Since yesterday morning, coming across the news haphazardly and almost mistakenly, I have been trying to give words to how I feel about @notnadia and my friendship with her. Words form the basis of our friendship, from livejournal confessionals to fanfiction in shared fandoms to gchat conversations on work laptops, right through to social media – twitter, tumblr, instagram, facebook, slack, whatsapp. For almost half my life Tahlia and I have been engaging in one long conversation that crossed the Atlantic in both directions, sometimes accompanied by wine, and almost always book-ended with the admonishment that it was damn past her bedtime and she should go to sleep already.
Like any friendship predicated on an exchange of language, ours was made up of and fit-to-burst with stories – stories of our shared adventures, of shared travels and trials; stories of shows and ships; stories of that one summer we never set out in the right direction, doubling back on ourselves in circles from Camden and Liverpool Street to Brussels and Bruges; stories of our in-jokes, our fandom footholds and ‘catchphrases’, and remembrances of behaviour we could never properly eschew, despite knowing it did us more harm than help. We talked when Tahlia wasn’t yet asleep and I wasn’t sleeping anymore; when a rash of vague-tweeting would prompt me to reach out – girl, what is going on? – that would lead to a back-and-forth that would carry me from a sunless dawn and into a day-sprung city. I used to travel in liminal hours, and that’s where our friendship lived for a while, those in-between times at the opposite ends of our days.
I sat with Tahlia outside an elevator in a hotel on the continent whilst we talked about what had really been bothering her since before she boarded a flight in the States; I ran with her through St Pancras station, rushing to pick up our tickets before running back to catch our soon-departing train; I followed her into cathedrals and churches, and I sat with her after she’d lit candles for her mom and grandmother, something she did because they would have wanted her to, and so in turn did for herself. I made her walk the mile and a half journey to the park she usually took the metro to, and, before that, over Brooklyn bridge and into the New York that she loved and claimed as her own. We’ve sat next to each other on buses and park benches; taken cross-continental trains and cross-city transit; drank beer at café tables and prosecco in cinemas. We’ve gone several rounds on the merits of different tube maps; brought it up in re-tweets of maps from countries not our own; often agreed then held onto the disagreements anyway. We talked about hit counts and project management apps; about the prevalence of whatsapp in some countries over others; about wifi on the underground. We took and compared notes on our cultural differences; laughed at and with each other over how my Britishness stacked up against her Americanness; had conflicting opinions on what she meant by punk. We went to bars with weird names and bought drinks on the same basis. We shared hotel rooms and holidayed together; said, this is what it means to have international friends, before realising, wait, no, we’re definitely going the wrong way— hang on, I’m going to load Maps again.
When she moved into her own place, I cheered; when she lost her mom, I mourned next to her, a thousand miles away. Did you eat? You should eat. Did you call someone? Text me; I’m here. You’re not alone. Go for a walk today; leave the flat; meet a friend. Did you go out? Send me proof. And then – photos. Photos of laundry receipts. Photos of cinema tickets. Photos of metro passes, of bars and bodegas. Proof of survival. Proof of life.
In 2014 I made the trek to the States and Tahlia opened her home to me; insisted I stay with her when I was wobbling over the things I could and couldn’t afford but didn’t want to assume or put anyone out. She wanted to show me the city the way she’d found it – took me on her commute; bought me breakfast at her bagel place; took me to themed bars and pizza joints. We did exactly what we were wont to do – watched Spooks and documentaries about Banksy; yelled at the screen and at each other; talked about our lives and our jobs and our families and friends; talked about her latest news, her plans, that one hellish boss, or her next big break. Talked and talked and talked like we didn’t text or skype on the regular; like we hadn’t spoken in years. Wore bonnets in a costume museum; went to the theatre in the West End; recommended films and books and shows and ships; recommended plays and disagreed on them; shared selfies of outfits and agreed we looked boss. Sent pictures that meant nothing outside the dialogue that existed between us. Even when we paused – even when the everyday world intervened – we’d pick up again like the pause was merely notional; hit resume, ran some previouslies, got caught the hell up.
The foundation of our relationship was fixed and remained firm through a lot of changes. We were surprised and delighted in turn by the parallels in the structure of our professional lives, exclaiming, oh shit, that’s my job – you’re doing my job! We cheered each other on in each new step and gave a war cry in support of surviving the last heartbreak, the last bad job, the last personal indignity. Fuck that, we told each other; be kind, but take no shit. We deserve nice things, we’d remind each other, even when we weren’t sure it was true, happier to hear it from each other than ourselves. Don’t lie, I’d say; you’re allowed to want things for the sake of wanting them. Bullshit, she’d say to me; you earned this, so you get to have it. We shared interests and intimacies despite the distance and in spite of time zones. We were messy people and we wore that together, partly with pride, partly with indifference. For a long time, we were both always tired, always trying in our own ways to get through, and coming back to complain to one another when we couldn’t tell other people. What passed between us was private and privileged; there are confidences between us that I will never break.
