she's in my body

I wrote this about a year ago and have tried to edit and work on it for a while so that it sounds a bit more like my writing nowadays. But I am starting to forget how these feelings felt and thought I would just share it as is before I change it too much and it strays from how raw it was in the moment. So, even if this doesn’t totally sound like me or the way I would like it to be, this is how I was feeling about a year ago when I was having a hard time. Names have been changed. 

My high school best friend and I claimed Malibu as ours. We were sure we were the only ones who truly existed at the beach and appreciated it for reasons others couldn’t comprehend. We drove down PCH religiously and cried to music that reminded us of our parents or the boys who touched us too young. We screamed at the cars in front of us, dancing and practicing choreography for every song in our joint playlist. We were both naturally loud and obnoxious but with the openness of the beach or the highway, we found we could reach new octaves and took up every inch of space we could find. Then, we noted the feeling for when we would need it later. 

On Sundays, Elena and I shook each other awake and got in the car while it was still dark. Empty stomachs, swollen eyes, and cocooned in fluffy pink throw blankets, we moved sluggishly through the cold quiet of the morning. The beach was only twenty minutes away with no traffic so we dragged each other to watch the sunrise and pretend that we were the only ones in the world who loved each other so. We slept on the beach: hair tangled and teeth scarcely brushed, I lay on top of her or nestled next to her with my feet tucked between her thighs, our giggles chime with the wind, and when the sun wakes us, we look up at each other in silence. We rarely said I love you, besides birthdays and when we fought. It was understood that silence brewed love and that we each felt we could not live without the others’ comfort and ease. So we sat in the sand wrapped in a bubble of warm solace silence, feeling the most loved and wanted since maybe the womb. 

Much of our friendship was built on these dreamy romantic moments and a kind of yearning to be the most important person in the other’s life. I would tell her she never felt far because she was always lingering like she was always in my body. She told me she wished we could be one body. For five years we were constantly on top of one another, everyone asking if we were dating, always responding, in sync, everyone asks that!

After Malibu, we stare at our bodies in the mirror while we run a bath and plan to work out in the coming week. We decide which parts of her body are our favorite and we do the same for mine. We imagine what we would look like if we were combined, her breasts, my legs. Some kind of idealized Frankenstein of female flesh. She tells me I should eat and when I tell her to do the same she says she’ll smoke instead. Eventually, our eyes are peeled away from the mirror and we crawl into the bath together. We listen to Bob Marley. She rolls joints and I eat goldfish. We sit in silence. We giggle. We watch popular tv shows. We talk about the girls she hates and I say I hate who she does. Her brother bangs on the bathroom door and we yell that we’re busy healing ourselves. He asks if we’re gay, No, Kevin, we’re best friends, stop being homophobic. I question if we’re secretly in love but reassure myself we have deeper issues. We don’t know how to be alone, we don’t know who we are without the other or how to fill our time when we are not together. We’re certainly not convinced that there is life outside of this. 

In the height of our friendship, I slept alone maybe one day a week. I was always bouncing between sleeping with her and whoever I was dating and then complaining to both of them that I was never alone. Though when I complained to her she only smiled and nodded, feeling assured that I would spend less time with my boyfriend but that our schedule would be kept intact. We considered our time together to be synonymous with being alone. When I returned from long days or long trips, I drove to her house instead of my own and we sank deeply into one another; allowing each other to be ugly or sad or afraid; believing this was better than being alone. More comfortable, less distraught, or frantic, like we both could get when we were alone.

I often felt that the two of us didn’t seem to be two people enjoying each other’s company, but instead that we created something else, a third spirit that was bigger than ourselves; where we could be bigger than ourselves. When we slipped into this third swell of energy, everything became intuitive. We had built a kind of cultish home around repeated symbiotic rituals. Rituals that felt to be second nature and never required thought. 

Rituals like walking into our bedrooms and following a dance of where we took off our shoes, which corner our bags reside in, which side of the bed we lay on, always the same. We move through the rooms of each other’s homes with muscle memory, never bumping into one another as we seem to have a keen sense of the other’s body. Our separate homes became both of our homes: the drawer where my snacks live in her cabinet, the jar of her earrings and extra sleeping pills for when she forgets, two toothbrushes in each bathroom sink. 

Rituals of taking her car to the beach and mine to the city, of never asking if the other is okay because you are assumed to always know if she is. Of waking up and immediately checking our bodies, of keeping track of how much the other ate, of the competition we called devotion. Of baking peanut butter cookies; licking each side of the spoon clean at the same time, noses barely touching. Rituals of playing one song we both know first in the car and then playing new music to show the other; as if that one song reconnected us every time, assured us that we were still close and would not drift away. 

