Kindred Spirits

The Laurel to my Hardy, the Diana Barry to my Anne Shirley is my best friend, Violet. We listen to Bach cantatas on vinyl on my dining room floor. It takes me weeks to write the pages she edits in a day. She knows exactly how many pumps of blueberry syrup I put in my black coffee. Our friends call us the Gatsbys; her beauty gives me symmetry, her intellect gives me mortality.

When I wanted to dye my hair blue, she put on a pair of gloves. When I sit in hell, she sits with me, hand in hand, in a cloud of indigo. On the days I’m held up at work, she feeds my cat for me and sends me dream pop playlists. She reminds me to breathe, to live, to look up at the sunset in the Western sky and to tell jokes to strangers in cafes. We take turns blowing bubbles in the kitchen as we load the dishwasher. I pick her up from work with a glittery dress she can change into on our way to a friend’s housewarming party. We practice our Brooklyn accents in the seasonal aisle at Costco and draw each other on the sidewalk in pink and green chalk.

We’re both city girls, we love subways and hate treehouses, and we fight like teenagers. She has rhinestone eyes and thin fingers that can type much faster than I can. We have the same love language – time. Time, snatched at bus stops, over the phone at 3am, when she’s fixing my eyeliner, sharing a bowl of oatmeal, buying each other lilies, building a Lego set together.

Violet is the sun, bright, blazing up any room she enters, but sometimes difficult to be around, to look at directly. She can sell an ice cream cone on a January morning. She encourages me to draw and write, and prints out my creations to pin to her fridge. I’m the million stars in the night sky that wink at her, and fall from elegance with a thud.

Her brutal honesty opens wounds that she licks gently. She loves me with a violence that makes me want to be a better person. I teach her to respond to rejections and drink less soda, she shows me how to be patient, to be lovable, to be real.

I believe she’s a kindred spirit of mine, as all dynamic duos are. A kindred spirit is someone who knows and understands you completely. You communicate in nods and smiles, there is nothing you want to hide from them. When you meet a kindred spirit, you just know. You go together like strawberries and cream. And there are more of them out there than you think.