This past year Tahlia was on an upswing that finally, truly looked like it might never crest and turn back on her. I was worried about her – she threw herself into everything that interested her so completely and I could see patterns I’d seen before re-emerging. In some ways, I failed her this past year; I knew, too, that it was taking me longer than other friends she had to trust in the new trajectory of her life. I was being cautious, I said, so she didn’t have to, and sometimes that meant that I wasn’t fully with her in her joy this year, even though I tried to keep up. But Tahlia was happy! She was excited and passionate and energised. Even in the depths of my carefully-guarded cynicism that delight was infectious, and also her gift, not only to me, but to everyone who encountered it, whether we were open to it or not – perhaps especially when we were not. In the conversation that was our friendship, we each clearly understood our respective roles: my job was to keep Tahlia on level ground, making sure she never lied to herself, but hers was to jump first and convince me to follow – to join her as she pursued what she wanted with open-hearted optimism. Take that holiday; ask for that raise; make that move. Do it because you can; do it because you want to. Do it because you earned it. We deserve nice things.
In DC last year, descending into the metro with a number of our ‘pocket’ friends Tahlia said, you’re the mom and I’m the dad. At the time I sort of eye-rolled the sentiment, maybe finding it reductionist or heteronormative, but since then I’ve come to appreciate something else about that perspective: that each of us remained defiantly ourselves but in tandem; that we complemented one another; that there existed between us an interplay, equal and opposite, separate but balanced. We each played a role for the other, and when I couldn’t perform that role then I’d send envoys, ask our mutual friends, have you spoken to Tahlia? I’m worried about her; have you heard from her? I worried a lot - that was and is my disposition – whilst Tahlia raged. I cut through noise to reach her; she made noise to protect me.
I am waiting now for a Sunday Skype call that will never come, one that we scheduled and re-scheduled and re-scheduled again, all the while still rolling into each other’s whatsapps and Instagram comments with frequency. We spoke in code because we hadn’t had that call yet. We said, I love that print! when we meant hi, it’s good to see you. We typed I have been thinking about that article all day which meant I’m still paying attention; I’m still talking. I am not ready for our conversation to be over; I have been stockpiling topics for that call – things to ask; things to tell in return. Scrolling through tumblr when I couldn’t sleep last night I thought how fucked it was that Tahlia wouldn’t get to watch the new lady Doctor Who or find out how Game of Thrones ends. How incomprehensible it was that she wouldn’t go back to her park or her stretch of beach; wouldn’t again visit those Russian storefronts on the Shore. What utter bullshit that she’d never again send me a news article with the comment IT’S ALWAYS THE RUSSIANS or OMNISHAMBLES, or say, remember that time when--? Remember that time we got lost; that time you took me to a club; that time you saved me from a cab in front of Fake Thames House? And I can’t pass it back either: remember when you used being American to force us through customs at Eurostar? When you apologised to the waitstaff for not finishing your meal because I just got off a flight? When you took us all the way around Camden looking for the Amy Winehouse bar and we walked past it twice? Remember when? Remember?
We, each of us, have to do the remembering now. It has been overwhelming reading the tweets, the facebook posts and tumblr memoriams; I can’t imagine how it must feel to Tahlia’s family and friends when even I, who knew which spheres she traversed, have been taken aback by just how far her reach was – how many people she knew, and how many people she brought up with her through sheer strength of joy. We are all connected; we were all caught and buoyed by fandom and it brought us to Tahlia and her to us. Someone posted a poem that titled one of her fics – it was a poem I sent her; one that she’d asked for. Someone else said Tahlia had told them to write, that they must write, and I remembered that I’d told her the same once upon a time, and that she’d taken it to heart and then passed it on. Someone posted a photo with her, and I thought, oh, I know that flat; I picked her up from there once and I see it every time I go to the Young Vic. You and you and you and me, and everyone who has dropped into Tahlia’s mentions; all these circles that touch and overlap with Tahlia. She would have loved to read all of our remembrances; would have been bowled over by the sheer number of them, and – let’s face it – ecstatic over the stats. Tahlia was and always will be Tahlia, after all.
I won’t be able to attend the funeral or wake; for once, the distance between us is too far. When I heard the news yesterday I immediately wanted to text her— girl, what is going on? But that conversation has come to a close. We left it the way we always did, open in anticipation of the next sentence. I’m glad that if it had to close, that it’s being replaced by all of us talking out loud, telling and sharing our remembrances. Tahlia loved a good narrative twist; she loved to guess them before they happened. It was one of her many superpowers. I hope she knew how much we love her; I hope she knew it before we said it.
Rest easy Tahl.
