Will You Be My Bosom Best Friend?

In all the books that I have read, pages and pages of romance in my youth, globs of fantasy in my young adulthood, and as an adult literary fiction with a spidgen of the appropriate amount of horror, if there is such an appropriate amount, and despicable characters, lots and lots of despicable characters, there is one story in particular that really resonated with me; I still think about it in fact. Now for those who know me, it may come as a surprise that I still think of such a story as this, for it is very not the me of today. It's more what the younger Elizabeth enjoyed. The one who lived with her rose colored glasses tightly pushed high up on her nose, her heart open to a world brimming with delicious possibilities for her future self.

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, the 1985 Canadian made for television film starring Megan Follows, is the story that I am talking about.

I grew up watching this movie. It's actually in three parts and I revelled in every blessed minute. When I was older I read the books penned by author L.M. Montgomery. They always say the book is better than any film adaptation ever could be, but in this case the movie really did justice to the books. In fact, I enjoyed both of them equally.

If you don’t already know the story I won’t bore you with the minute details, but at its core is the main character Anne Shirley.  Anne is an orphan and is adopted by a brother and sister who wanted a boy to help them around the farm.  Of course this would probably never happen today, but this story takes place in the early 1900s so that arrangement wasn’t terribly unusual.  They didn’t get the boy that they requested however, but was instead met with over imaginative, spitfire Anne Shirley. There were several things about Anne that stood out to me then and I still remember to this day. First, she insists on being called Cordelia because “it’s such a perfectly elegant name” (32), but resigned herself to her real name Anne, even if she believed it to be very unromantic.  When Marilla, her adopted mother, scoffs at such a notion and refuses to call her anything but her lawful name, Anne makes another request. Can everyone at least spell it with an e?  And the last thing. Anne wants to find her bosom best friend, “an intimate friend, you know–a really kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul” (66).  Anne does find that intimate friend in the character of Diana Berry and their relationship, in my opinion, is one of the most inspiring, most iconic in all of literature.  Upon Anne first meeting Diana she asks her, “Do you think you can like me a little–enough to be my bosom friend?” (97). 

I always felt that I shared quite a few things with Anne Shirley or maybe she influenced me to behave in certain ways; the first media influencer who I was swayed by I guess you could say.

When I was in seventh grade I wanted to die my hair red, like Anne, and change my name to Cordelia, like Anne. I even wrote one paper in my English class and signed it Cordelia McKintock. My mother refused both of these notions. I know, rude. And I resigned myself to using Cordelia McKlintock as a pseudonym if I ever became a published writer. Second, my middle name is Anne and I revelled in the fact that it is spelled with an e even though my mother said that I was named after my grandmother who did not end her Ann with an e, which I must admit confused me. I am glad that my mom did decide to tag that e on to the end of my Anne for I really do think it looks better that way. It gives it an extra flare. (Now if your name is Ann and it does not end with an e, I apologize for saying such things. I like the name Ann no matter how it's spelled if I'm being completely honest.)

Third, and most important to this particular blog post, finding my bosom best friend.  My Diana Berry if you will.  I’ve had two friends in my life that would rival something that means a bosom best friend.  My cousin Amanda and my childhood friend Jessica.  Both girls had to put up with me repeatedly asking them to be my bosom friend.  The first time I asked Amanda, she looked at me quizzically at first and maybe a bit panicked.  I’m pretty sure she had never watched Anne of Green Gables or read the books and I did not really provide her with much context for my question, maybe she would have understood me better if I had explained the story.  Needless to say I was rejected by the both of them.  I only ever saw Amanda once a year and I’m sure she was thinking, I have loads of friends back home who I talk to on a daily basis.  But alas, I didn’t let that deter me for I continued to ask her every year.  Bless her for not telling me to shut the fuck up already.  And Jessica.  Jessica was too much of a pragmatist to understand such a strange, weird, and too intimate of a question.  Also, what a committment to make in the fourth grade to another person.

All of this brings me to my current state of things.  I have struggled with finding friends in my adult life and I really think Anne Shirley and her quest for a kindred spirit ruined me.  I have always wanted that friend to confide in, my ride or die.  Someone who laughs at my jokes, never at my expense.  Someone who would help me bury a body, no questions asked.  Someone who is like family, but better because they chose you.  But Anne found her kindred spirit in childhood, not as an adult and maybe that's the real key to all of this. That's not to say you can't find a friend, even a best friend, as an adult, I think it just looks a little different. Life expectations, responsibilites get in the way sometimes of maintaining friendships in adulthood. People leave, but may return again and that is ok as well. And another thing, not everyone has to be your particular best friend; not everyone even has a best friend. Some times I take a notion and romantisize it in my mind and then get depressed if fiction does not become my reality, but that's not fiction's real job. Fiction's job is to take us away from the harsh stings of whatever makes up our day to day, not to infiltrate into our real life.

I sometimes do miss the dreamy version of myself. The one who longed to live in a romantisized version of her life. She is still in me perhaps, buried deep within loads of cynicism and stoniness, resurfacing every 20 years or so like some sort of Hailey’s comet, even though that is visible I think every 76 years, and maybe that's how long it will take for me to revert back to who I once was.

Maybe it's Montgomery herself who would have been my bosom best friend if I had met her. It's her stories, her words that will always stay sunkissed and cherished in my heart and that makes me happy that I was introduced to her by an Ann, without an e, for reading her stories shaped the person who I am today. I would never have gone around ptitfully asking classmates if they would be my bosom friend. I would also probably not have been mocked or judged for living in my own little Anne Shirley world, but I would rather that world than the one we are currently living in. My world involves flowery words, titillating hearts. A place that is always autumn, makes you feel like you are being held in a tight embrace. It's a place where you are loved because of the simple fact that you are you and isn't that what we all really want in the end.