in her old life, the laughter was loud! We felt like thieves in the night who were taking back a piece of her soul. She is now married to a man who loves her deeply and yes…she wore a gorgeous, white, dress. This same friend prodded me to enroll in college, the champion of my brain. She held my fears at her kitchen table as I learned to navigate a new language; microsoft word, professor, computer, syllabus, library and  formats upon formats. She allowed me to grow in her safety and now I’m the first person in my family to have a bachelor’s degree. I am proud to say that I graduated magna cum laude and was the keynote speaker of my program.  Our friendship allowed us both to feel safe enough to challenge our ideas of ourselves, our lives and our worth.

These friendships are bigger than the individual, these friendships have become a standard of sorts, a marker of how love will be given by all the people I meet and have a mutual affection for.

However, some of the newest loves of my life have felt differently and they have decided to disembark. I suppose for them it is healing although it feels much more like an attempt to punish and bruise. I am allowing the disappointments to wash over me. I have made myself swallow the betrayals and made myself slowly taste their searing burn. This would normally make me want to defend and fight, to lash out and to cry. But today, I am learning a different way.  Today I am digesting a different truth and to quote the lovely Frieda Kahlo, today I am “training [my] heart like a dog” to love those who have hurt me while closing their chapter in my life.

This ship pulled up her anchor in Los Angeles and those who have chosen to disembark, I wish them well.  Their souls made my heart soar and they were the bringers of much growth and awareness in a very painful part of my journey. But ours was not a friendship ours it seems, was a friend-season aboard S.S. Taosgrl.  How lucky am I that I had the season and how lucky am I that I now know the difference.

In a week I will disembark in New Orleans, greeted by some of the most gorgeous souls with whom I’ve been privileged to share my journey so far. I will drink Champagne and toast the bringer of Faith in my life as she marries. I expect the moment will bring all things magical and chaotic, it will bring big-belly laughter and heartsick tears and I know that I will be safe there. I am safe with them and my heart-ship will be overflowing with love and friendships that have stood the test of time.