There are times when you’ll need someone.
On writing an ode to Assia, one of my best friends.
“Follow your envy—it shows you what you want.” - Lori Gottlieb
One of my best friends was once my nemesis. Okay, that sounds dramatic because it is, but that’s how I felt. Once, my freshman year roommate, whom I once professed to loathe back in 2010, Assia is now one of my closest and cherished friends fifteen years later. I admitted the revelation about the start of our connection on New Year's Day 2020, or was it New Year’s Eve 2019?
It’s hard to admit to someone that you had no valid reason for hating them. Sure, both of the immature versions of ourselves said and did things to each other back then that we laugh and cringe at now. And though I felt differently at the time, none of those happenings deserved the disdain I felt then. We were so childish and petty towards each other, but chalked it up to being total opposites who were forced to share the first space we had outside of the homes we grew up in as we entered adulthood.
It took a lot of soul-searching and growth to come to the realization of why I disliked her so much back then. It had a lot to do with my own insecurities and low self-esteem. I was unsure about myself and life, and I perceived Assia to be the exact opposite, where she seemed so sure of herself, who she was, and of life. She seemed so balanced. She could party all weekend and still get up early for Army drills and PT. She had a close circle of friends with whom she spent quality time, and effortlessly aced accounting exams. To this day, she does not have to try to be cool. She just oozes cool. I tell her all the time how cool she is. I think she’s one of the coolest humans who has ever existed. She, like me, is also very quirky and weird. But she’s soooo damn cool. And if I’m honest, her unintentional cool factor probably pissed me off even more because “cool” was not a word used to describe me back then.
To me, Assia was a daily physical reminder of what and who I wanted to be but was not. Sure of myself. Cool in nature. Beautiful. Loved. And I wasn’t mature enough to know, name, or explain that then. I also hadn’t yet learned to healthily resolve conflict. This was my first time sharing significant space with someone who wasn’t related to me, and boy, did we clash. Growing up in my family, if we were upset with someone, we just stopped talking to them until we were over it or had a reason to speak to them. That was my norm, so I carried it into all my other relationships and friendships until early adulthood. Assia often referred to me as her wife because she “Never knew when I’d be mad and stop talking to her again.”
I envied Assia because she was the physical manifestation of all the things I hated and so desperately wanted to change about myself. She had a breathtaking beauty and an amazing, thin body. She seemingly made friends easily, and I thought people flocked to her. And she was so free-spirited and uninhibited. If she cared what others thought, I couldn’t tell at the time. I hadn’t yet learned to know and love myself in the way that I do now, and wanted so badly to embody who she was.
When I revealed these thoughts to Assia while visiting her in Denver for the New Year 2020, she said, “You thought I was everything you weren’t, but you embodied everything I was afraid to be. You were openly sensitive and vulnerable, unafraid to let the world know. You said and acted what and how you felt, even if it didn’t quite fit the mood.”
How funny, that now, a decade and a half later, we’ve become each other’s person. No explanations necessary. No judgements passed. It’s wild that it was the envy of what the other seemingly possessed that was part of the fuel that kept us apart. And now, the undeniable similarities, mirror images of what we thought we lacked, brought us back together.
A couple of years ago, we talked about whether 19-year-old Ashleigh and Assia would be surprised to see where we are now, and the conclusion was perfect: “They may be shocked at who we are individually, but we always knew the love was too strong not to come back to.” There were times in college when we’d be getting along, lying in our respective beds, having girl talk until three or four in the morning about everything and nothing at all—even knowing Assia had to be up for PT in a few hours. Sometimes those conversations induced tears, other times hushed laughter so as not to wake our suitemates, and it gave me hope that we could find a way to coexist. But those moments didn’t happen often enough then to compensate for the growth we both needed. It was our growth individually as people over the years that laid the foundation for the glorious, eternal sisterhood we have now, and I’m glad we’re here.
That conversation on New Year's changed something for me in our friendship. We had become closer before that trip, but there were always miles and months between our conversations and interactions. At the time of that trip, so many things in my life didn’t feel right, and Assia sat with me in it and helped me not feel so tied to the choices I’d made so far that got me where I was. She reminded me that it’s okay to change my mind about how I show up in the world, and I was grateful for her reassurance and ready to go into 2020 changing my life.
