In, the movie Gone With The Wind, Rhett Butler says, “You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.”

This may have been said in a romantic context but oh my! To have been kissed by my friends has been the best experience of my life. A kiss, so often used as an expression of love is the most befitting metaphor for the actions of love and endearment showered on me by my friends.

I have not always regarded friendships to be the best thing to happen to humanity. If anything, I found them a bit too intrusive for my liking. I already didn’t like human beings enough, the idea of building friendships that required a certain amount of investment did not sit well with my soul. I would come to learn that I was right about the hard work that went into cultivating friendships, I just wouldn’t have expected them to be the healing balm to the wounds life had so generously carved on me.

I would come to know that my fear of friendships sprouted from what my soul knew to be true but feared the most. I would become undone and find myself at my most vulnerable. This would mean, unlike instances where family, would hurt you and you could easily blame God for dumping you into the wrong squad, friendships were your doing. Imagine handing someone the knife and turning your back to them with the hopes that they wouldn’t stab you with it. Even the women often blindsided in my favourite crime thrillers would not fall for such a rookie move. Yet it is the very essence of these friendships.

Trusting that the very core of who I am, once exposed will not be used against me was a hard thing to accept. If you are not used to this kind of commitment, you may feel yourself drowning under this violent ocean of what feels like weakness. Only weak people need to use other human beings as crutches. That’s what I had always told myself. Tried to convince myself that I was far much better alone than with a community of women who loved me so fervently.

My best friend recently asked me, “what makes you happy?” I wouldn’t have realised how little I knew of something I had aggressively demanded of the universe. I might not have had the right answer at that moment, but I left the conversation more fulfilled than when we had started talking. That is what friendship is. A labour of love. Being so overwhelmed with love for another individual that your mind is filled with thoughts of how you can make their life easier and more pleasurable.

To be regarded so highly by someone that how you feel matters to them. It is through experiences such as these that you learn why the spiritual teachers of our time and before that, have always emphasised that love would assuage our brokenness.

When I couldn’t sleep one night, thinking of the love I felt for my dear friend, and sending her a message long past midnight, expressing my feelings, I wondered if I had gone too far with my interpretation of love. Moments later, my phone would light up and I would read one of the sweetest messages shared with me. This deep love, which I could not put into words, was perfectly understood and reciprocated. That is what having a soulmate must feel like. To be understood when words fail.

I could spend the day recounting the number of ways I have been loved, so deeply that I had to take a moment to pause and soak it all up. It almost feels surreal how someone’s actions can impact you so significantly. In the same way that people bruise us and we are found scarred for most of our lives, we can be loved and find eternal healing.

It is beyond me now, to glorify an unsatisfying experience of love. To settle for crumbs when I’ve been presented with more. Platonic relationships may not be a replacement for romantic love, but I know for sure I am more likely to enjoy a life without a romantic partner than I would, a life, without my friends.

Is that why religion insists on presenting the deity as our friend? “Oh what a friend we have in Jesus…” Is this the highest manifestation of God’s love? Is this where humanity and spirituality cross paths? At the height of the unconditional love presented to us in friendships? Where challenges are an opportunity for growth and unearthing a deeper sense of love?

I grew up witnessing toxic portrayals of friendships. The media, worked hard to convince me that as much as friendships were challenging, healthy friendships with women were beyond possibility. It seemed that women were incapable of loving one another in the purest form. Growing into the woman I am today, has taught me that, that message may as well have been the biggest form of deceit.

These women in my life, bring with them the kind of love I would pluck flower petals to, wishing lady luck would bring my way. They are the epitome of God’s grace. The zenith of His love. It becomes impossible to not believe in a higher power because this is beyond what my human mind can fathom. It is what the ancestors move the winds to. They rattle the skies and replenish the earth in honour of our act of love.

I still do not like human beings much, but if I were to be a good citizen of the earth and wish them one thing, it would be, that they experience what I have been so graciously blessed with. There is no other place my heart would rather be, than here in the embrace of my beloveds.

Okay, maybe I would rather be unclad in The Dalmatian Islands, but I would want them to still be the home my heart recognises at all times.

I know the heavens are in awe of us. I would be too!

And so my dear loves, it is my wish that you are kissed as well. Kissed by those who know how to.