Knowing new music, shopping at new stores, making new friends, all seemed to threaten our bond of being the perfect complement for one another. We were too different to be considered the same, in fact, we were complete opposites of each other. Her skin was typically pale and creamy whereas mine was brown and rich. Her body and breasts were full whereas I stood thin and lanky. But we considered ourselves to each be one half of a whole, together creating the perfect duo, the perfect girl.

Constantly afraid of slipping away from each other, we controlled our fear by ensuring we knew everything there was to know about the other. Knowing every garment of clothing that hung in her closet, every food fixation, and every person in the other’s class was expected. If we were out with friends and information appeared that the other did not know, it was a sign of weakness in our bond and I believe in those moments, we both filled with shame. So we filmed and sent videos of the things we bought when we were out shopping, we texted each other constantly with updates about our days, we called when we cried about our bodies, and, periodically, we read our journal entries to each other. Our biggest fights were ones where our bond was threatened; when we felt jealous or scared of the future, where the home of rituals we had created was beginning to reveal a foundation that was not all that strong. 

One December she bought me a silver bracelet with a matching charm to the necklace she wore every day and we smiled in relief that there finally felt to be some kind of permanence to our bond. 

Elena and I met in our freshmen year of P.E. at a private all-girls Catholic high school. The school was guarded by giant wrought iron gates and a long driveway that led into some kind of colonial castle of a school with green rolling hills. There were cobblestone floors and rose gardens spread throughout. Girls in plaid mini skirts and white collared tops. 

Biannually in P.E., we all sat in the middle of the basketball court, criss-cross apple sauce, as our teacher told us the measurements our body ought to be to live a healthy and balanced life. We held pink measuring tapes up to our waist, butts, and each leg and arm, writing down our findings, sharing small timid looks with one another in silence. I was a dancer for most of my life and rolled my eyes at our P.E. teacher as I found the activity unsurprising. Though on the other side of the room, I saw a small surprised face from Elena whose measurements did not add up. I sat with her outside of the gym while we waited to be picked up. I told her this school was stupid and that I was leaving next Fall. She looked at me with a slight tilt to her head, eyes large like a puppy, and her mouth slightly open. It appeared to me that she had not known it was an option to get up and leave. 

For the first year or so, a lot of our conversations went like that. I would say some rendition of free-spirited chatter that my hippie school and upbringing taught me and she would attempt to wrap her brain around it. We had opposing childhoods and thus saw the world in contradicting ways. Where my world was massive and open, hers was often small and constricted.

I always loved that look she gave me, that puppy dog face. I would laugh and tell her it was endearing but I think I saw something in it that fueled me. That gave me some sense of assurance. That I could be smart, mature, and good. Thus our roles in our friendship were quickly defined. I was big sister, teaching and comforting her. She was little sister, making me feel big. I allowed her to cry and in turn, it allowed me not to feel. We both loved our roles. They helped ease some of the inherent competition. 

I’ve always been competitive. One summer we ordered a blow-up pool for her backyard and spent two months playing mermaids and rating our underwater tricks out of five—I always won. Though you could normally spot us in push-up bras and skintight clothing, when we were alone we relived every childhood moment we could, longing to be young again. Wishing to have grown up eating at each other’s dining room tables.

I was a handful of a child. Always screaming. Always naked. Always with wild hair in knots and giant boots on feet. My mom tells stories of me screaming in children’s faces, of biting, of stealing stickers, of cheating on math tests, yet somehow always getting away with it all. As I got older, the adjectives used to describe me melded from mean and bossy to assertive and confident and I felt content with that. Felt powerful with those labels.  

Elena was less of a handful. She was a good girl who wore uniforms and clean-cut clothing. She did well in math and when she did not do well she was penalized for it. She remembered being an anxious child, not saying much and being praised for doing so. She tells stories of crying when she had to order food at a restaurant and at sixteen her mom typically ordered her food for her until eventually, I began ordering her food as well. I ordered her eggs and toast without wavering. Her mom was thin and short and kept in competition with Elena to ensure she was always smaller in frame than her own daughter. 

Sophomore year, Elena, fifteen, I, sixteen. Elena took all the sleeping pills she could find. When she was surprised to wake up the next morning I drove her to the beach and we cried at the edge of the sea. 

When I got into Reed, she decided on the University of Portland and our shoulders that were tightly held up to our ears from the stress of senior year finally fell back into place. We couldn’t be more relieved knowing we would live in the same city for four more years, still just twenty minutes away from each other. 

