Platonic Love As The Blueprint

Adult Survival & Things

There is a presence that holds the body, an aura that keeps score. I find comfort in the blanket of friendships that continue to reshape the framework of my alliance with the people I do life with. After changes that feel like a vacuum of time, coupled with the debris of severed relationships in the past few years. I’ve had no choice but to let these changes puncture the density of bone and marrow, to separate me from the herd. Friendship is a sacred practice— where bodies are made visible through the constant and genuine expression of love.

I’ve made a conscious effort to tend a garden for old friends, those whose presence still echo a subtle force, a whisper saying, “There existed a time where you were my anchor— a spring in my existence. I don’t know what you may need now, but let me extend the heart I still have for you, to save whatever is left of who we are now.”

I am reminded of how fast years pass, and how laughter fades when the demand of adulthood overtakes the love. I chatted with an old friend recently over the phone; we laughed for the better half of that hour, recounting memories and tracing the height of nostalgia into oblivion. 4 years ago, we held a record for 6. “Thank you,” I said, for this. ‘I know we are supposed to grow apart, but I don’t want to. Please keep calling.’ They said.

I remember the air, sunrays peaking through the cracks in the blind overlooking 94 — traffic headed east through the density of a bridged confession. It was a Wednesday afternoon that felt like a Sunday morning; quiet and resonant. Simplicity in the sanctity of friendship. Tenderness is a sort of magic to relationships with connectivity I still don’t quite understand, but I feel reborn in the subtlety of language, body, or otherwise. There is a conviction that unconditional love is stuck between gum and teeth, wedged between sound and laughter. To value something is to know the weight of a thing, to find out is to make curiosity a point of entry, a soft landing to keep calling.

There are many ways to show love, to remember there’s still space for a thing. When I was younger my mother said, ‘You don’t have to throw away your old shoes for new soles.’ That stuck with me because when filled to the brim, we often position the ego for revolving doors— as if friendship is a pit stop, not a human miracle. A place where lava learns the ferocity of water, where we surrender intensity in place for softness. In this vacuum of body and space, we learn the subtlety of prayer, the importance of hands, and what it means to hold presence beyond the layers of our own scars. We grieve the fragility of trust to air the bruises, yet we learn to receive here. Friendship is where the heart learns to hear.

We tend to carve out spaces in empty vacuums; we suffocate intimacy for battery-powered connections. Voluntary excuses become a tagline for unrequited friendships. We feed people the least of us, hoping they get drunk off secondhand loneliness to cover the excuse of not giving all that you are, to all that you can, every time you can. Do not take a constant presence in your life for granted, those who knead themselves to your life’s journey; hold them in truth. In the body, and let their aura keep score. ‘I know we are supposed to grow apart, but I don’t want to. Please keep calling.’ They said. Keep calling.

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