The Cycle of Friendship
I'm about to leave on my first real vacation in 2 1/2 years. The last one, although idyllic, was unfortunately punctuated by the suicide of my best friend*--but that's not what's on my mind. My departure has been delayed by business difficulties and illness. My mind was already on vacation as I sequestered myself in my apartment. Wheeling and dealing between coughing fits in my bathrobe while brewing vile herbal concoctions, hoping for a cure. All week I've been thinking about the inevitable departures of which we have no control.
I knew a (big) celebrity through work and spent many hours with her. Eavesdropping on her phone calls were always fascinating: "please call (insert name) and set up lunch, I haven't spoken to her in months, don't want to lose the friendship." She knew the "you have to be friends with your friends" rule. She was willing to give something else up to accomplish this. This is basic. I can fall into workaholism but she had me beat. She was the hardest working woman in Hollywood yet she balanced it to have friends and she had some great ones. Should I name drop?
You've stayed up nights pouring out your deepest and darkest. They know all your favorites, your habits, your proclivities. You know where they keep their vibrator and their pot. They've seen you with your hair down. I remember when one was elated to say she'd found "him." Unfortunately I knew "him" already and we loathed each other. He had furry teeth and looked at everyone like they were covered in shit. I knew our friendship was doomed. Since their marriage, we've had one uncomfortable meal together and I doubt it will happen again unless she divorces him or he dies.
There's also the type who find "him" or "her" and fall off the face of the earth, making that person their "everything." I find this especially revolting and have never done it. You know them, the "we" people. You don't have to give up "I" just because you found a relationship. I had one of these stop speaking to me for years and then popped back up like nothing when things got rough for him, wanting to pick up where we left off. Did I welcome him back with open arms? Of course. Will he fall off the face of the earth again? I guarantee it.
Divorce is the most vicious way to lose friends. You consider them family, you'd take a bullet for them, listed as one of their emergency contacts, godparents to their children. Come divorce, they will character assassinate you, sever your head, hold it up by the hair and let the blood drip for all the world to see. It's just like the movie Heathers, except people decades past high school are playing the same games. Many think they're safe, it happens more often than not. To a fiercely loyal person, this is utterly baffling.
I'm not going to count death but it is one of the ways we lose friends. The reason for the * next to "best friend" is a personal peeve of mine. When someone uses the phrase in a group of friends, someone else is (often) deeply hurt. It's a term of exclusion that I personally never use. My "best friend" varies from week to week. My friend who committed suicide called me her best friend and out of respect, I bestow her with the title, she earned it. I mourn her deeply and no one will ever replace her.
People tend to align with others at their own socioeconomic level. As a result, I've lost friends who became too fabulous for me. I've also lost them to cults, becoming entrenched in exclusive, fetish-centered social groups (kind of the same thing), and many have just plain moved away.
I write a lot about addiction--this is the way I've lost the most friends. Some died, others go off to a place I can't reach them, or I have to stay away to avoid getting hurt. When they sober up, they are like soldiers coming back from the war. Being friends with a chronic relapser is difficult because you never know when they're your friend or when they will pick up a drink or a drug and become someone you don't know.
I know...this has been heavy. Sometimes it's just a change of seasons. The wind blows me one way and my friend another. It happens and it's just life. Facebook allows us to be friends with people we never would have known, find long-lost loved ones, but it also helps us keep people in our lives who through this process would have exited our lives years ago (ducks flying objects).
At 46, making new friends is harder than it used to be. Why? I'm not sure, it just is. I'd rather be alone than waste energy on low-quality social interaction. I don't have social anxiety, low self-esteem or anything else that bars me from human contact. I just treasure my time. One thing I miss from youth is the spontaneity of my peers. The "what are you doing...see you in 20 minutes" has become "I have some availability in six weeks."
We love to think of our friendships as eternal and in the golden part of them, they are because that's something we get to keep forever. Friendship is for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
I knew a (big) celebrity through work and spent many hours with her. Eavesdropping on her phone calls were always fascinating: "please call (insert name) and set up lunch, I haven't spoken to her in months, don't want to lose the friendship." She knew the "you have to be friends with your friends" rule. She was willing to give something else up to accomplish this. This is basic. I can fall into workaholism but she had me beat. She was the hardest working woman in Hollywood yet she balanced it to have friends and she had some great ones. Should I name drop?
You've stayed up nights pouring out your deepest and darkest. They know all your favorites, your habits, your proclivities. You know where they keep their vibrator and their pot. They've seen you with your hair down. I remember when one was elated to say she'd found "him." Unfortunately I knew "him" already and we loathed each other. He had furry teeth and looked at everyone like they were covered in shit. I knew our friendship was doomed. Since their marriage, we've had one uncomfortable meal together and I doubt it will happen again unless she divorces him or he dies.
There's also the type who find "him" or "her" and fall off the face of the earth, making that person their "everything." I find this especially revolting and have never done it. You know them, the "we" people. You don't have to give up "I" just because you found a relationship. I had one of these stop speaking to me for years and then popped back up like nothing when things got rough for him, wanting to pick up where we left off. Did I welcome him back with open arms? Of course. Will he fall off the face of the earth again? I guarantee it.
Divorce is the most vicious way to lose friends. You consider them family, you'd take a bullet for them, listed as one of their emergency contacts, godparents to their children. Come divorce, they will character assassinate you, sever your head, hold it up by the hair and let the blood drip for all the world to see. It's just like the movie Heathers, except people decades past high school are playing the same games. Many think they're safe, it happens more often than not. To a fiercely loyal person, this is utterly baffling.
I'm not going to count death but it is one of the ways we lose friends. The reason for the * next to "best friend" is a personal peeve of mine. When someone uses the phrase in a group of friends, someone else is (often) deeply hurt. It's a term of exclusion that I personally never use. My "best friend" varies from week to week. My friend who committed suicide called me her best friend and out of respect, I bestow her with the title, she earned it. I mourn her deeply and no one will ever replace her.
People tend to align with others at their own socioeconomic level. As a result, I've lost friends who became too fabulous for me. I've also lost them to cults, becoming entrenched in exclusive, fetish-centered social groups (kind of the same thing), and many have just plain moved away.
I write a lot about addiction--this is the way I've lost the most friends. Some died, others go off to a place I can't reach them, or I have to stay away to avoid getting hurt. When they sober up, they are like soldiers coming back from the war. Being friends with a chronic relapser is difficult because you never know when they're your friend or when they will pick up a drink or a drug and become someone you don't know.
I know...this has been heavy. Sometimes it's just a change of seasons. The wind blows me one way and my friend another. It happens and it's just life. Facebook allows us to be friends with people we never would have known, find long-lost loved ones, but it also helps us keep people in our lives who through this process would have exited our lives years ago (ducks flying objects).
At 46, making new friends is harder than it used to be. Why? I'm not sure, it just is. I'd rather be alone than waste energy on low-quality social interaction. I don't have social anxiety, low self-esteem or anything else that bars me from human contact. I just treasure my time. One thing I miss from youth is the spontaneity of my peers. The "what are you doing...see you in 20 minutes" has become "I have some availability in six weeks."
We love to think of our friendships as eternal and in the golden part of them, they are because that's something we get to keep forever. Friendship is for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
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