Cake for Lunch: How to Win Friends and Lose Followers

a Lunch on Friday x Angel Cake collab

We had the idea of writing this piece after a particularly great night where we were reflecting on how much we value our friends—we have somehow weaved together people from different pockets of our lives, and all the pieces fit together like they were designed to be there. We feel so grateful to feel this way because this is not always how our lives were, we have gone through different phases and friendship forms that have led us here. Enjoy!

Old Friends

Angelina: I’ve heard that if you’re friends with someone for 7 years, the friendship will last a lifetime. I don’t believe everything I read on the Internet, but this I want to believe is true. If both parties are willing to make a friendship last, then it will. I have people I’m still friends with from kindergarten and first grade, people who knew me when I had braces and acne and a phase of wearing cargo shorts from the boys section at Gap, and they’re still friends with me. I think there’s something quite magical about old friends—people who you may not see for a few months or even a year, but the second you see them again, you pick right up where you left off. Old friends know you in a way no one else ever will. If someone knew you as a child, they knew you at your purest, and that’s inimitable. I tell my best friend from high school that she knows me better than I know myself because it’s true. You can’t rewrite your past, and if someone who knew you for 7+ years has stuck with you that long, they’re probably not going anywhere now!!!!

Emily: Angelina I can’t imagine you wearing cargo shorts and now that vision is stuck in my head baahahah. There is something so inherently vulnerable about being around old friends that I really love, they’ve seen you painfully metamorphosize through awkward phases and have experienced the painful lessons that inform how you hold yourself today. I always feel a little exposed when I’m around the people I grew up with, they call me out when I say overly pretentious things and remind me that of the time I threw up on the carpet of our friend’s furnished basement the first time we were drinking. As much as I try to learn from my mistakes and evolve into a new person I will always be tethered back down to my awkward lanky self by these people, it’s a reality check I yearn for every year like clockwork. 

New Friends 

Emily: Something I’ve realized about myself is that I live for the beginning of most things, whether it’s the start of a new year, job, romantic relationship, etc. I find the promise of what could be so intoxicating. I love the feeling of lighting a candle for the first time, slowly watching the wax melt and congeal into itself transforming into something new. I say all this to say, I really love the beginning of a friendship. There is nothing quite like hanging out with someone for the first time and leaving feeling lighter despite gaining something new. The act of making new friends for a lot of us changes dramatically upon the conclusion of school, at least for me I spent most of my life in an educational system designed for me to make friends with people my age, I didn’t even think that making friends would ever be difficult because I was constantly surrounded by my peers. When I graduated I still had my best friends but I noticed that I lost a lot of my in-between relationships, those people who would be in my classes or who I would see at parties every single week without making any real effort. In an attempt to gain some of these people back in my life I started saying yes to EVERYTHING (which… I kind of still do… working on it), and filled my proverbial cup with these people again. Like with most things in life, making new friends requires effort, time and discomfort which only makes it so much sweeter.

Angelina: At parent-teacher conferences when I was growing up, the teachers would often tell my parents, “Angelina is friends with everyone.” Since I was little, I’ve loved making new friends. I’ve written about this before, but I truly believe we have something in common with every person we meet, and it’s so enthralling to figure out what that might be. When I moved to New York full-time in 2020, I began making friends at work and in my neighborhood and at parties and on Twitter. I was so excited to have a fresh landscape of new friends who might become forever friends. In reality, not all of these people stuck, but the ones who did are some of the most important people in my life to this day. That’s what’s so exciting about a new friendship—you never know where it might lead. I had no idea that replying to a random tweet would lead to my friendship with Elise, or that going to a random party in Williamsburg would lead to my friendship with JC (which led to Anne and Reid dating!), or that accepting an invite to a 25th birthday party would lead to THIS ESSAY. (More on that below.)

Emily: I will say, Angelina is incredible at making friends and forming relationships with people, it is one of my favorite things about her. She reaches out and follows up and is so fantastically genuine. May we all learn from her, I know I have! 

Work Friends 

Emily: The first real big girl job I have ever had was fully remote due to Covid restrictions, I would often say things like, “I cannot imagineeeee ever going to an office” and would join my peers in lamenting the idea of being in-person. Eventually we switched to a hybrid structure and people whom I only saw in little squares on my screen suddenly had expansive lives and personalities of their own. I still remember the first time I virtually met Angelina, she presented in a meeting and I thought she was so well-spoken and just simply cool. Eventually we sat across from each other in the office and would exchange a few laughs from time to time because we both value laughing at work, I vividly remember being at a corporate happy hour when we didn’t know each other and she complimented the neon green turtleneck I was wearing (don’t judge me for that..), I told her that I looked like Elizabeth Holmes if she was on Molly, she laughed at that and I knew we would be friends. I invited her to my 25th birthday party not thinking that she would actually come… and the rest is history! Some work friends are meant to stay at the office, but the most important thing is that you have people who you can actually be yourself with and momentarily leave your 9-5 personality behind. 

Angelina: Emily and I have a whimsical friendship because the first time we hung out one-on-one, I let her dye my hair. We didn’t even know each other that well, but I trusted her from the beginning. (I think it’s because we’re both from Pennsylvania.) For so long, I would introduce her as “Emily, my friend from work,” but eventually, she just became “my friend Emily,” and I am so grateful! On the subject of work friends, in general, I think they’re some of the most important friendships in your life at any given time, whether you know it or not. I was thinking about this yesterday—how my colleagues at work are the people I’ve spent most of my life with for the past 4 years. I spend 8+ hours a day with them. In reality, I see them more than I see my own family. Work friendships are fascinating because we’re forced to be in the same environment every day, solving problems and creating solutions. I’d hate to be one of those people who doesn’t make friends at work because I’d have no one to healthily gossip with or have lunch with or send Zoom chats to about the toilets not flushing on the 17th floor. Work should be FUN!

