On friendship & couches

How well do you know your friends?

Because I love to analyze the world and my brain inherently thinks in systems, I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship and how to know someone - and furthermore, how to know yourself. If you’ve spoken to me at all over the last few weeks, I probably went deep on my current theory of Inner Worlds (how can you most accurately capture the true essence of someone, how can you symbolically represent someone - the past, present, future version of themselves, the mythology of their life). My current theory is this: many of us don’t know ourselves, and thus, we make it difficult for others to connect with us fully.

I’ve been exploring this in several ways: What does the inside of your mind look like? If we assume your psyche is a house, what are the various rooms, and how do they encapsulate your hopes and dreams? What is your hero’s journey? What is the fantasy-style map of your life? If your life were an RPG, what would it look like? 

And perhaps, my silliest (but current favorite) question: If you were a couch, what couch would you be? What would it look like, what fabric, how many people could you sit, what setting would it be in? (Please indulge me and answer here). 

I have no answers yet, but I would love your help exploring how we can better understand ourselves and others.

There is a fine line between caring and controlling. While I see how all of this could be perceived as clinical, my intentions are clear: I want to understand you, and I want you to understand me so that we can connect in a space where we can both fully be ourselves without pretense and fully be in the now together. 

I want to understand your hopes, dreams, or aspirations so I can help push if there is any way of getting you there - and vice versa - but more than anything, I just want to be in a moment where neither of us needs anything from each other aside from basking in the completeness of one another’s company. 

What is Friendship?

As a single woman in my early thirties, I’ve come to a profound realization over the last few years of how much weight society places on finding a life partner versus valuing friendships. A tremendous amount of pressure is placed on finding ‘the one’ - that perfect prince charming who can slay the dragon, wake me up from my slumber, and rescue me from the castle I’ve trapped myself in. Love is not finding ‘the one’ but realizing that you are ‘the one’ (and have been all along). Love is finding yourself with the support and reflection of others. You are love. You are loved.

This is a half-baked thought, so please treat it as such, but I’ve been somewhat jealous of polycules (the current term floating around polyamory-land for networks of romantic partners). On the romantic front, I want a deep monogamous connection with someone for myself, but there is something about the polycules that appeals to my tribal human roots and how I want to show up for my friends. A polycule is not a group of friends per say; it feels like something more profound. It’s more aligned to a ‘chosen family’, a tribe, your people. My friends are the people I can be fully myself with - without expectations. We unconditionally love each other and support each other through all of that. But how well do I really know any of them? How can we all show up better for the people we are about?

There is a lot of fascination around the ethical, non-monogamous world right now. The common theme of ‘how do you make it all work?’ seems to come down to communication - how are you feeling, what matters to you, how do you communicate your needs - and I think we all have a lot to learn regardless of our relationship style and type. 

How Can We Be Better Friends?

If we’re new friends (or not friends yet, but we should be), here are a couple of facts to know about me:

I hate small talk. I love to go deep but playful. I hate it when people therapy / spiritually mansplain me (so please call me out if I ever do it to you). I think the world would be better if we all leaned into our most whimsical selves. I’d rather revel in the ridiculousness of it all - how fortunate we are to be on a small rock in the middle of a galaxy - and the wonderous beauty of it all. If given the choice, I’d love to spend all my days laughing and dancing and playing but also place a lot of weight around being a ‘real person’ who can get shit done. I love to create - any entrepreneur can attest that there is an addictive power to transforming ‘nothing’ into ‘something’, even if that ‘something’ isn’t particularly good. The power of creation for me comes from the alchemy of channeling a source of tension in my body - an old hurt - and transforming it into something beautiful. I strongly believe that we don’t need to take things as seriously as we often do, and we often overcomplicate everything (I’m very guilty of this). 

