Forgetting the Prince + Remembering Girlfriends.

After scanning the room, my mother spotted a little blond girl,

Sweetie, what's your name? Lisa? Well, Lisa - this is my daughter. You two are going to be great friends.

And with that, she had us hold hands and triumphantly march into Kindergarten, together. She was my first friend - through kindergarten and first grade, not so much through middle school, again through Myspace, and now - nearing thirty, peripherally through Facebook. She looks exactly like her mother did when we were - and she was - young.

Thank you, Saturn. Thankyouverymuch.

 In eighth grade, my binder was covered in the bubbly writing of a fourteen year old obsessed with Gwen Stefani and fitting in - written out were phrases and words that would be Greek to me now - long forgotten inside jokes, boys' names and song lyrics. Inside the binder, were notes from my friends about boys, school and eachother. Throughout high school, maneuvering through the throngs of other (invisibly) insecure and hyper hormonal teenagers, I sought refuge in a few friendships that seemed unbreakable - until one of us would get jealous or competitive and we would end up back stabbing or in some cases, front stabbing, one another.
Around nineteen, I was known to utter the phrase,

You know, I just don't get along with girls, I just get along with boys soooo much better.

Of course, at 19 I thought all other girls were competition - I only wanted to hang around guys. I thought that would somehow make me The Winner. (But it also meant I had no friends without the ulterior motive of sex.)
At 23, when I moved in with my boyfriend, I stopped returning some very good friends' phone calls. I actually listened to said boyfriend when he told me he thought my friends were flakey and stupid. (But, by listening to him and alienating my friends, it was in fact me being the stupid flake, wasn't it?!)
And it's only now, over the course of the last year, that I have finally realized and learned to appreciate the true value of good girlfriends.
Thankfully, gone are the uber-competetive & comparitive friendships of growing up; I believe, as women, we are taught to veiw one another as constant competetion - to our own detriment. It starts young - think of Snow White and her evil stepmother or Cinderella's terrible step sisters. Without reading into it too much, haven't we been told over and over again that it's the Prince who'll save us, who will complete us? And that other women out there are just competing for his attention at the Ball? (Or the bar.) Whereas most men like other men until they have a reason not to, we as women are taught not to like other women until we are given a reason to. Until then, we tend to veiw eachother as rivals. Why?!
Not everyone outgrows this veiw, unfortunately - we all know those women out there who instead of being an ally are constantly trying to one up you. I've been that friend & I've had that friend.
So, newly single, over the summer, at 28 and a half, just as Saturn's Return really begun to "test my character and the structures I built my life upon" I realized, I have no friends. I mean I had friends, but for the most part they had all grown up or moved on and away or they were fully aligned with my relationship with my boyfriend. Talk about 'structurally unsound'...
Thankfully, the good friends from before forgave me my flakey stupidity and were (and are) there for me day & night when I need them. I can call them crying, laughing, cursing or crazy as a hobo. And I hope they realize, and I think they do, that I'm game to do the same. Old aquaintances have fallen away. Old habits have been broken.
As time moves forward, while I'm restructuring and reevluating the way I have lived my life, I have been lucky enough to have stumbled upon a couple more. I no longer veiw other women as rivals; I no longer have friends just to call for Happy Hour - It's something so much deeper now. I have friends to call for hummus & wine. I have friends to keep on Code Blue (Something Bad Happened!) Alert during a first date. I am on Code Blue for theirs. I have two hour long phone conversations with these girls. I have friends who call just to see how my day is going. I have inside jokes, I have running partners, coffee clatches. I have a friend who, if I really needed her to, would drop everything and hope on a plane to come to me. I have a friend, that at 10 PM last night, would've jumped in her car and been at my house if I asked her to. Don't even start me on the mix CD that may have been made a couple Saturdays ago...
You see, I finally have friends that make me laugh like a seventh grader, but not cry like one.
I am no longer a Snow White or a Cinderella competing against her enemies & waiting for her Prince to save her; instead I am a happy little dwarf living and laughing alongside - not against - many other dwarves. I can lean on them, I know their strengths and their faults and they know mine. And I love them for it.
I think, perhaps, I need to seriously date my friends for awhile.
Forget the Prince. I'll be with my dwarves.

Sidenote: I have cancelled most dates going forward this week. I handed myself a fucking eraser.
Also, Goldilocks & Platonic-Guy are friends again. In real life & on facebook. Troubs and I may or may not have played a roll.