when two people become close
slowly, or all of a sudden? / friendship series part 1
This is part 1 of a series of essays I am writing on friendship. Although best read before the other two pieces, each essay can be read standalone.
The start of friendship is like buying a new pair of shoes. Some might fit perfectly right away, others take some time to break in. You might have to get through the awkward phase for a while, getting familiar with its quirks before you find it begins molding to you, before you find it only fits you better and better as time goes on.
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I’ve been thinking about how I’ve gotten deeply entangled with the people in my life. What constitutes closeness?
Is closeness shared context? We’re close because we lived together in university. Geographical proximity? We’re close because we live within a 15-minute radius walking distance of each other. Mutual interests/hobbies? We’re both fans of SEVENTEEN.
Of all my friendships, I’d say at a baseline they meet some sort of combination of these. I believe these are good building blocks of friendship, but they’re not necessarily determinants of what one might consider a ‘close’ friendship.
So how do we go deeper with certain people? How do you get to someone’s core?
i got you your favourite dessert
Closeness is remembering. It’s considering the other, it’s knowing what they like and dislike. It’s thinking of you texts, with specific memories or references. At dinner, K asks L how she knows I’ll like the dish she orders for me. L responds with “because I know her palate.” I try it, and I do indeed enjoy it. And of course she knew I would, because she knows me. Because she’s had 10+ years of knowing me.
Closeness is memories they have of you that you don’t even have of yourself anymore. I rely on C’s mind to recount certain niche experiences or knowledge we’ve co-created.
It’s learning from observation. F, upon seeing me eat a slice of cheese, asked if I had just eaten chocolate prior to it.
“How did you know?” I said.
“Well, you always eat cheese after you eat something sweet,” she responded.
M once told me how easy it is to get gifts for me because my interests are so deep. It’s the scene in Me Before You when Louisa gets these yellow striped socks from Will that she is absolutely ecstatic over, whereas her boyfriend got her a necklace with his name on it that you can clearly tell she is not enthused by.1 To be loved is to be known.
despite it all,
Closeness is revealing. It’s people who are close enough to you tell you the hard truths about yourself. They call you out on your bullshit. Or they tolerate it, and accept you are not without flaws. To love you in spite of it all. They bring up concerns, they’re not afraid to start conflict because they care enough about the relationship to save it. And they trust you enough to know you wouldn’t mind, that it wouldn’t end over this conflict.
Proximity makes it easier to see the flaws in a relationship, but it also makes it harder—because once you know what shaped the parties involved, the sharpness starts to dull. I think proximity shows you the problems and love decides whether you’ll look away—are you close enough to see clearly, or close enough to stop looking?
— How close should you hold your friends? by Sherry
Being around someone you have become close to forces you to quickly learn about yourself. Whether in a friendship or relationship, the situations you encounter together confront you dead-on. They teach you what it means to be human.
i see you everywhere i go
When two people become close, distance doesn’t matter. Some of my closest friendships are with people who do not live in my city - people I only get to see maybe 2, 3, maybe 4 times a year if I’m lucky.
Instead, you start seeing them everywhere. Not necessarily in a literal sense, but in the memories embued in places. A banner for the Lion King musical. Every other restaurant in Chinatown/Ossington/Queen St. West. The streets are laced with memories; I trace them like veins on my wrist.
When two people become close, the person matters more than the hangout. The person becomes a container for how you remember your experience, and they are also a big factor in your experience of it overall. It’s not that I want to check out XYZ restaurant specifically, it’s that I just want to spend time with M and A.
co-created worlds
We speak in a language of our own that’s incomprehensible to others. When two people become close, they default to their natural self around each other. Defined by the parts of you they bring out, and how unseen this is to the rest of the world. A whole world, a part of you reserved for only a specific set of people. What looks like a strange spectacle to someone else is a normal day in the face of each other. Or simply put, one person’s brand of weird is embraced and even shared.
It’s as if there’s a private channel only we can enter, only we can dial into. Our vocabulary is shared, our mannerisms adopted from each other. A chicken and egg problem, but with us.
It’s the way my guards and barriers go down around the people I love. The sillier I am around someone, the safer I feel. The more dumb I allow myself to be. I don’t have these pretenses up. I don’t feel the need to have everything together. I can say shit like mistakenly use the word hypothetical when I was trying to use the word hypocritical (my brain works like that sometimes). Or describe a movie as a “cryo-thriller” and be convinced that makes complete sense. I can act like a baby; I have zero filter.
when two people are not close
When two people are close, it is faster for you to spot when two people are not.