That was my last big trip before the world shut down in 2020, and I lost my mind. I had no idea just how monumental Assia’s presence would be for me in the years that followed. When life took a turn for the worse for me, I was confiding in Assia and cried about just how dark and heavy things had been for me. She responded something like “I wish I could hold it all for you, even if for a little bit, just to give you some relief. If I could carry it for you, I would.” You know the love is real when even when someone has their own heavy baggage to handle and they would still make room for yours in a heartbeat. And still, that’s the space she holds for me. She always comes through with a timely affirmation or show of support whether its’s a video of dancing happily to a song, or a voice memo encouraging me about something I’m experiencing.
Early on in the pandemic, she caused mayhem in my home for a second because she sent a bouquet of sunflowers with a heartfelt note of love but no name. My daughter’s father was not happy about that, and even though I was technically single, I had to assure him I had no idea who they were from. When I found out they were from her, I was so relieved, amused, and grateful to have her in my life all over again.
Assia is one of my favorite people to share a space with.
Even though much of that space has been virtual since college, Assia shared this same sentiment about me, and it shows whenever we interact: video chats with libations or herbs, catching up on life, running lines for one of her auditions, or talking about something I’ve written. She’s also a muse for me. I never leave our conversations without having things to sit with and write about. We exchange advice and ideas as if our rent or mortgage payments depend on it.
Our birthdays are two days apart, I’m April 15th and she’s the 17th. In early 2023, we were conversing about our birthdays that year, and she told me that she would be spending this month in Paris on a sabbatical. I immediately invited myself on the trip for the week of our birthdays. Assia thought I was just talking shit, probably because I was jobless and broke, but I had the miles for it and booked it immediately after we got off the call. I could only afford the travel because I had been saving miles for a trip to Amsterdam pre-pandemic as a gift to myself for getting into grad school. And I wouldn’t have to pay for lodging because she had an Airbnb for a month already. When I invited myself, she had every right to say, “Hmm, maybe not, this trip is serving a specific purpose for me, and I don’t want to interrupt that.” Instead, she wasted no time inviting me along.
Before then, I was depressed and suicidal. I needed to keep things in my sight that I could look forward to to keep me alive, and that trip to Paris was one of those things. I’m so glad that I went. That trip renewed something in me and gave me a new lease on life. I was so inspired all the way, and it sparked some joy in me that I had not felt in quite some time. That week, together with Assia, was beautiful. We stayed up talking just like we did freshman year of college. We gave each other space when the moment called for it. We co-worked on our creative projects. We explored the city and did touristy things. And we even recorded a time capsule to watch in ten years that I may or may not have taken a peek at for a line in the video. That trip was both life-changing and saving.
I was recently able to spend a weekend in LA with Assia last month, and each time I get to share significant space and time with her, I am renewed and affirmed mentally and emotionally, and leave her presence better than I came. I look forward to all the lives Assia and I will live together, holding each other’s hands along the way. I’m glad that life took us from complete strangers who, on the surface, seemingly couldn’t be more different, to kindred spirits navigating life together.
Assia, “Thank you for everything” doesn’t feel sufficient, but it’s what I have for now. Thank you for seeing and loving me. I’m so glad we exist together as we are—fully expressing, fully loving, and fully caring.
There are times when you’ll need someone, I will be by your side.
Note: I’ve been telling Assia, on and off, that I was writing about her for years. It started with her jokingly teasing me after I wrote about another friendship on my blog years ago. That conversation actually made me sit down and start writing about our friendship because it is one of the most unexpected blessings of my life. This essay took on many forms. I chopped a lot for length and flow; there’s just so much to our story. This was a character profile I enjoyed writing. I also made this random playlist of songs that may not go together, but are somewhere in some of the videos between Assia and I.
Currently.
Feeling — Okay, dare I say.. good? That feels scary to say because I feel like I’ll dare life to break me in some way again.
Doing — I am proud to say that I have been doing a whole lot of writing this week. These essays won’t write themselves. This book won’t write itself.
Reading — About to start the last book in the Brown sisters series, “Act Your Age, Eve Brown.”
Anticipating — My little sister’s 30th birthday party this week. It feels weird because my little brother and sister are twins, so its my brothers birthday too, but just her party lol
Learning — To get out of my own way. Something I’ll learn and relearn again.
Affirming — I have everything I need to succeed.
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🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹 I love you and am just honored to be in your orbit.
My best friend and I also started out disliking each other as college freshmen. And here we are, BFFs fifty years later.