Yes, I'm 37 and I live with my BFF

If you don’t love the Golden Girls, then that’s your problem. But if you do, then you know the value of living with girlfriends—the Dorothys, the Roses, the Blanches and Sophias. Dorothy with her sarcasm. Rose with her St. Olaf anecdotes. Blanche with her libido. And Sophia with her straight up savageness. Each personality was quite different, and yet, they formed a bond that television viewers admired and identified with; sometimes our best friends are those who don’t claim to be like us. Instead, they compliment us.

Since we were 14, my best friend, Erica, and I used to joke that we, too, would retire together in Florida much like the Golden Girls. Someday we’d live together in Florida with amazing tans, palm fronds waved over us by handsome, oiled men in Speedos, drinks in hand and big sunglasses hiding our fair faces while we laughed and drank in the golden brilliance of the coastal, Florida sun. This is a dream that we’ve believed in for a long time—through broken relationships, through failures, through hardships and through pain. We laugh about it, still, but somewhere not so deep down, it’s a dream that we know could truly become a reality someday.

Regardless of such dreams, I find myself now living the Golden Girls life here in Gettysburg, PA. Erica and I now live together, along with her daughter, Peyton who is 13 going on 35. Peyton provides the Dorothy-like wit and sarcasm that seems to always question our thirty year old decision-making skills as she asks us “is THAT what you’re wearing?” When I consider that Peyton is at the age when Erica and I became fast friends, I wonder if our teenage imaginations could have envisioned our futures, what life would be like at the age of 36 and 37.

In my most recent ayahuasca journey, I was brought back to my childhood self. I was shown myself as a little girl, standing on a mountainside, looking out over a landscape of rock, forest and city below. The air was sharp and cold, but a thin mist of fog hovered around me as I tried to make out my surroundings. While I’ve never been there, the scene reminded me of what it might be like standing on the edge of Mt. Fuji. Beside me stood play figures that represented my childhood: Rainbow Brite, Sheera, Strawberry Shortcake, some Care Bears and My Little Ponies. (I know this seems weird, but bear with me.) My vision asked me to venture back to the mind of a child, to a time when life is filled with play, innocence and imagination. I remembered the hope I had as a child, that I’d someday travel the world, become a successful writer, maybe even live abroad for a time and marry someone who treated me like a Disney princess. As a child, I had so many dreams, so many visions of my possible future, but all I remember is the excitement woven in each element of fantasy as though it was an enchanted looking glass full of dazzling memories that I had yet to behold. 

And I cried. I began to weep for this little girl, not because she was foolish in imagining such fanciful things, but because I felt as though I had let her down. My adult self told my child self that it’s time to put aside those dreams, those play characters that I thought I might emulate, those hopes that are hinged upon the happy endings of television melodramas. My play friends turned and began to walk away from both my child self and adult self. At that moment, I felt a bleeding sensation of heartache; it felt as though the core of me had been cut out, excised and removed down to its most soulful root. The spirit of ayahuasca intervened and said “Wait! You can still have your dreams. You can still have your hope. You’re allowed to imagine that your future might still be beautiful and bright.” I cried even harder because ayahuasca was right: I didn’t have to chastise my inner child for believing that, someday, things would get better. That, someday, I’d live the life that I had dreamed of even if it wasn’t the exact vignette of my childhood reveries. What matters most is not the visions that we behold for our futures, but that we can still create them with the innocence and hope that our inner child remembers. It is the energy of these expectations, these intentions, that can carry us to realities far beyond what our wildest dreams can conjure. 

Over the past three years I have carved out a unique place for myself in this part of my journey. I have allowed my childlike imagination take me on world-traveling adventures that my young self would be proud of. At the same time, however, this imagination also led me to a place where I began to struggle financially. I moved back in with my parents at the age of 36. I started working for my family’s business. I rooted myself back into Adams County when I could have, literally, gone anywhere else in the world to start the next chapter of life. 

I wept for the knowing that I had not, and possibly would not, live the life that I dreamed of. I wept because I knew that, in many ways, I had let my youthful self down. I now had college debt to worry about. Car payments. Insurance. Credit cards. Life, as it turns out, is not as simple and carefree as we can imagine it will be at the whim of our childhood fantasies. 

But today I’m living in a version of my 14-year old aspirations. While no one has said, to my face, that it’s not really all that impressive to still be single and live with a roommate at the age of 37, I know that’s the impression that others may have. However, I can say that it’s been one of the greatest gifts of my entire life. You see, my friend Erica and I are quite different in our interests, hobbies and personalities. But our character--our value for unconditional love, openmindedness, integrity and unrelenting passion for enjoying life--is quite similar. It's where we come together and always go when we need to support one another.

It’s not a secret that both Erica and I have had a challenging year but for different reasons. In the span of a few months, Erica lost her uncle whom she was very close to and her father who was the light of her world. Words cannot describe the tumult of pain and grief that she has navigated over the past year. It makes my challenges of financial strain and relationship failures seem superficial and incomparable. Nonetheless, we have both stood by one another and allowed for us to have our own pain, to feel it without shame, and to learn how to heal the wounds from our past day by day, knowing that some wounds will never fully disappear. Losing a loved one is not something that you can “get over”; it’s an experience that we must learn to live with, using only the salve of memory and love that we share in the moment that makes these wounds something we can carry with us rather than something that weighs us down as a burden.

So at 37, I’m living the Golden Girls life—as we both joke—and I’m totally cool with it. I don’t have a husband to come home to or children to take care of, but I do have a best friend to laugh with and a teenager to keep me on my toes. I’m in a place that I’m incredibly thankful for, and, as it turns out, I’m learning to be more self-reliant than when I lived on my own. I can even install curtain rods and disassemble a dishwasher when it stops working. This is a huge coup for me, people. I laugh because I’m actually learning how to be a better partner to live with as a singe person. I have compassion for Erica when she’s had a rough day, and I find myself not taking the aspect of sharing space with someone for granted. Yes, I joke that “I have to hang this picture up before my wife gets home,” but the truth behind it is that I value the ability to bring someone else happiness in small gestures of thoughtfulness. Our actions, not our words, matter most.

If you get the chance to live with your best friend at any age, consider yourself lucky. I’m not surrounded by oiled Adonises on a beach somewhere (yet), and my skin tone is a disappointing pallor of pasty that I’m not proud of, but my heart is incredibly happy and grateful for where I am today. Whether or not we envisioned this life for ourselves back in junior high, I don’t think either of us could have anticipated that we’d actually need each other a lot sooner than retirement age. Someday we’ll find our way to that beach life. Someday we’ll both have men in our lives that will make us feel like the queens we are. In the meantime, we’ll continue to support one another as we pursue the hopeful, dazzling sunlight of our dreams—and that is what makes us truly golden.