O, Friend, My Bosom Said
On Finding Literary Friendships and Community | Treat Yourself with Brittany Ackerman #1
In our age of self-awareness and personal care, we have been collectively encouraged to treat ourselves—to our daily overpriced coffee and little pastries, to taking hot girl walks, to learning a new craft, buying houseplants, redecorating our space, spending time with our furry friends, etc. Treating ourselves means doing something enjoyable that isn’t “necessary.” We treat ourselves to froyo not because we need to, but because we want to! We deserve it!
Treat Yourself is a monthly column on process where Brittany Ackerman explores this notion of self-care. How do we treat ourselves when we write? How can we take care of our physical, mental, and emotional health and well-being as writers? Is it possible to find peace in our daily lives by balancing what we give to ourselves versus what we give to our work?
Brittany wants to find out! In these dispatches from her writing desk, she encourages writers to join in on the conversation by commenting, engaging, and sharing personal experiences– the struggles, the wins, the what the checks!? Writing can be lonely, but it doesn’t have to be, so let’s treat ourselves to the support and encouragement of our literary community– right here, right now! Or, like, only if you feel up to it? If not, no worries, hehe.
O, Friend, My Bosom Said
“There are good ships and wood ships, ships that sail the sea, but the best ships are friendships, and may they always be” —Irish proverb
In third grade, Dee asks me to be her pen pal. I ask her what a pen pal is exactly. She tells me that we will write each other notes and pass them back and forth. I am afraid of getting in trouble, of our teacher, Mrs. Gladstone, who is very pregnant, catching us pass notes. Dee goes first.
Do you want to be my best friend? Circle Y or N.
I circle Y, and we are now best friends.
She makes an envelope out of notebook paper and sticks a smiley face sticker inside. She tells me that she “hates writing cursive” because it’s “so stupid,” and I put my hand over my mouth to laugh. We don’t ask about boys or our families. I don’t tell her that my mom took my brother and me to see Good Will Hunting and cried after because she didn’t realize how many times Matt Damon and Ben Affleck would say the word “fuck.” All I remember from the movie is, “Do you like apples?” So I write to Dee:
Do you like apples?
There is a desire to be impressive, to pull her in as a reader, to connect the experience of my life to the experience of hers and write it down. This is the first time I pull something from a movie into my real life.
I imagine the beginning of time. I see a sheepdog jump over a cliff and the herd of sheep that follow. I hear the string of a harpsichord plucked and vibrating. I see the way time whirrs in that low, continuous growl, like the call of a distant bird.
How do I put into words that I feel lonely? How do I tell Dee that I love her already without scaring her away?
Dee sends a note to Rachel. Rachel doesn’t like me. And now Dee and Rachel are best friends. A smiley face sticker on the back of Rachel’s hand. Dee laughing at something funny. She laughs so hard, she gets in trouble.
*
Another Wednesday night after workshop spent at the Irishmen. It’s 10:30 pm, but sleep is not an essential thing just yet. We are adults, writers with jobs and significant others and difficult pasts, and when workshop ends, we must continue the conversation elsewhere. We are never done talking, ever.
The green awning invites us in. We sit at a table on stools and some of us order beers. Someone who is a stranger will become my boyfriend for the next two and a half years. He moves his messenger bag so I can sit next to him. He orders a club soda and lime and a chicken potpie. I order a beer and it comes with a slice of orange on the rim.
We do not talk about workshop; how it went, how it was disappointing, how we have no idea what’s going on in this part of the essay or that part of the story, or how to decipher this poem or that craft piece. Instead, we talk about books and movies and the not-so-distant future and the way we deserve more of a stipend for teaching undergrad and the way we are lucky and unlucky to be here.
In grad school, I am caught between my past and my present. An ex-boyfriend texts me from a few miles away. Another ex sends emails from a different state.
Are these my people, I wonder? Will this group of dysfunctional creatives be with me forever and ever? I know everyone’s stories. I know their words.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay about friendship. He said, “A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.”
But am I sincere? Am I truly myself right now?
“…thus we weave social threads of our own, a new web of relations; and, as many thoughts in succession substantiate themselves, we shall by and by stand in a new world of our own creation, and no longer strangers and pilgrims in a traditionary globe. My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them to me” (Emerson).