I like to think I am pretty social. I get along well with others, as a baseline I would say it is quite easy for me to make friends. But this does not mean I can necessarily get close with just anyone.
I’ve come to realize how rare it is to have a long-term close friendship. The way I act and feel around such friends simply does not surface with everyone.
As an example at a group hangout the other day, I realized it was quite literally impossible for me to dial into my inner child. I tried, and it felt fake. I felt like I was in host mode, leadership mode. I wasn’t as comfortable as I thought I was with them. It is obvious they were close, though. I thought to myself, “huh, why can’t I act the way I do around these guys like I do around L?”
I went home and wrote about it right away. What I realized was I had this sort of aspirational closeness feeling inside of me. I guess, the feeling of wanting to be close to someone I wasn’t yet close with. The desire to be close. But you can’t speedrun closeness. And that’s the inherent nature of intimacy and closeness! Close friendship takes time, and I will take my time to get to know them. I would say it took 3+ years of knowing and being friends with L before I felt we were actually close.
are we meant to be close to people, or do we actively choose to be?
Closeness demands reciprocity. It’s asking: how vulnerable are you willing to get with someone? How much do you trust this person? Who are you willing to let into your own interiority, your true self? You cannot get close to someone by yourself. It’s a two-way dance.
It can manifest in a few ways. When two people are meant to be close, there’s a chemical reaction. You can see it. You can sense it. You feel it in your bones, your body, in the blood pumping to your heart before you recognize it in your brain. I think when I first met L, I knew I wanted to be friends with her.
With other people, I might not have had an initial bond with them, but it is clear it’s due to the actions overtime that led us to where we stand today. The acceptances of bids. The tango of offering favours without ledgers. To show up is an intentional choice of the relationships you choose to keep in your life and how much you want to keep choosing.
You might not know who you will get close to next. But you can choose. And while you can’t control if they want to be close with you too, you can atleast make it known.
In part two, we will explore the many ways you can keep choosing.
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My 5-year old sneakers only fit the way they do on me because of how I’ve worn them over the years, and a new pair wouldn’t understand the depth or nuance of the steps I’ve taken. At the same time, someone else with the same sized feet wouldn’t be able to wear them with the same comfort.
I wonder if I shaped the shoes first or if they shaped me.
life roundup 𐙚₊˚⊹
I have been telling people about this essay series I’ve been writing for weeks (edit: months now), yet it has taken me an embarrassingly long time to get this piece to your inbox, as is the case with most of my pieces. Originally my goal was before I left for China - I am currently on my flight to Shanghai tipping tapping away in hopes of wrapping the essay up in a neat little bow. It is not the best situation that I have a 3 hour delay but atleast it gives me a few more hours to write — fast forward — I am editing from my Shanghai hotel room — fast forward — i am posting from Chongqing — fast forward — I’m posting from Guangzhou — fast forward — i’m back in toronto lmfao, went to new york and back, and now i’m ACTUALLY finally posting… why do i do this
For some context on the series: I was writing about closeness and friendship and felt like there was so much to touch on that I couldn’t contain in one piece. Ambitious, but I hope to drop the remainder of the series before the new year :’)
In other news: I went to China for the first time! It was fun but also felt a bit lackluster at times. I tend to post the highlights on my IG stories and everyone says it looks like I had a blast, but I find it’s always in the mundane moments I have the most fun than it is the big spectacles. Inside jokes between my family, laughter over the dinner table. Most of my purchases were blind boxes and trinket-adjacent things, we entered every Pop Mart we saw. I bought new volleyball shoes. Weather was not my favourite but was manageable. It was difficult for me to appreciate the food with my restrictions. I got tired of Chinese food, I’d get indigestion at fancy restaurants. Most of my trips have felt like this recently, despite knowing I did have fun I think it’s the novelty wear off - now that I’ve travelled around a bit I’ve noticed that many experiences are similar, just packaged differently. I also think I just hate being thrown off my routine; I find joy in eating meals on time, working on projects I love, exercising regularly, seeing my friends - all of which I didn’t get to do much. It was also my first time travelling with my family abroad to a new place together which comes with its own set of challenges (though I love them!).
