Friendship is surely one of my favorite areas of reflection. I have always lingered over it, it seems to me, fascinated by all that it offers in terms of possibilities, variations, nuances, so much does it intersect with all other forms of bonds, that it invites itself into the art of accompaniment, into love, siblings, even bonds with animals. Like a final resistance to this existential solitude that pursues us from birth to death, friendship makes life bearable for us, when everything else around us collapses, when there are the modern “Irish wars” and we also suffer from “seeing a friend cry” (Brel).
This week, I was that friend who had the great privilege of seeing her friends cry. Through unrelated circumstances, I found myself in that availability offered by summer, which made me a witness, present, with an accessible heart and open hands, to gather the tears of my friends, each touched by different trials. The loss in the background, obviously — the cruel loss of a loved one that makes the days unbearable, the breaths difficult to renew, the reasons for living scattered to the four corners of a world that had suddenly become too big — marked their days and I could cry, reflect and tolerate a little of the great silence of emptiness, with them.
I am not always a good friend, according to my definition. My greatest flaw is a lack of availability, precisely, a relationship with time that I never manage to fit into the boxes of my desires, which always exceed those of the agenda. When the energy is at work, at the clinic or writing, I am in a dedication that sometimes makes me cut off from this essential presence to what, however, is so precious to me. We live in a world where everything escapes us, but first and foremost time, and, every summer, I renew to myself vows that I struggle not to betray: “never again, Nathalie, not to have time for friendships”. I work, however, this summer, the proof is what you are reading right now! I work, but I work less, this less that allows one to savor time, to find the space within oneself that offers the other an authentic interface, as if the house became bigger, when one runs less inside it. I know that I am writing to you from the place of my privilege, that of being able to work less, that of choosing when I work and that, above all, of being surrounded by friends who know how to forgive my absences. Loneliness is one of the greatest psychosocial scourges weighing down our societies, which still separate individual needs too much from common goals, which overvalue the love of the couple and the family to the detriment of this bond that keeps us alive, well beyond romantic breakups, family rejections: friendship, social bonds, ultimately belonging to a community, however small it may be.
“If I am pressed to say why I loved him, I feel that this can only be expressed by answering: because it was him, because it was me,” said Montaigne about his famous friendship with Étienne de la Boétie. There is indeed this erasure of the boundaries of the soul between two or more people which is typically that of friendship. Without bodies, as this same Montaigne said, friendship is distinguished, according to him, from love by a form of spiritual fusion, an elevation which allows the meeting of a thought and feelings which nourish each other. Friendship thus allows us to remain both where we are and in this elsewhere where we are beings still enriched, as if embellished by our friends. For me, friendship is that place where I can fall, be carried, see myself enlarged, admire, feel admired, but also that where I can receive from that true mirror which allows me to distinguish what deserves to be thrown overboard from what, on the contrary, demands to be preserved in this crossing of my existence.
When I disappoint a friend, I disappoint myself. When a friend disappoints me, it happens that I never get over it. Nothing hurts more, for me, than these heartbreaks that arise in unsuspected areas. Friendship is a bit like the bond of love in that it can begin with an explosion of confetti, and end with the bitterest of disappointments. After the confetti, inevitably comes this moment when the other reveals himself in what he is, more and more, and, as in the bond of love, it is there, perhaps, that the true nature of the bond of friendship begins.
There, as in the shrink’s office, there is indeed, yes, something of the famous transference, the one that involves pinning on the other a whole bunch of projections, desires that do not much concern the real person in front of whom we find ourselves. And as in the cinema, inevitably, the lights come back on at some point. We then become aware that there was indeed a screen, with on top of it all a bunch of images that made us vibrate, certainly, but which came from an imaginary world that, sometimes, no longer fits the reality of this other to whom we are addressing ourselves. And it is there, it seems to me, that the most beautiful part of friendship can unfold. We become touched by the wound of the other, by his unique identity configuration, by the precise way he has chosen (or not) to walk his person in a world that escapes him, also him. We are seduced at first, then afterwards, we root our friendship in a form of decision to support this imperfect being, just like us, in this path that we take together. This week, it warmed my heart to be there, only, for my sad friends.
Little laces of words, of new memories, pearled through this silence which is also the privilege of true friendships, have gently settled in the solid setting of our affection, deepening even further our so necessary friendships.