What Do We Do With Outgrown Friendships?

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North

A monarch butterfly perched on a leaf

“And yet what if friendship and love weren’t opposite points between which to pivot but loci that overlap in varying degrees? Under the Romantic ideal of love, we’ve come to expect that every great romance should also contain within itself, in addition to erotic passion, a robust friendship. But we hold with deep suspicion the opposite—a platonic friendship colored with the emotional hues of romantic love, never given physical form but always aglow with an intensity artificially dimmed by the label of plain friendship. Perhaps we need not label these kaleidoscopic emotional universes after all; perhaps resisting the urge to classify and contain is the only way to do justice to their iridescent richness of sentiment and feeling.” 

– Maria Popova, The Monarchs, Music, and the Meaning of Life: The Most Touching Deathbed Love Letter Ever Written 

When Cera and I were girls, not too long ago, there was a small clearing in the forest that secluded our middle school. Our friendship began with the first ribbed stump in that little forest. Here, in Monarchia (as we called it), we were fairies with the wings of monarch butterflies, dining at a polished table of the sturdiest wood. It soon became the last one standing.

This makeshift table felt safer than any at home; I could hide on top of it and breathe fresh air, rather than my own breath beneath Mama’s round, clothed coffee table. Each afternoon, I picked the velcro straps of my knee pads open to air dry, layered on two swipes of lip chap, propped up my skateboard, crossed my legs on that stump, and closed my eyes. I didn’t need to open them to see the trees swirling like spirographs, the early September wind blowing in every direction at once inside my forest cutout. But I did need to open them when that same wind, one afternoon, brought with it a voice hardly distinguishable from the breeze. 

“Are you asleep?”

I opened my eyes, disoriented, and looked into the face of the reddest-haired girl I ever saw. Her eyes were like the tiger’s eye crystals in my earrings, her freckles and lips like stippled copper, and her hair in four uneven braids that fell to her ankles. 

Being twelve, I answered, “I must be. Are you even real?”

Cera smirked and a few crooked teeth poked out. “I mustn’t be, at least not now, because no one ever answers my questions. Even if rudely.”

“Well, do you always ask silly questions? People can’t sleep sitting up, obviously.”

“And yet, everyone does, don’t they?”

Unsure of what she meant, but expecting something deep the way I’d interpret her response now, I frowned.

Cera rolled her eyes and dug her fists into her hips. “Well, aren’t you impossible? It’s called math class.”

I smiled but kept my eyes narrowed. “Okay. Touché. What do you want? This was my spot first.”

Cera brightened and crossed her arms. “A friend.”

Bold. Alright. “I don’t do friends.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t you know this is always how it starts? Iron sharpens iron, doesn’t it?”

I didn’t know what to say to that, and I didn’t get her reference at the time. I turned my back to her and hugged my knees to my chest. A moment later, I felt another back lean gently against mine. I didn’t object, but I did say, “It’s weird how quiet your voice is. It doesn’t match what you say.”

“Gentleness and assertiveness aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“I don’t understand half of what you say.”

“That’s okay. Most grown-ups don’t either.”

“What are you a witch or something? Are you trying to cast a spell on me?”

“I don’t know yet, but you’re supposed to find out at thirteen, so I hear.”

“So I hear? Who says that?” I laughed out loud. When she didn’t shift her body or reply, I cleared my throat and added, “I think I like fairies better.”

“Me too, actually. Why can’t fairies cast spells?”

“Do you know any?”

“No, but let’s invent one, shall we?”

She pulled away and turned around to get onto her knees. I began to turn, too, but she stopped me. 

“Stay still.”

I remember feeling swept along, but not uncomfortable. She took apart her braids and finger-combed my long, black hair. Then, she began nimbly braiding them together.

“What are you doing?” I asked without pulling away.

“Linking the spell to us—makes it more powerful.”

“I want to know what it is first!”

“Shh. No, you don’t. Then it won’t come true!”

“That’s for wishes not spells.”

“Who says? We can make our own rules here. And you don’t need words if there’s a physical binding. A braid is most powerful, you know.”

I didn’t know but must have agreed because I let her finish braiding, and when she did, she said in that soft voice, “There, just like monarch butterfly wings.”

We curled up, back to back on the stump, and decided that naps solidified spells even further. I knew something within me had permanently changed when I stirred an hour later at dusk. I tried to sit up, and in doing so, took her whole body with me. We both screamed, “Ouch.”

***

So it went on like this. Every September afternoon was magical, the school day a distant thought, until the sign appeared. We saw it pegged into the ground at the rim of the forest as we were leaving. It was October tenth—I know because I’d just turned thirteen.

“What are zoning laws?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve never said those words together.”

