Whether it lasts a day or a lifetime, no friendship is ever a mistake.
I met my first 'bestie' in kindergarten. We'd bonded over glitter glue and Big Comfy Couch only to later became bitter frenemies all of three weeks later. I'd learned a crucial, vital lesson with that devastating heartbreak:
Finding true 'friendship' is tough. Keeping it—even harder.
In its earliest stages friendship is fragile, delicate but fierce with promise. It must be tended and nurtured, allowed to grow and thrive and flourish in a light, easy grip that doesn't bruise or suffocate, which is often easier said than done.
These sinuous connections evolve as we grow, often transitioning from the ones we hung out with on mommy & me play-dates, to those we chose for ourselves as we navigate the terrifying minefield of boys, major skin issues and homework. And what happens beyond those days of school when you no longer have the threads of class or the mutual commiseration over boy drama to tether you together?
It's easy to get sucked into petty jealousy when our friends grow closer to someone else and you'll hate yourself for being envious, but there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. Life happens, and it can either drive you together or wrench you apart.
Sometimes, despite all efforts, friendships die. That's an inevitable truth that is impossible to fight. So when another comes to a close, don't get swallowed up in anger or fall into the blame game over unavoidable circumstances. Accept it for what it is—that this person was drawn into your life for a purpose which has been fulfilled. Smile over what you shared, and then open your heart to the possibilities of something new and equally beautiful yet to come.
Then there are some friendships—a very rare and lucky few—the not only survive, but endure.
I was fifteen when I met them. My Sisters.
I'd come to New York, as I did every year, to while away the summer with relatives. The late June air was hot but not humid and the sky a wash of denim blue. The sun, bright and dazzling in its warm, danced across my skin until it almost sizzled. As if the rays were sliding through my pores and filling me with light, casting away all the gloom of dark shadows that clung inside of me like cob webs.
A truly gorgeous day. The kind that hummed with promises and changed lives.
I was in line at a Starbucks, nose in a book as usual, when some douchebro dumped his honey latte frappucino over my head and cackled with his friends. I stood there, locked in a mortified tableau that stuttered in halting frames of movement as the iced-brew slid down my face, soaking me in coffee and shame. I was no stranger to this kind of behavior, but that certainly didn't make it any easier to swallow every time some jerk thought it hilarious to humiliate me.
But I wouldn't change that moment for anything, because that was when I met Shayne.
Like me, she was...different, though perhaps not so obvious on the outside with long hair of unassuming brown, a lean build with symmetrical features most guys would consider hot but were equally attractive to girls, and without a single tattoo or piercing (those didn't start to appear until she hit twenty).
With a kind of swagger about her that was all attitude and honesty, she stepped forward to defend me when no one else would; this shy nerd that she plucked up and dusted off after I'd been kicked down for daring to be different.
For daring to be me.
After cleaning me up in the bathroom--giving me a spare shirt from her bag to wear, she talked me into hanging out with her at Pizzeria. There, she introduced me to the remaining girls who would become the greatest loves of my life. My best friends and truest family.
For the rest of the summer I was sucked into a whirlwind of female company unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. And every day I wondered when it would come to end? When would they cast me out as quickly as they'd roped me in? I wasn't beautiful, or all that smart. I wasn't popular or confident or really all that interesting.
Or so I'd thought.
Until these girls showed me different, and the longer I spent in their company, the more I started to believe. To dream. To hope. As the days of summer grew shorter, it became harder not to lose that new-found sparkle, and perhaps it was in sensing my growing anticipation, that spurred Shayne to propose we swear an oath of sisterhood.
We were hanging out at Priya's family home in New York. Her parents were vacationing in Dubai, and had left her with a hired chaperon, Ms. Mills. As Ms. Mills had a penchant for Vodka and muscle relaxers on a Sunday afternoon, we'd snuck a bottle of Rosé upstairs and tucked ourselves away inside the master bedroom's massive walk-in closet; the entire space large as my childhood apartment. There, we gorged on greasy pizza and drank chilled wine, surrounded by hundreds of gorgeous stilettos.
This space had become our inner sanctum, our place of worship. Even Shayne seemed equally mesmerized and enraptured by the beauty of towering heels.
Together we toasted the end of a glorious summer, the forging of new friendship (meaning...me!) as well as to wish Caitriona all the best as her family moved to Paris next month.
That's when Shayne sat up, her brown hair a mess (as always back then), and in lieu of a Bible, she hefted up what would become the symbol of our revolution.
"Swear," she said, casting her stern gaze to each of us in turn, her Spanish accent thickened with booze, "that no matter what happens, we will always be friends. Nay, more than friends. Sisters." Excited she tried to stand but could only manage to stagger to her knees, Rosé in one hand and the stiletto in the other, which she held out between us. "Swear fealty to our Sisterhood on this Stiletto. Let this symbol bind us together, now and always, so that nothing can ever sever our vow. Not distance, boys, or whatever bullshit life throws our way. We will stand together. For each other. No matter what."
With the six of us drunk and giggling, we'd stuck out hands in like athletes at a big game and swore a vow of sisterhood and fidelity, to support one another, love each other and be together always; our pact spoken over a pair gorgeous pair of black lacquered heels with sinful red bottoms.
