My daughter was an early and prolific reader, which occasionally gave her a speaking vocabulary that was a little unusual for someone her age and living in modern times. When she was around six or seven, while reading Anne of Green Gables, she came to me one evening and a little dramatically asked, "Mom, when will I find my bosom friend?" I think I chuckled a little under my breath at the drama and then probably gave her the only answer that made any sense, "You'll find them when the time is right." It was such a genuine and wholesome question, but I remember it struck me at the time as so legitimate. Because I was also wondering at that time and had been wondering for years (and am still wondering now!) when I would find MY bosom friend, even if I hadn't thought to put it in those terms.
Generally speaking a "bosom friend" is a very close, deeply trusted friend with whom you share your deepest secrets, thoughts, and personal feelings and with whom you have an unbreakable emotional bond, even across time and distance. I have had many friends and even very close friends throughout my life, but mostly they have felt like "seasonal" friendships--close for a time and then no longer a regular part of my life. I am grateful for all of those friendships and believe them all to have been exactly the people I needed in my life at exactly the moment they were there, and I hope those people share a similar feeling about me. I just haven't really had the experience of deep, enduring friendships that span time and distance and carry that unbreakable emotional bond.
I hear about the importance of female friendships often, and I see others enjoying girls' weekends with ladies they've known since childhood or college and think how amazing that seems, but it honestly all just feels very mysterious to me. This isn't me feeling sorry for myself. In general, I feel pretty content with my life and don't often think of it as lacking, and I do have beautiful friendships that I cherish. But recently, standing in a dressing room trying on dress after dress while shopping for something appropriate to wear to my now grown daughter's upcoming wedding and feeling desperately like I wanted another trusted woman's opinion, I thought to myself with a nostalgic smile, "When will I find my bosom friend?"
I wanted someone to tell me how the dresses really looked, to know me and my preferences well enough to pick out the perfect dress for me to try on, to laugh with about the hideous ones, to bounce not only wedding wardrobe ideas off but the complicated emotions of having grown children who are stepping into lives apart from me and the challenge of finding myself in a new chapter that doesn't quite make sense to me yet.
Perhaps, like I told my daughter all those years ago, I'll find my bosom friend when the time is right. Or maybe a bosom friend is necessarily someone you meet when you're young and you grow with into that type of friendship over time. Or possibly not everyone is meant to have a bosom friend, and some of us are better suited for seasonal friendships, which is an option I'm truly okay with.
I'm genuinely curious: If you have a "bosom friend," I'd love to know how you met and how you knew this was your person. Have you known each other since childhood, or did you meet later in life? Were you bosom friends at first sight or did the friendship take a while to develop?
