god forbid a girl passes the bechdel test
you still haven't even met all the people who will love you !!!! on arriving at your Elsewhere and turning 25 <3
When I was 18 years old, I felt inescapably trapped in friendships that were never meant for me. Among the score of reasons why these friendships never worked, is the fact that our priorities have always been glaringly different. Whereas they would spend too much time planning lust-charged romantic escapades with boys who begged them for sex but refused to so much as smile at them in public – I would be…utterly confused (probably cause - and i realised this belatedly - i’m a lesbian). They’d stuff miniskirts and high heels into the school backpacks still adorned with funky badges and keychains that betrayed their lingering girlhood.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to join them... it was just that I was never asked. they’d create group chats without me to organise Friday night plans, and the deafening hush that fell over any room I walked into that they too happened to occupy was all the proof I needed that they’d frequently bitch about me. The awkward, inconveniently passionate, politically-charged friend who stuck out like a sore thumb among a clique of girls who traversed the Earth like it was their sole purpose to draw attention from boys who never knew how to love them right.
God forbid a girl passes the Bechdel test, right?
I felt indescribably lonely and wanderlust for an ‘elsewhere’ in which friendships were built on care and trust. I prayed that one day I’d be familiar with the intuitive knowing and understanding that seemed central to female friendships and its transcendence. That which cannot be replicated by anyone else on Earth, much less the fleeting lover.
At 25, I’ve broken out of the stifling confines of their cliquey excuse for friendship. While they occasionally call me and complain to me about each other, they’ll often tell me how lucky I am that I am untouched by the drama that plagues their lives, still, 7 years later, over the same boys, the same hostility. They’ll tell me horror stories about violations of “bro code” and betrayal, she acts like such a pick me around him, when she knows I liked him first. The secret relief that washes over me in these moments is a reminder that, transactional placeholder friendships are an evil I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy.
At 24 and 25, I sit around the friends I’ve made in my 20s and feel the love flooding my senses like petrichor. Something beautiful that emerges after tumult, something ordained. In the presence of my favourite people, I feel god. I let her disarm me. I stretch my arms wide open and accept the love that’s healed me time and time again. In their quiet laughter, in the soft caresses on my arm as I recount the awkward pain of a nightmare date, in their kind and open eyes, ever patient. In their instinctive willingness to extend their hearts and minds to causes that require their presence. This, to me, is the Elsewhere I’ve longed for.
All this to say that it was in fact a momentary lapse, a blip in the matrix, or maybe even demonic possession – who’s to say? - that drove me to invite my friends from a lifetime ago to celebrate my 25th birthday. Clinging to some morsel of hope that maybe this time it would be different, maybe this time they wouldn’t all talk over each other, or bring the same boys from when we were 18. This is how I learn that old expectations, too, die hard.
The logistics of what unfolded were irrelevant to the dull ache. It refuses to reason, it only remembers or is reminded. None of them were free, at least not for a girl’s night, and never in the absence of cheap, fleeting dick – if their “sorry Dru, I’m not free on Saturday” followed by “do you guys wanna go watch this boy play at this bar on Saturday?” was anything to go by. Possibly realising the new and revised plans were being shared on the group chat with me, they soon backtracked. Now everyone was suddenly wanting to come by on Saturday. Their forced eagerness to celebrate my birthday with me – was now to prove a point, we aren’t the same friends we used to be.
Perhaps it’s the pettiness or the humiliation that threatened to pull me under, but suddenly, I too was unavailable for my own proposed birthday plans. Steeling myself and with every intention to shrug it off, the tears, admittedly, took me by surprise. And being at work when it all went down, was less than ideal.
Diva down.
(In a world insisting on nonchalance, it really is tough out here being the only chalant bitch around…)
Slinking away to the bathroom, I pressed my palms into my eyes in a feeble attempt at reversing my tears. Like, if they don’t fall, I still have the upper hand.