I always wanted to be someone's 'sister'. Now I had five.
That was the moment The Stiletto Sisterhood was born. Or manifesto was simple, our code, sacrosanct. This was the mark of a new chapter. A new stage in our lives.
I happened to just be there in that pivotal moment of its inception. This voyeur watching these gorgeous creatures come together, and for whatever reason, they wanted me to join them. They took me in.
Sometimes I wonder what would my life be like had I not had that sweetened beverage dumped over my head? If I had never met Shayne? If she had not elected to bring me into her circle, transforming my life far beyond the isolated loneliness I'd become so deeply entrenched--I was drowning in it?
You couldn't group together six more different girls if you tried.
Fiercely independent, child prodigy, Priyanka, Indian on her mother's side and Swedish on her father's (according to the sperm bank donor papers she found at the age of twelve), pint-sized Caitriona, an adopted Korean raised by German parents who quoted Cosmo like some would Socrates. Isobel, the Italian/Irish sweetheart whose mom who took off when she was seven (more on that later); Shayne—the reluctant royal and the gender fluid a-sexual who you could never quite tell if she was a smoking hot girl or a beautiful boy. Eshe, an African Filipino with a face and body that stood out but couldn't look in a mirror without serious self-loathing.
And then there was me...
Too timid to string words together, my sisters dubbed me Silent Six; and later amended it to Six, as I was no longer quite so silent.
I know what you're thinking, of all symbols—a stiletto? Those torture devices? The embodiment of female oppression and male-masochism? There are those who feel, rather strongly, that high-heels reduce women to sexual objectification. We felt differently.
#FeministsWearHeelsToo
After all, it was Cinderella who first taught little girls anything was possible, from making her dreams come true to taking over the world, with the right pair of shoes.
The literal word Italian stiletto means a slender dagger which was used in the Renaissance. An appropriate name as women throughout time wielded their stilettos as exactly that: weapons against high-brow feminists and low-brow men. Weapons against societal expectations of gender roles and in the pursuit of equality.
Once a symbol of control and repression, we have wrenched back the stiletto back and reclaimed it as an icon of womanhood to tackle the world en pointe, like a ballerina; stilettos demand both poise and precision.
Life after that summer was difficult, with each of us pulled to respective corners of the world, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter helped virtually shrink those miles stretched between us to practically nothing. We kept in constant communication despite different time zones, hectic schedules and personal demands of life, the summers were always ours. A time for us to reconnect and rediscover one another. We'd meet up, each of us taking turns to play host.
Until this year. This would be the first time where something greater than our love of each other would pull us all further apart:
Adulthood.
That terrifying landscape of budding careers on the back of fourteen-hour work days for crap pay, moving out of the familial nest into a shoe-box apartment and acquire things like bills in our own names. Actual bills for hydro, electricity and WiFi. Bills that come back every month and result in people screaming at you over the phone if you fail to pay in a timely fashion.
Where Saturday's are spent grocery shopping or cleaning and Sunday's for doing laundry because eating out costs a fortune, bath rings are gross and your clothes won't magically wash or fold themselves.
But if there was any one of us I knew who was born to rise to this kind of challenge, it was Priya.
Fierce. Unshakable. She dances like no one's watching, loves Tequila, collects vintage landscape photography, can recite Tolstoy by rote, and always cries at the end of Titanic.
In our eight years of Sisterhood, she kept us grounded, focused and always on our a-game. Because of her we'd each forged a game plan centered on our life's ambitions and made smart academic choices while facing years of post-secondary hell to get us there (except Shayne who refused to waste another moment in academic pursuits when her heart was in the ring). She'd coach us through all-nighter cram sessions, edit our essays, send motivational quotes or listen when one of us had a meltdown from the stresses of mid-terms and a shifting bell curve.
If you could call Shayne the founder of the Sisterhood, then Priya undoubtedly would stand as its backbone.
She was destined to lead, and born to wear any shade of lipstick.
Especially red.
***NOTE***
Friendship is such a beautiful thing. Something I always struggled with as a shy, geeky, insecure kid afraid to look anyone in the eye, let alone walk up and introduce myself. As a teenager, I spent most of my life behind my computer and inside my stories.
I'm sure you all know how isolating the life of a writer can be.
What I love most about Wattpad are all the amazing, incredible individuals I've come to know, admire, respect and value for their endless support and love. Who were there for me when I didn't know a soul, who reached out and took my hand and brought me into the fold as Shay did with Six. Who gave me a chance to be a part of something/an opportunity I might never have had.
To name a few:
MorrighansMuse MichelleJoQuinn LDCrichton KevinaOyatedor zoedinovi Emily samantha Lucyface MayenWrites AngelinaMLopez CaitlinOHanlon TaliaArcher and kfxinfinity (you can totally be a Sister, too LOL),
PLus some new additions DoNotMicrowave XxSkater2Girl16xX knightsrachel adam_and_jane IyanaBanana alessandra and millions more who I will shout out and fangirl over as this story progresses.
So, now I want you guys to give your Sisters (guy or girl) a shout out in the comments below this chapter to let them know how much you value and appreciate their love/support!
#JoinTheSisterhood