Do We Take Friendship for Granted?
5/11/2025
“I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.”
This phrase came to mind as we opened a bottle of wine, watching the yachts floating on the night-lit sea. There’s a lot from these past years I no longer want to remember. I know that, against my will, many good and painful moments are already fading into oblivion—and I don’t miss a single one of them. If there’s anything I plan to keep, it’s this night. The warm Sicilian wind brushes against our messy hair, and the two of us gaze at the brightening horizon line, as always—talking about love, which, like sand, has slipped through our fingers over the years.
I watch her tear-filled eyes and remember how, two years ago, just like now, in a foreign country, she ran to meet me, pulling me off to drink wine when I could barely see the road through my own tears. Sitting there in silence now, I start to think that maybe I selfishly rejoice when love doesn’t work out for us. I want to believe that my friends—against their own will—also feel a bit relieved when my dramas finally reach their climax. Because if any of us were to succeed in love—it wouldn’t be like this anymore. We wouldn’t run so far for one another. We’d be chasing someone else.
Across those waves, straight in line with my nose, on the shore, I know another dear friend of mine was sitting, watching the spring night sky and smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Alone, too. I was gifted him when I got involved with his friend. The love was intense, but thank God it wasn’t the one that stayed—he did. Proof, perhaps, that when I asked for a lot, I unexpectedly received even more.
Whenever we talk—he laughs. As soon as I get a voice message from him, I know it’ll start with a chuckle. His happiness is beautiful. So untainted that I can’t help but smile when I hear his voice. He used to laugh, too, when I’d get mad at him for throwing pebbles into the water during every sunset, when all I wanted was perfect stillness. Now, as I watch the sun disappear into another ocean, I miss how he used to annoy me. In my mind, I count the months left, impatient for the moment I’ll bite his head off again for the same old things—and he’ll laugh just the same.
Then we’ll go dancing, spending half the time pretending to be a couple to those who don’t like us, and introducing each other to people whose glances we find attractive. Just so we can have stories to laugh about on the way home.
And whether I like it or not—I have to admit that only our shared failures in love allow us to live through these days, which feel painful now but will, years from now, become the kind of memory we’ll replay again and again in our minds, accompanied by deep sighs. These are the wonderful days we’ll long for.
I no longer need love, I think, with my head resting on her lap. One is enough—the one doomed to never fully come true. Enough of those new faces that pop up every six months, only to remind me how much hardship and sleepless nights another person can demand when they say “I love you” but act like someone who hates you.
“You’re too much for me,” I hear my favorite person in the world almost believing the nonsense some random idiot tried to convince her of. And I agree with him—she is way too much for him.
“Probably the most beautiful thing about you is how much space you give,” I whisper, as she pours the last drops of wine into our espresso cups. No more loud Italians walking by—just the soft sound of water and her sniffles.
I wish so badly that she meets someone who sees her even more beautifully than I do. And that the loner sitting out there beyond the horizon meets someone who finds his laughter even more delightful than I do. That, to someone, my favorite person would be neither too much nor too little—just right. Someone who gives them the space to be whoever they want to be.
I don’t want other kinds of people around me. Let them be, like now, just passersby who show up only to remind us of what we don’t want.
After sitting far too long with empty cups in hand and a wine bottle that’s been empty for a while, marking the end of the night, we finally get up to leave. As always—in different directions. I could say only God knows when we’ll meet again. But I don’t. We’ll meet when we miss each other. And with the years—that happens more often, and more quickly.
She slowly disappears into the darkness beyond the great church courtyard, and I feel so grateful that fate was kind—our paths did cross.
Friendship, like every other relationship, takes work. You have to choose the right people—the ones worth all the sleepless nights. All the days when you feel like the loneliest person in the world and realize—you were painfully wrong. And all those moments when you cry not from sadness but from laughter, unable to name the reason why.
Because only after some time does it become clear:
The best people are the ones who stay.