White Lotus and the exploration of shared history.

(and why the three women cannot be reduced to a scathing critique of female friendship)

Despite reading the odd article on Substack that labelled Laurie’s speech in the season finale of White Lotus as “self-abandonment”, I think most of us were deeply moved by it.

Here it is again:

“Thats funny ‘cause if I’m being honest, all week I’ve been so sad. I just feel like my expectations were too high, or… I just feel like as you get older, you have to justify your life, you know? And your choices.

And… when I’m with you guys, it’s just so, like… like, transparent what my choices were, and my mistakes. I have no belief system. And I… Well, I mean I’ve had a lot of them, but… I mean, work was my religion for forever, but I definitely lost my belief there. And then— And then I tried love, and that was just a painful religion, just made everything worse. And then, even for me, just, like, being a mother, that didn’t save me either. But I had this epiphany today. I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning because time gives it meaning.

We… we started this life together. I mean, we’re going through it apart, but we’re still together, and I… I look at you guys, and it feels meaningful. And I can’t explain it, but even when we’re just sitting around the pool talking about whatever inane shit, it still feels very fucking deep.

I’m glad you have a beautiful face. And I’m glad that you have a beautiful life. And I’m just happy to be at the table. I love you.”

I feel you, Laurie. Photo credit: HBO

And I think the reason we were all so moved is because we all know what it is to have friends that reach back into our pasts, and touch the parts of ourselves that we’ve tried hard to outgrow. The parts that feel awkward, or left out, or too much, or too little. We’ve chosen new friends that better reflect our chosen identities and yet, somehow, our oldest friends touch our deepest wounds – because our deepest wounds live in our childhoods.

More than that, the friends we’ve had since our youth will necessarily peel off in wildly different directions. These friends’ mere existence represent the multiple paths you could have, did, or didn’t take. If comparison lives anywhere, it’s burrowed most deeply in these relationships.

And yet those same people, through all the comings and goings that life presents – the losses and the victory laps – when they are still there, at least you can say you loved these people your whole life. And that they loved you. When everything else falls away, shared history remains. Nothing can erase it. It is to be known. It is being told, I’ll never leave you.

This sentiment is the beating heart of what we long for as human beings. To know that we are not alone; that we will not be left. Whilst we grasp at those words from romantic partners (it’s essentially why we marry in droves – sign a contract that says you won’t leave me!) the security is illusory at best. The contract can indeed be ripped up. They can leave. The closest we ever really come to knowing we won’t be left, is proof that we haven’t been. And by definition, we receive that most faithfully from those who have known and loved us the longest. Our friends. Even the ones that drive us mad. Even the ones who can be sneaky and flawed. Even the ones with whom we appear to have little in common any more, aside from our pasts that stretch ever further into the horizon.

Fabio Lovino/HBO

It’s also (I’m kind of riffing here) why men can happily sit side-by-side at a cricket match (or whatever it is they do, lol) and just exist together, with little else in common but the ball being tossed around the pitch. I visited an old friend of mine in New York recently, who is very much l-i-v-i-n-g (with a capital L) single life in his late thirties, and he remarked on how moved he felt on a recent visit home to Sydney, spending time with old friends with young families. Their lives so vastly different, yet the continuity of their friendship brought him comfort amidst the chaos. In this way, we will always be tethered by our pasts. Anchors that were thrown to the ocean floor many moons ago, without us even realising it.

As for the Jaqueline-Laurie-Valentin love triangle plot line, I’m sure there’s not a woman alive who hasn’t been entangled in a situation involving a man and her friend. And the man is usually insignificant in the scheme of things. It’s the apology and the repair that matters. It’s the moving through it that actually lets your friendship deepen, while he turns to dust. Some loser you laugh about one day, with any luck.

And I’m even more sure there is not a woman alive who isn’t intimately familiar with the texture of gossiping about one of their oldest and/or best friends. We want to look at it on screen and call it toxic, but I don’t think it is. I know my best and oldest friends MUST talk about me – about the questionable decisions I’m making or the stuff I’ve done that worries them. Equally, I know they talk about me when they’re proud of me or in admiration of something I’ve achieved. This is all gossip. And it’s all okay. We gossip as a means to vent, cope, explore and test our own assumptions and biases. Of course there are limits to what’s acceptable in the realm of gossip but just because you gossip about a friend, doesn’t mean you don’t love them. I’d often argue the opposite. Most importantly, we don’t ever really need to hear the details of this gossip, we simply must accept that it exists as part of the fabric of long, complicated, finely woven and ultimately loving human relationships.

A still from ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 | Photo Credit: HBO

Before my wedding, my mum gathered notes and photos from all of my oldest and best girlfriends and compiled them into a book. After everyone left the lunch she’d thrown for me a few days before the BiG dAy, I opened the book and read its contents. Photos and memories from as far back as five years old lined the pages. Pictures from backpacking trips, school camps, music festivals and weddings, along with notes that that undid me. I wept in that restaurant (somewhat uncontrollably which probably made my poor mum wonder if she’d made some sort of horrible mistake) because I was given the gift of realising I’d been seen, even when I thought I’d been alone. All along these women were there, holding our shared memories in their hands, like candles under moonlight. They’d stayed. They’d never left.

Photos in the book provided by my oldest friend, Rosie, with whom I remain close over 30 years since our friendship blossomed, age 5 (a friendship that has zero toxic elements!)

To that end, I hope one day I get to feel the magic of a bender in Thailand with my oldest friends in my 40s, even if there’s gossip and a bit of drama. No matter the shape of my life (or theirs) I know I’ll just be happy to be at the table.