Letter to My Soul Sister

Dear Soul Sister,

I could write a novel’s worth of words to express my gratitude for you and it still wouldn’t be enough. But sitting here, as the super moon filters through my thin curtains, I find the words spilling out, and this letter slaps the table. We laugh at how the butterfly wings fall so unexpectedly, knocking paths together in the most unlikely of ways. As the years have melted by and through us like sticks of butter in a pan, my gratitude for that first meeting has only grown. Two intoxicated 2nd years in a club at university, who’s circles never touched, who’s studies never crossed, stumbling into one another like shot glasses.

Our energies were opposed, you were in the middle of an argument, ready to swat me away like an uninvited fly. I’d spotted you speaking to the subject of my recent dalliance. Intending to be a girl’s girl and not step on toes, I nervously asked (difficult when shouting over dance music) if you and him were dating. The pure annoyance on your face, the very last thing you expected to hear and wholly irrelevant. He was in fact the mediator of your argument with another friend. I’m grateful that on that fateful night a decade ago, you let your rage subside into confusion, annoyance but then ultimately a strange alliance that ended in us dancing away our troubles instead.

I would come to learn that you are selective in both your friends and affection, that it is a privilege to be enlisted in the ranks of those you trust. You often say that others might find you rigid or cold when they first meet you, but that isn’t the window into you I see. You have the most open mind and heart when you sense the intentions of others, regardless of circumstance. As someone who is so admirably and unapologetically herself, it meant so much that you not only saw through my shyness and strangeness to the core of who I truly am, but accepted and celebrated it. You were the key that unlocked this view of myself. It’s something I carry with me always in moments of doubt, thanks to you.

But my judgement can be poor. Though you guide me, you have never forced your views. Thank you for being there tirelessly the year you had to watch the cracks appearing on me long before I shattered and left you sifting through the pieces. The man who did the breaking was one you hated from the start. You saw the way he undermined me and put me on a rung below him. Control disguised as care you said. Yet you did not distance yourself or shoot me down for seeing the good in that relationship, you stuck by my side. When the final curtain fell, as you knew it would, you did not sit there judging me, frustrated by what you saw through right from the start.

You hid the exhaustion from your eyes to wipe mine. You listened to me rehash the same story a hundred times from a thousand different angles, trying to make sense of actions that lacked any rationality or compassion to begin with. One night you revealed to me that after one of our catch ups, no longer under the yoke of his oppression, that you had text your brother, the person you hold most dear, telling him that you felt that you got your best friend back. I don’t think you realise how that echoed through me, through the noise of a manipulated mind, as the only reason I needed. You planted a seed, patiently tended, that would later grow into a sapling and tower as I healed. All the while, you made me feel that the world was turning in my favour, not against it, and that I was on the right track.

Your words hold so much weight that time and again they have been an anchor to my self-belief, whenever it threatens to drift away. When I have doubted my art, my passion, my writing, you have not let that goliath in my mind land the blows that would have flattened me. Thank you for continuing to lift my sails, to blow them up so full that every time I leave you, I’m flying. Daring to dream loses its danger with you. Thank you for every word both kind and firm that wakes me up from lethargy. Conversely, but just as importantly, thank you for striving to be vulnerable and honouring me enough as safe harbour to do the same for you when your lines are lagging. It’s harder than some realise, who’s doors knock in the wind, not yours. Yours is heavy, and I see only strength in you when we open it.

We are often the honoured inn keepers for each other’s minds. Treasures lie within, worthy of guarding and protecting. So, until I set your pint down next, I will always remain here, waiting by the hearth.

Eternally Grateful,

Your Forever Faithful Friend,

Nessy