“I only say them when I don’t care to find out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the signs don’t have our name on them, right? So they’re not our problem.”

“But this is where Monarchia is. What if the sign means something bad?”

“I don’t know what it means.”

“Yeah, you said that.”

“Let’s go home and not worry about it, okay? I made a birthday cake yesterday!” Cera smiled and reached for my hand. 

I put it in my pocket. “My hands are cold and chapped. I need some lotion first.”

Cera nodded, and even now, I’m not sure she suspected anything at all.

***

But I did worry. I logged onto my Dad’s computer to do some research, and I didn’t like what I found. The forest was to be demolished. A commercial complex was to be put in its place—a place where there used to be pre-contact Indigenous villages, paleolithic camps, and ancient Lake Iriquois’ glacial shorelines. Farmers grew acres of corn, squash, and beans—the three sisters—and accomplished hunters caught perch and Atlantic salmon. 

In a strange turn, I didn’t feel the urge to tell Cera any of this. I flopped onto my bed so hard it sank, wondering if she’d care when I told her what was really happening. Monarchia was already my sister, and although I’d never truly invited her to be, I felt lost unless Cera was the third.

***

“There’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Yes, there is! We can talk to our school and we can write letters to the mayor. We can at least try. Don’t you care about Monarchia?”

“Well, sure. But it’s just a place.”

“And am I just a person?”

Cera bit her lips. “Yes.”

And something occurred to me. It had been two months, and I hadn’t even told her my name. Nor had she asked.

“Hm. That makes sense,” I said coldly.

“Why?”

“You don’t even know my name.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Impossible. I never told you.”

“Rachel, I care about you. You’re my very best friend. But attachments only make hurt more hurtful, you know?” 

Only I would have noticed the thin film over her eyes just now. I remember wanting to shake my head firmly and clench my fists. I wanted to say the thirteen-year-old version of, “You’re right and wrong at the same time. If you care about me—or anybody past, present, and future—then you should care about a forest being demolished.” Yet, I was so afraid to lose her that I didn’t do or say anything. I just stood there, still on my skateboard, damp palms gripping the bark of a tree, soothed by how she mysteriously knew my name.

But by not doing or saying anything, you almost always lose people anyway.

***

I remember how they stole the forest in loops—like spirographs. It was cruel to mimic the motion of wind-swirled branches, and the dendrochronology of the little stump that mirrored our fingerprints. Cera and I met one final time before the privacy of tree coverage vanished. She hadn’t changed with the transition to fall in late October, and as the forest was deracinated, so was our friendship—flattened like sparkling water left out too long.

Cera had everything to say but what I hoped she would. But it turns out I didn’t need her to say much more; an overwhelming flutter of monarch butterflies appeared from behind a crane, creating an air cloud that, for a moment, didn’t smell like construction. And then they left for their three-thousand-mile journey to Mexico, in time for Día de Muertos. They’re one of the most poignant symbols of maturity, death, and rebirth. And Cera followed them.

From the edge of my driveway that evening, a new moon nowhere to be seen in the sky, the very last thing she said to me was, “I think you are a witch, indeed.” She smiled so brightly it hurt my eyes to look at her.

“Why?” I asked, unlocking my front door.

“You wear my eyes just below your ears.”

***

I couldn’t bear to go back after that. And neither did she, as far as I know. Twenty years later, the tiger’s eye teardrops are still my day-to-day earrings—a gift from a grandmother I never met. Like her, I continue to question if Cera was ever real. She was a grade older than me, so I didn’t usually pass her in the halls at school, but I never saw her again. Perhaps, subconsciously, I didn’t look hard enough. But I do look for her in everyone else—her love and lack weren’t mutually exclusive (I understand what this means now). I outgrew her, but, I’ve never outgrown the intimate friendship she gave me when I needed it most.

I need it now. We all do. 

I’m not thirteen anymore, and chances are you aren’t either. It’s cold approaching February—even colder approaching a Valentine’s Day amid so much isolation, violence, and crisis. I’m trying—rather desperately—to ask myself, “What does love look like—and what can it look like—right now? What do we need from each other?” It can begin like Cera’s. But it has to be more. We have to want more for one another. 

I’m struggling in this world like you—the economy, corrupt governments and leaders, climate catastrophes, human rights stabbed by the stroke of a pen, and so much more. Most days, I don’t know what to do. But what I do know is that intimate friendship is just as endangered as those monarchs and my childhood forest. Protecting it—and activating it as a gateway to community organizing—is to seek out new third spaces that don’t cost money, meet new people, and find collective care. Is it not a start to know what type of witch or fairy you are? Let’s be ones willing to healthily outgrow. Ones who remember not to forget.