The Horcrux Theorem of Friendship
How friendship stores versions of us we forget
I am like the Horcruxes in Harry Potter.
Snippets of me across different phases of my life lie strewn with the friends I have made. Some have most parts, some, a few. The childhood ones hold fragments of me that I had forgotten ever existed, deep in their memory. They are mostly about me in all my unvarnished, geeky glory. Whereas the newer friends hold a more finished-yet-still-geeky moi in their DNA.
My childhood friend and I have still (somehow) maintained our friendship through the different (and often difficult) seasons of our lives. She is one person who knew me before I was really me, before my public persona, my books, before my politically correct speeches. The picture she has of me, nobody else ever has – she has all versions of me. The bad haircuts, the braces, the ‘will I ever have boobs’, the crushes, the teasings, the school trips, the hideous, hideous fashion choices. And boy, what it must cost her to carry the weight of that witness.
Then there are the friends I made in college and post-graduate. Many, many of them still brighten my life with their humour, their kick-assery, and just the goofy-college-girl, the Maths-geek, the stick-thin figure with an overemotional heart on her sleeve view of me. They own my (and theirs) memories of the most carefree time I was ever given. Malhar, boys, SNDT ACM Students’ Chapter, good-looking professors, train crushes, bus crushes, festivals, less hideous fashion choices, the sheer time we spent together, it bonds you with a person for life – very much like the bond allows the Na’vi to connect with the creatures of Pandora in Avatar, minus the hair slotting experience.
Then there are the ones I made in later life – corporate world, mother group, society friends, and now author friends. The last category is the luckiest – or the unluckiest – as my friendship comes like a seasoned iron pan. The basement is built; the house is ready, we just need to add the friendship floors. This bunch – this gorgeous, talented, supportive, generous bunch – gets me on every level. They understand my nerdy roots and how it renders in my still juvenile humour to my angst, from my ‘teenagers sucks’ to ‘why is this sentence not coming to me’, and I get them too.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Because not all of these friendships speak the same language. My grammar for each one changes depending on who’s on the other side.
With my female friends, I am careless with words in a particular fashion, the carelessness of someone who knows the basic understanding is already present. We share a body of knowledge that was never taught, just lived. How violating a gaze can be. How a crowded train is a different experience when you are a female. And also, because female friendship goes everywhere: how a sanitary napkin can snag and pull in the most undignified way possible, the kind of thing you say out loud and every woman in the room winces in recognition, while every man in the room learns something new about the body, he has spent his life not inhabiting.
Male friends occasionally need me to set context about certain topics, mostly because they have never had to think of a situation from that specific perspective. My conversations with them range over such a variety of topics, and many a time I have learnt a thing or two from them. Even being humbled. What they understand differently, but not any lesser. Like the tall man who understands intimidation from the outside. The friend who doesn’t understand the gaze but will walk you to your car, anyway. The raunchy jokes that stop at a certain door and not cross it – unlike my girl gang. I share deep friendships with them where neither of us is performing our genders.
With my male friends, I am the same unhinged person, but softer around the edges somehow, just naturally arriving there. Maybe it’s protection (in my mind). Maybe I instinctively shield them from the full weight of what it means to move through the world in this body. Or maybe, and this is the uncomfortable truth, I am still, even now, slightly editing myself. Not my humour, not my opinions. Just the rawness. Just access to the very bottom junk drawer.
And then there is that absolutely rare male friend who crosses over. The one who gets it more than he should. Understands what is not said and doesn’t judge. The comfort level there is almost as pure as a female friendship, where I am the same everywhere. The no-holds-barred conversation, the venting, the uncomfortable truths spill out just as easily.
I didn’t always have access to this. In my younger years, sometimes unknowingly, I did “perform” for those connections. It’s only now, in my forties, that the performance has stopped. Femininity takes a backseat. Societal pressure eases. The worry about being judged dissolves. What remains is just pure companionship, unhinged, geeky, and honest.
And sometimes, in the middle of life, of firefighting, of existing, a friendship reaches across time and hands you back a piece of yourself you’d forgotten to miss. Last year, I met my childhood friend when she was visiting. And while sipping a coffee, I was confessing to wishing for something that was missing in my life. She looked at me and said: the young girl I once knew deserved this, and she would be so happy if it came true.
Stunned, I looked at my buddy, who knew me warts and all. And in my mind, I thanked her for reuniting me with the young girl I once was. And mostly, for remembering how I used to be, a shared sliver of me that still survived in her memory.
I am many things to many people, and many people hold parts of me not visible to others. Or parts of me that have been lost to life, but are alive in their recollections.
I am my own Horcrux. Bright and dim, lost and found, distributed across the people who chose to stay. And sometimes, in a coffee shop, over a Spanish Latte, one of them hands a fragment back.
And for that moment, I was whole.
Who holds a fragment of you that you’d forgotten existed? And when did they last hand it back?
Comment here or email me at natasha.harish.sharma@gmail.com.
😀😀😀✨✨✨💫💫🌟🌟
I believe in Horcruxes as much as you do. So here is to those parts that make us whole, cheers.