My Friends

I'm realising that writing about the women in my life is making me sound too sentimental. Not that I can deny being so, but I would like to give this post a rather different tone.

For some reason, I think that if you are a woman your girl friends are a lot more important to you than a man´s guy friends are to him. It'd be interesting to have a man who reads this post verify or contradict this point. Guys may need other men to play sports with or to have fun while drinking a few beers. Us women, on the other hand, need girl friends to talk and share experiences. We need other women in our lives. I met my oldest friend when we were three years old and I can proudly say that despite living far away from each other, we click as soon as we get together.

I went to an all girls school and although I know that today it sounds like an anachronism, something from pre-history that doesn't make any sense from an educational point of view, in my experience it was a blast. I wouldn't change it for any other type of school. As a little girl you don't pay much attention to whether there are boys or not at your school, but as you grow up, you start giving importance to the opposite sex. Since we were all girls, we didn't have to worry about looking good or acting pretty, we just were who we were without fake façades. Gym class was a lot of fun because in general we were all rather clumsy, but we couldn't care less. Recess was full of talking and conspiracy, you have to understand that there was no whatsapp or facebook back then and calling on the phone was quite expensive. The playground was the only place where we had the chance to talk about our things. A few years ago, when we all turned forty, we had a reunion and it felt like we had been together for all those years we had been apart. We each fell into the roles we had at school, the funny ones, the critical ones, the leaders, the responsible ones... we had a great time.

I met one of my dearest friends in college. We've lived apart for many years now, but we don't let more than two weeks go by without talking on the phone. At university we were hand in glove and we spent many, many hours together, studying, talking, having coffee, but most of all laughing. Today she's one of the few people to whom I'd tell anything. We've always been there for each other and I know that we will be forever. Didn't I start by saying that I wasn't going to get too sentimental? Well, if any of my friends get to read this, they'll all be laughing by now, because they know me too well and would have sworn in line two that I wasn't going to succeed.

My current friends, the ones I share my daily life with, have been together for quite a while now and have been through thick and thin. As you get older life gets complicated and those college years when all you do is laugh seem to be farther and farther away. All in all, though, we have a great time. When there is a problem we help each other or if there's not much we can do, at least we are there to listen to one another and to give support. We go shopping, we drink wine, we listen to stories about our respective children, we go shopping again, but once more what we do the most is talk, talk, talk and laugh.

My friends are all very dear to me and I could not live without them. They're all different from each other, but they all have something that makes them super special for me. I would not want to finish, though, without giving someone a little wink. My red carpet buddy... how could cocktails in Manhattan not to have a special mention!