I did not seek an MFA program. It sought me. Across the street from the campus, I was waitressing at an Italian restaurant. I longed for a place to learn more. I longed for community. And then, one of the bartenders got accepted to the writing program and I thought to give it a try. And then it happened. And then I stayed on the other side of the street.
Ten years from now, most of the writers at this table will have children. We will exchange pictures of our babies and give each other branches of support from time to time. Whenever one of us gets something published, we will think, I hope the department sends out an email about this. And it will take me many years to realize that these were my people for a time and that, as Emerson said, “The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
*
How does one make friends as an adult? And not just friends, but literary friends? Do we meet each other in book clubs, at readings, at bookstores? Do we find one another online in the comments of a famous writer’s post? Do we care deeply about each others’ pasts, deep enough to want some kind of future that will outlive the present? Or is it just for now, surface-level, for the aesthetic of the moment, something to capture and then let go?
I find myself in a book club with many bright women. We meet outside at a park and discuss books and enjoy snacks and banter. I have not felt so much camaraderie around other women since college when I was in a sorority.
For a time, this book club becomes my identity. I am okay if I can read the book we all voted on and show up to the monthly meeting. I am okay if I can sit in the circle and make ambitious critique on form and structure and content. Yet, I leave each meeting feeling bad about myself in a way I'm not sure how to express. I came, I read, I added to the discourse. But what am I really gaining? What is the benefit of this group?
The thing is, if one woman wears a sundress and I wear jeans, I feel subordinate. If one woman has a book deal (which a few do), then I feel a lack. If one of the women has a special ARC from a publisher, one that comes with a cute bucket hat and a Frisbee, then I feel completely at a loss. I only feel good in the group when I have something to offer.
The group disbands through waves of the pandemic. The women move out of state. The women get more book deals. The women do not actually get along as well as we all thought we did. Something about the disbanding feels more honest than the formation.
“I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage,” said Emerson. “When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know. For now, after so many ages of experience, what do we know of nature, or of ourselves?”
Were those my people?
And then I move away, and then I become pregnant, and I go to a Kevin Wilson reading, and he is introduced by Ann Patchett with the loveliest of introductions, and then Kevin Wilson comes back up to the podium, and he says to the audience, “Ann is the only writer who I can actually call a friend. I deeply admire her work. She’s my favorite writer. And us writers can’t say that about most other writers.”
Why is it so hard for writers to make other writer friends? Are we jealous? Are we insecure? Are we wondering what they can do for us, or vice versa, what we can do for them? A writer is always working; writing as well as performing excruciating acts of mental gymnastics. Is it impossible for us to make room for the enjoyment of life? For the pleasure of what it means to have a friend, through thick and thin? Are we able to be there for someone wholly? Or does all our love go to our own page?
Slowly, over time, I make my way back to some of the women from book club. Maybe there is no more park with the view of the lake or no more sundresses or no more Tupperware of blueberries, but there is finally tenderness.
*
I take my daughter to the bookstore. We wander over to literary fiction and I show her my novel. She grabs it because it’s pretty, all pink and yellow and bright like a piece of fruit, and we take a photo together.
I put the book back on the shelf and we make our way to the kid’s area, which is much more exciting. There’s a stage for a puppet show and benches for reading, and my daughter takes a book about pizza off the shelf and skims through it. We find a book that plays bird songs. We find a book about the blue dog with an accent from the popular TV show. I let her explore and choose and seek.
It’s amazing that a bookstore never overwhelms me; all those words on pages; all those ideas written down and printed and bound. The books don’t feel like friends, like community. They feel like pillars, like birds perched high and above. And although I am right there with them, I still search for a place to land.
*
Works Cited: Friendship Essay by Emerson
I wonder if part of it is that writers and other artists share more of ourselves, through our work, than we normally would in making friendships. We therefore can't have the kind of superficial connections that are possible when one doesn't reveal one's full self and it's that much harder to find our people because the bar is set so high. But when we do, well, that person is as special as Ann Patchett <3
I really enjoyed this piece. Thanks
Brittany's essay strike a chord. Friendship, a form of love, is essential.
Without it, we drift anonymously on a sea of doubt.