Will you be my emergency contact?

One of the things they don’t teach you in school is how hard it is to make friends as an adult. We wish we could just ask, “wanna be friends?” to the cool person standing in front of you at the checkout stand. Alas, it’s not that simple when you are a full-grown adult with a mortgage, a job, a heightened sense of social norms, and an ego.

It becomes even harder when you want to tell someone that they are your BFF. Of course, the difference is that once you graduate from calling yourself by a grade title, that whole concept of “best friend” changes. It’s no longer an exclusive friendship like it was in third grade. As we mature, we realize we can have more than one bestie, and that you don’t need to declare how much you mean to each other with a slightly juvenile title like “best friend.” 

The thing is, though, I still very much harbor that nine-year-old girl inside me. And she, that little girl with pigtails, does want to tell her favorite new friend that she is, in fact, her best friend.

The only problem is that the 37-year-old part of her gets scared about opening herself up like that and saying, “You are my best friend!” Because she knows all too well the pain of not having your feelings reciprocated by the person you really, really like. So she’s learned to be covert about the way she expresses her affection and appreciation toward others.

In childhood, she traded the title “best friend” like bracelets. Now she uses a wonderfully non-committal grown-up version of that and says, “Text me when you get home,” or “Want me to pick you up?” or “I can watch your kid for a couple of hours.”

Well, one day she decided to take a step a bit further than that. Because, again, through painful lessons, she’s learned that one of the most regrettable things in life is missing out on the opportunity to tell someone how much they meant to her. So one day, she mustered all of her courage to ask her new friend who had entered her life only recently,

 “Hey, I know we’ve only known each other for a short time… but will you be my emergency contact?”

Readers, her friend said “yes.”

It was the most amazing feeling to have someone say yes to having your back in the toughest times, and to commit to that kind of support, care, and love. Not only had I met someone so incredible that I wanted to be best friends with, but I had also been able to cultivate and nurture a friendship in my brand-new life, in a brand-new country, and in a language.

When we acquire a new language, whether it’s your second or your seventh, the goal is always the same: so that you connect more deeply with people and their culture, and so that maybe one day, you can be comfortable and skilled enough with that language to be playful and creative in the way you ask someone, “wanna be friends?”

Written by SAKURACO