Female Friendship

Bringing respite during the hardships in life.

- Rajshree Jaiswal

In today’s time and age, pop culture has demonised the bonds between women. Coming from an all-girls school – a place filled with amazing yet undeniably hormonal teenage girls, with few of them trying to ape “Blair Waldorf” – tearing down others for fun and gossip, I, too, had unintentionally absorbed this idea that female friendships are unhealthy and competitive.

I was also literally consumed by the opinion that boys make better friends than girls. In my first year of college, I befriended a couple of pupils, primarily boys. I had some female friends as well, but we were not as close.

Since, I hailed from a small city with several stereotypes attached to women, coupled with minimal exposure to boys in my entire school years; I found male friendship (so-called less drama) inherently more valuable than female friendship. At that juncture, having platonic relations with boys was just like an achievement for eighteen-year-old lass like me.

With my new set of friends and new experiences, life was all hunkydory. But shortly, it was hit by a major tragedy. In my second year of college, I lost my dearest mother. Her sudden demise had a significant impact on me. It created an emotional void inside me.

Although I acted all strong on the outside, I was just too broken and lonely on the inside. For some reason, I was too ashamed to express my feelings. While I thought that I had successfully concealed my sorrow and tricked everyone into believing that I was over my mother’s death, my ‘not so close’ female friends sensed my distress and suffering and reached out to me.