I turned 24 in Chongqing! With the travels it has been difficult for me to properly slow down and reflect on all that there was in the last year. I hope to do so soon.
In the last two months prior to the trip, I’ve felt very at peace. Life has been so stably amazing that I wasn’t really sure what to do with myself. It is easy for me to get up in the mornings and get to work. I am working out regularly and working on my ankle rehab still (I am able to play volleyball again!). I am seeing my friends. I feel so unbelievably lucky to be surrounded by people I love.
A new Asian grocery mart opened near my condo and I honestly believe it’s a top contributor to how great I’ve felt recently, turns out all I needed was a walkable Asian grocer. My mental health is so up. I go to this store multiple times a day. Life is so awesome
I saw SEVENTEEN for the third time in Tacoma and everytime I see them I am reminded of how much I love being a SEVENTEEN fan. Everyone at the concert had such great outfits, adorned with SEVENTEEN-specific clear concert bags, bejeweled lighsticks, and custom-designed freebies that have given me a new life goal: I would like to become rich so I can devote my life to being a full-time SEVENTEEN stan. It is soooo much work and I am impressed by how these fans have managed to do it.
I went on a 14-day Instagram ban prior to my trip to see SEVENTEEN/China and honestly it has been really nice. I’ve found that I’m slightly less of a compulsive poster due to physically being unable to, and I had kept a private Are.na channel in the meanttime to fuel that posting desire. I don’t have as strong of a desire to see what everyone’s up to, nor spend hours sucked into Reels. It’s great. I would say my usage is minimal since re-downloading it as well.
A few other tidbits from the last 3 months:
Celebrated MM’s birthday
Powerpoint nights and silly minute-to-win-it games hosted by MM
Went on a scavenger hunt across the UofT campus
I’ve discovered I like milk. A grown woman at the ripe age of 24, discovering that she is both lactose and that she also enjoys lactose-free milk in the timespan of a few months. Go crazy.
Went to new york for a bit and met up with friends and acquaintances every day, I feel very lucky to know I have good company in a few different cities :’)
media i’ve been loving╰(*´︶`*)╯♡
Watched “Date my Friend” - a Korean reality show about celebrities who have volunteered their friends to participate in dating show where they date each other. I love the concept bc of how emotionally invested all the panelists are, honestly probably the most entertaining part of the show. after i finished i went to reddit to see what others thoughts and lots of controversy but i liked it lol. i find i enjoy a lot of things more when not subject to the opinions of others
You’re catching me at a very locked-in time of my life. Because of this, I have pretty much been exclusively listening to 2 playlists on repeat for the month of September as well as into October: 1) the entire discography of Kainbeats (a lo-fi beats artist) and 2) my “obsession-core” playlist comprised of sports anime osts (think haikyuu, blue lock, etc.)
Watched Physical Asia and as a result am determined to become an athletic weapon in 2026… I got hyrox-pilled overnight and we shall see how that will pan out for me next year
shoutouts ⋆⭒˚｡⋆
L, for being silly with me and inspiring most of this post
M, as always, for your presence and grace. also for getting me a snoopy toy camera for my birthday :’)
C, for buying me another snoopy plate in Kyoto after mine broke, among many other things
Y, for telling me to just stop worrying and having that mindset shift actually impact my life so drastically (link to tweet here)
ML, a long-time carat (seventeen fan) I met at the concert who helped me buy a beanie in the VIP merch line when it was sold out in the regular merch line, and who also gave F and I lots of tips on the concert/pre-concert activities (despite being a regular seventeen concert go-er it seems I was ill-prepared). She was also barricade at the show and happened to get on the jumbotron for AJU NICE high note and I felt so proud.
A, who helped takeover hosting my creative co-working series while S and I were away
The above community for a lovely cottage retreat and birthday potluck celebrating our 1-year anniversary :’)
AG^2 for escape rooms and adventures in Wonderland (as well as driving for most of it)
MM for baking me apple pie
My family for a great China trip together
Any of my friends who I may not have drawn examples from in this post, but believe me I appreciate and value you so so deeply and am so grateful for our friendship :’)
this scene:
I loved reading this, the shoe analogy is so good! To be seen is to be loved 🥹 I've been thinking a lot recently about what it means to be close to people so the timing of this post is fantastic, and I can relate too much about meaning to post something then suddenly you blink and it's been months 😭