The Summer before we left for college, the Summer of 2020, Elena and I saw each other maybe three times. The pandemic had just begun and my family was scared. I spent my summer with my boyfriend at the time and she spent hers with some close friends. We called often and sat in parking lots with 10 feet of distance between us but both of us could feel the seams of our bond coming loose. As Summer became Fall and then Winter, seasons passed where we did not see much of each other, and soon that became a year.

In the Summer of 2021, we planned a ten-day trip for her to visit me in Hawaii. As the days approached my body filled with stress and excitement; saying I was ecstatic to melt back into our routines and habits but knowing this was a desperate attempt to force our bond back into place, to squeeze a year of loss into ten days. 

On the second or third night, she looked up at me from the floor, hugging her knees with wet eyes and a tremble to her bones. She was in a state I was familiar with so I routinely slipped into my designated role. I held her tight and when I asked what was wrong, hours of tears and a long complicated ugly story came out of her mouth. A story that involved my first girlfriend, lying, manipulating, pretending, performing, hiding things from me and from everyone else, and ultimately, the reasons behind her taking all of those sleeping pills that one day sophomore year. When she asked if I was mad, if I hated her, I looked inside of myself, deep into my belly, asking, are we okay? But my belly was empty. Nothing was coming up my throat; my feet and hands weren’t tingling. I felt nothing at all and only held her tighter. I reassured her it was okay and the trip went on. 

For the following days, we sat at the beach in silence. Though this time it was unclear if silence brewed love or resentment. Feet in the sand. Heads down. She read books I had recently loved and put aside for her. I read Eve Babitz and wished I was home in Los Angeles. Home before she told me the truth that would later disorient my memories of LA, that would later prevent me from visiting at all. When my own books were not distracting enough, I took heavy breaths in the ocean and swam lap after lap to wash the discomfort off my skin. I imagined the sea salt exfoliating dead skin cells and tensions I could not identify or fully recognize in my body. I swam to get space from her. I swam to get away from her. I swam to show her I was still strong and capable, fast and athletic. That I was still enjoying my time, free-spirited, and without a care of what she had told me. I imagined her watching me swim and thinking how beautiful I was, how worthy I was. I hoped that sight would hurt her and make her feel small in comparison. 

When we talked a month later, the longest we had ever gone without speaking, she had a whole life I didn’t know about and it was clear our biggest fears had come true. She had a new boyfriend I hadn’t met; I didn’t know what she wore on their first date or what her mom had said about it all. I wasn’t told who her new roommate was or that she got a new puppy. I didn’t even know that she cut her hair. Our bubble of home and comforting ritual had changed and we no longer knew how to act with one another. Our muscles forgot the ways in which our bodies moved with one another. The choreography that we thought was forever embedded in our bones was fuzzy and no longer made sense, no longer felt intuitive. We sat across from each other at a coffee shop and it felt to be two people sitting in one place, two separate bodies frozen over in time, unable to even begin to think of how one energy could be created from the two. At the end of our two-hour coffee date, I told her she was still my best friend and that I loved her. She hugged me and told me the same but when I looked into her tired and scornful eyes, I knew she was saying what she thought I wanted to hear and that she had already slipped out of my reach. 

The next few days which turned into months, anger started to bubble up in my belly and soon my limbs held too much heat to hold, it was seeping out of my membrane and pores, it was filling up the room, and left hot ironed footprints with my steps. Forced to live in my own body all the time rather than being able to slip into the relief of our third energy, I saw the damage in my body from the patterns we developed. I had gone about five years without earnestly feeling, no longer ate enough to sustain myself, and felt lost without the object of winning or dazzling. Mostly, I was confused why the three serious long-term relationships I had in high school did not prepare me for the heartbreak of losing my best friend. So I kept texting, we talked briefly when Taylor Swift re-released Red and also when her grandpa died. I continued rituals without her, playing one song we both know first in the car before anything else, I scoured for the breadcrumbs of our friendship, rewatching every video of us screaming at the top of our lungs. My ego made small at how I could be the one groveling when she needed me to order her food. 

Over spring break I looked down at my wrist to see that the silver bracelet I had worn for the past almost six years was gone. I couldn’t remember when or where it had fallen off or how long it had been lost so I bought a new bracelet and took it as a sign. When I told my roommate that I thought the tears over Elena were finally done, I found the bracelet in one of my jacket pockets and I swallowed the hard truth that she never felt far, even when I was furious, she was always lingering, like she was always in my body.