How foolish would I be to not see this?

Oh, how lucky am I to be where I am right now? With fear in my heart dictating my every move—how lucky am I to be around the ones who remind me who I am, how lucky am I to be with you?

How lucky am I to spend all my time after the worst fight with love like you. How lucky am I to be reminded, instantly, that love is more than the bare minimum—and that the right love, in all its quiet ways, warms my heart.

How lucky am I to scream at the top of my lungs about a man’s mess with you? For you to remind me that love is more than the bare minimum, and for me to do that for you. To meet you, hold you, pour out my heart. To laugh through the confusion, to create more memories with you.

How lucky am I to have a call scheduled with you, to discuss together the bad decisions we make?

Because life was never about avoiding bad decisions or escaping bad days. It was always about being able to spend the bad days with someone, talk about it more than once as bad parts of life be, and change them slowly while having you on my side. Having you by my side not for changing my life, but for cheering me on as I do it. And a hundred times over, I will do that for you.

How lucky am I to live in peak girlhood, to have all you girls at hand's reach. To be able to hug and share as I deal with life on the side. How lucky am I to say that my life is not the problems or the men in it, but the women who let me discuss and cry over it again and again and again until my eyes run dry and then still some more.

How lucky am I to have this as my life – you (my girls) and our unapologetic conversations, continuous reminders of what actually love feels like even when we cry for that noodle of a man. How lucky am I that this, right here, a conversation with you about life, is life itself. How foolish would I be to not recognise that life is not what’s happening outside of our friendship, but is this friendship itself. Life is this – with the meaningless tears and snorts to a man who doesn’t seem to understand, life is also the unapologetic and understanding silence with my women, as we navigate through what happens outside, as we hold each other, watch us make our own set of bad decisions and pull ourselves out of it.

This is life

my trip

my badam milk

my calls with fiza

a date in Silaa discussing the fuck-all men

and a desperate attempt to be okay.

Because any day, I would take all this love and the hurt that comes with it, rather than not take the love at all.

How lucky am I to have you, and with all my heart, I hope I never forget what this love is like.

How foolish would I be to not see this?

A fool like that I would never want to be.