Bless Tess

At 40 years old, my best friend moved into my home and here is the tale.

This May, I asked a new friend to move from DC into my home. To know me is to know I prefer space and independence, so a proposal of cohabitation was a risk to the little autonomy I have as a parent. Besides my child, I hadn’t shared a home with anyone who wasn’t a romantic partner since my 20s. I was 40 when Tess answered with an enthusiastic yes and moved into my home with her dog, plants, musical instruments, and the comfiest leather couch that kicked mine to the curb.

Tess and I met last summer, and after knowing her for a few minutes, I instantly knew this would be a forever person in my life. You know that feeling? Truth is, we met on Hinge. Sometimes apps are there to speed up timelines, letting our worlds collide a little quicker. The Hinge to friend pipeline is so very real, and perhaps one day I’ll talk about it more, but now, this is not the point.

Tess has not only bloomed into the most solid friend I could dream of (one I didn’t know I needed), but she’s held my tears and crumpled heart through this very painful year of nearly everything ending. My favorite words she’s reminded me, a declaration that has echoed through our home: “Bethany, you are safe.” Together, we’ve radicalized and rewired our minds to what family can look like - she helps me raise my child because I can no longer do it on my own. I should not be doing it on my own. I don’t want to do it on my own. She has birthed joy and play back into my life, in ways I typically only allow room for lovers to do. Play is intimate. She makes the best scrambled eggs. She reminds me that love should not be transactional. She is one of those people who pours so much into others that, oftentimes, I must remind her to fill her own cup first because of her selfless wiring. Since the May move in, we’ve naturally chosen to prioritize platonic connection over everything else and as a result, have an exquisite new close group of friends who feel like home.

Tess and I have shared a handful of pee in your pants moments which have felt straight out of Broad City episodes which includes: a spider (Tess’s biggest phobia) getting trapped and reappearing for over a month in her new Jeep, on the eve my birthday, a strange and unexpected crossing of paths of an ex with her new girlfriend who could pass as my body double, and a trip to New England where we role played the Edie’s of Grey Gardens the entire time. I swear, we are aging backwards because of sheer silliness. We remind one another that one of the most spiritual things you can do is have fun. Our platonic love story is in its honeymoonish golden phase, we are time-stamping these formative years of friendship into our memories, binding us close, because I know life, and new journeys we must go on await us both and one day, we won’t be living under the same roof, sharing morning coffee, laughs, a joint and guitar strumming on the patio as Palmer swings.

In the year of so many losses, a platonic love story has brewed alongside the heartbreaks, and one that surpasses the romantic variety in my opinion. Sometimes life gets better when hearts get decimated. Mine certainly has.

To prioritizing platonic soulmates.
To raising our babies with friends.
To reenvisioning family.
To saying yes to help.
To sharing our emotional (and sometimes physical) home with people who regulate our nervous system and to stop trying to make them exist where they do not belong.

Thank you, Tess, for finding Palmer and me in this lifetime. I hope we find one another into the next. And you, dear reader, may you learn and expand with the people who found you in this lifetime. Soulmate shit.

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