Emily: Someone please fix the 17th floor bathroom we’re begging 

Party Friends 

Angelina: I have a handful of friends whom I’ve never seen in the daylight. We met at parties and still go to parties together, and for a while, that was the extent of our friendships. You might ask yourself, isn’t that a bit shallow? To have friends who are only party friends? But it’s so much more than that. These are friends who have spent hours at a time with me on some of the most fun nights of my life. These are people who make getting ready and going out worth it because the second I see them, I feel like I’m at home no matter where we are. These are friends who have become family through our 18-person group chat that never stops texting (partially because at least one person is always awake). I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have friends that will likely never meet your parents. It’s fun having people in your life who fit into a space that’s shaped for them and them only—it’s what makes the friendship unique and special!!!!

Emily: I got into a heated argument one time with a friend about the importance of party friends, she argued that she preferred to only have deep intense friendships and hated the notion of fringe party friends, I argued that I think a well-rounded life is built on different levels of friendships spanning from party friends to work friends to neighborhood friends to best friends to forever friends. Rarely do you find people who are a one-size-fits-all in your life, I have different pockets of my life I keep separately on purpose, AND THAT’S OKAY! I love friends I dance and gossip with and I love friends who I can have deep conversations with. Do not feel bad for having party friends or for setting boundary to keep someone in the party box!!!!!!!

Fake Friends 

SOOOOO we had this on our outline to write about but we both realized we don’t have any fake friends. Probably because of all of the above and below…. how beautiful is that?

Former Friends 

Angelina: For most of my life, I had never really lost a friend. Of course, I had friends I was really close to in grade school whom I wasn’t as close to in high school, but I hadn’t truly had a “falling out” with a friend until about a year ago. Someone I loved so deeply no longer wanted to be my friend, and it was really hard for me to accept. I kept trying to hold onto our friendship of the past, doing everything in my power to preserve the commonalities we had shared throughout high school and college in an effort to save a sinking ship. One of my friends told me, “It’s not worth your time, it’s a lost cause,” but I couldn’t bear the thought of our road trips to see our favorite band or our adventures in London or our long drives through rural Pennsylvania being a distant memory, a blip in my camera roll. After one final effort over a phone call where I did most of the talking, I realized maybe it was time to give up. Maybe the friendship would be better preserved by relishing in those memories that exist in my camera roll and loving them for what they were during those moments in time. I remember how my heart sank when I saw that she unfollowed me on Instagram, and I knew it was over. Isn’t that funny? How losing a follower means it’s over? At the end of it all, I think that’s what made me start to accept everything—our friendship before she unfollowed me on Instagram was beautiful and juvenile and hilarious and spontaneous and carefree and fun. It was a moment in time. I’ve accepted everything now, and I still love her and wish her the best. My acceptance of losing this friend made space for new experiences. 

Emily: In general, I have very little conflict in my life. In high school and college I was constantly be surrounded by reality tv worthy friend fights and would always feel so confused how that could ever happen. I used to think that this was because I didn’t like conflict but I’ve realized that it is moreso that I just simply do not have dramatic friends, which is intentional. What I have had happen in the absence of drama is the slow fade out of a friendship which can subtly sting for even longer. There is something deeply sad but kind of cathartic to realize that a friend who I had commonality with because of a external factor will no longer exist in the same way once our lives inevitably change. I’m still grappling with this and feel confronted everytime I receive a wedding invitation in the mail from someone I have nothing in common with anymore, it feels weird, but it’s supposed to. 

Forever Friends 

Emily: People say that in a romantic relationship it should feel easy and natural when you are around That Person, while I completely agree with the sentiment I find that I rarely hear people describe friendship in this way. I still remember the first day I got into my now forever friend Sydney’s car in college, her clunky Subaru barely inched up the massive hill my dorm was at the top of. She honked her horn for me to get in and I opened the passenger door to various piles of trash which she told me to ignore which I dutifully did. She drove us to get spray tans like the good little sorority girls we were and I laughed the entire time feeling my shoulders relax knowing that I could be completely myself inside this magical car, a feeling I hadn’t felt in a long time. By the time she dropped me off I was sticky from the orange spray and giddy knowing that she will without a doubt be in my life forever, it just felt easy. 

Angelina: I know very well who my forever friends are, because they’re the people I’ve never had to try around. They’re the people to which I can say, “I’m tired, can you guys go home soon?” when we’re sitting in my living room giggling over glasses of bourbon on a Thursday night. They’re the people I’ve never had to explain myself to or justify anything to. They’re my friends who aren’t even my friends—they’re family. I have a locked note in my phone called “forever friends” with a list of these very special people in my life, and I’ve never really had to edit it, because they're the types of friendships that are fueled by unconditional love. I’m sitting across from one of them right now watching her type in this document. I’m seeing a few of them later and I can’t wait to squeeze them. Forever friends are what make life worth living!!!!!!!

Epilogue 

Emily: Okay listen up team, we originally had a plan to have a dinner party in November for our friends and readers… long story short we went through the motions and have been bamboozled and are no longer having a dinner party in November. 

Angelina: I have tears in my eyes from laughing as I tell you, we’ve been BAMBOOZLED—HOWEVER, there is a lesson in everything, and what these two girls have learned is that WE CAN DO IT OURSELVES!!!!! We still plan to have a gathering with all of you soon, but unfortunately, that will not be happening this November. Good things come to those who wait.

Thank you for reading!!!!!!

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