And still they came, an almost disrespectful squandering of my own nonsensical logic. Suddenly, I was 18 again, violently swallowing the lump in my throat as I sat around them in an empty classroom listening, as they airily discuss their most recent rendezvous– a night out, a party, the clubs – one I was, yet again, left out of.
In the clarity of hindsight and dare I say, the newfound perspective that comes with being 25, I can admit that it really was quite dramatic (I did get my period the next day). I feel silly, even now, for having cried over them in the office bathroom, in 2025, the year of our lord. I feel silly for so easily having lost sight of the sacred connections, bonds and friendships I’ve collected like precious stones, in the six years since I decentred the group of girls that never really knew me.
In the office bathroom, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror and realised 2 things:
1. Just how waterproof, my waterproof mascara was (nary a ghost of a smudge - thank you Ms. Huda)
2. How much time has passed, how much water under the bridge.
(one might say: the 2 faces of a Gemini)
Wiping away my tears in the bathroom mirror, I was realising that while I may not be everything I want to be in that moment, I am now a lot of things I could only hope I’d become six years ago.
And so, my birthday was a quiet affair. My family, the only people I had shared my moment of weakness with, did the most to make it a day filled with joy. And it was. Letters, gifts and flowers coming through. My university friends from New Zealand called me at 2am, 9am and 4pm, and while my heart ached with just how much I miss them, I was once again reminded of the wonderful turns my life has taken and the people that have come with each twist.
I had, by then, acknowledged that starting my 25th year with people who would’ve dragged their feet to the function, would certainly have been a bad omen.
It was instead, a day of quiet reflection. Thanking the universe for the trials, the lessons, the people, the love and loss of the previous year, all of which I look back on with a certain grateful reverence. These are the patterns of my being, that which has made me softer, smarter, stronger, and braver, for all that will come with 25.
Come Monday, I was flying out of the house for work, 15 minutes late - time blindness, a cheap excuse for pulling up 10 minutes late for our Monday morning staff meeting. Apologising profusely to my boss for my tardiness, she assures me with a belated birthday hug, that nothing useful is ever discussed in the first 10 minutes of the meeting, just the usual politics and gossip that is customary for a women’s rights organisation.
I went about my workday, just happy to be there. My boss informs me that we have a meeting at 4:30, and she tells me we can have the cake I brought in then. Ordinarily, the prospect of working during teatime is damn near sacrilege in this country, but I shrug it off. The grind never stops, two birds one stone, etc.
At 4:30, my cake and I head downstairs for the meeting. Through the frosted glass of the meeting room, I first noticed flickering lights, but with little time to process what it might be, I precariously balanced the cake in one hand and slide open the door with the other.
A sea of red, white, black and silver balloons at my feet.
To my right was what was once an office desk, now rid of its contents to accommodate a several platters of food. Sliced vegetables with a hummus dip, crackers, eclairs, pastries, skewers, chicken wings, and 2 bottles of wine.
Stuck to the wall were silver helium balloons that spelled out “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” and beneath that, a “25.”
The golden flickering I noticed through the frosted glass - fairy lights adorning one of several bookcases that make up our expansive library.
And in front of me? Everyone that has come to mean everything to me in the last year. Researchers, policy influencers, human rights lawyers, women’s rights and queer rights activists - change makers. The people who have taken space in my heart, now filling up the room waiting to celebrate my birthday with me.
And after all was said, done, eaten, sung and embraced, we cleaned up, closed shop and headed to a pro Palestine protest, cause what else would we be doing?
This was once the Elsewhere I prayed for. And right now, in this very moment, I am exactly where I need to be.
if you like my work and would like to support a cause, you can do so by buying me a coffee :) - this month, any $ received will go to medical aid for Palestinians.
babe wake up, disco tigers just dropped another banger of a post!!!! that line about petrichor hit me like a truck, thats exactly what it’s like!!! we go through so much emotional tumult trying to find our people, but when we do, my god does it feel like a miracle. ive been lucky enough to have that irl with friends, but also with u each time ur name hits my screen, ur an absolute breath of fresh air, dru!