I love to build worlds for people. I love design. I love building experiences - in particular, I love to throw birthday parties. I love it when things are perfectly efficient without sacrificing beauty. I love seeing a problem and finding a solution. I love symbolism. I love dream language. I love analyzing the world and people. I love little moments of spontaneity when it feels like the world is winking at you - when the light is refracted in a certain way, when I stumbled upon a heart-shaped rock or leaf, when you catch the green flash at the end of a sunset, when I look up to see the Big Dipper whenever I feel like I’ve lost my way. 

This is the visual encapsulation of my world, LouLouLand - I am equal parts whimsical and dark, fairy-like and structured, chaos and control, irrational and rational. I define myself by my contrasts. 

Me as a couch would be a 1970s De Sede Terrazza sofa with enough seats for 6 people in varying conversation formations. Sleek and elegant but unconventional. Natural but architectural. It would be moss green - maybe thick velvet or sheepskin or mongolian wool - something that you can sink into and have the feeling that you’re lying on a hillside of grass but cozier. I love to be warm and I love to snuggle so my couch would have a variety of weights of blankets and pillows for optimal coziness. There would be books and art projects scattered around and of course, plenty of snacks. Ideally, the couch would be outside on a grassy knoll next to the beach with crashing waves nearby. It would be shaded under a tree whose canopy looks like a kaleidoscope of butterflies. It is surrounded by flowers, birds (definitely parrots), and butterflies. It is perfectly positioned to take in a beautiful sunset and there is a firepit nearby for when it gets dark and the stars come out. 

I always thought I was introverted, but I have realized that the right people recharge me, and I can spend infinite time with them. I come across as strong, but am a very sensitive flower. I’ve worn a mask to survive in various challenging worlds for years (read: male-dominated worlds of finance in New York, venture capital in San Francisco, and cybersecurity in Latin America), but I am at a point in my life where I am profoundly ready to be free.

I am guilty of never asking for help—even when I do need it—and I am trying very hard to change this. I would love your help in realizing that I don’t need to do it all by myself. I would love your help to remind myself to stop stressing, stop trying to control, and just be me. 

I had a debate with my therapist this morning about what it means to be a friend. I still don’t have the answer, but it brings me tremendous joy when I see my friends become the best versions of themselves. It inspires me to do the same for myself to show up more completely for others.

I would love to learn more about you: what inspires you, what drives you, what makes you happy, what makes you laugh uncontrollably, what your innermost wish is, and what you want more than anything. And I would love to tell you more about me. And I hope we can keep going deeper in concentric circles towards a path of greater connection and love for ourselves and each other.

Why Is This Important to Me?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to show up better for the people I care about. This isn’t a new thought - I care deeply about the people I surround myself with and love to give - but it’s something I haven’t always succeeded at due to my limitations. 

I suffered from depression and anxiety for years (finally, I am very free from that burden, but if you need help, I am 100000% there for you. Mental health is challenging, and there is no shame in feeling like you can’t do it all alone). If I’m being honest, for a lot of my life, I couldn’t be there for anyone, much less myself. 

With my newfound happiness, I feel a tremendous responsibility to give back. I am here because of all of you - I love my friends and my community more deeply than I could ever say or put words to. You all shined a light when I was in darkness. I stand here in awe and gratitude to every one of you. As a result, my purpose in life is clear. I want to be a lighthouse for all those lost girls and boys who feel alone. I want to celebrate every facet of those I love (and those who are new friends) and reflect their amazingness to them. I want to fully see my friends for everything that they are - all of the sides to them that they previously were ashamed of, all of their traumas that they’ve hidden, all of the successes and missteps, and everything that is part of the human condition and part of life. I want to be vulnerable enough that I enable them to see me, support me, and give back to me in the same way. Friendship is a multi-dimensional dance of giving, receiving, supporting, loving, being. 

I’ve had a quote from Rumi echoing in my head for the last few weeks, and I think it is profoundly true: “We are all just walking each other home.”

We are all walking towards a path of self-actualization and need friends to get us there.