The Cycle of Friendship
**Revised. I didn't like the energy of the original blog. I think this is better**
Just before 2am, I was headed to the local market a just up Hollywood Boulevard from my place to pick up a couple cans of dog food, coffee and whatever produce might be on sale. Two girls were walking in front of me at a brisk clip. I tuned into the kind of gulpy chatter brought on by a evening of guzzling liquor and snorting a few lines of coke. They moved in unison, their 7" platform shoes clunking in step, their micro-mini clad behinds sashaying like the tic-toc of a metronome. The spoke in dialed-in slang, the kind developed in and understood by their likely tight circle of friends. They were in their early 20's. I remember being them, running around the same neighborhood, guzzling hard liquor and snorting good coke--except my uniform was v-neck shirts, Gibraud jeans with a fat belt and biker boots. That was a lifetime ago. I still hang onto a little of the slang from those days. Most of the people are long gone, in their place are fewer but more solid relationships.
I was partially raised by my great-grandparents. Their stories of the places and people they had known covered parts of 2 centuries (they were born in the 1890's). They owned the first car when there were not yet roads in their area "we drove across the prairie", saw the advent of the airplane, saw vaccines cure plagues, television...everything up to the beginning of the internet. Seeing my great-grandmother's reaction the first time I handed her a cell phone was priceless--she was in her 90's. They regaled me with colorful tales--I realized that they seldom included how relationships ended unless they were exceptional or part of the story. They focused on good memories and they were happy people. They focused on the good times, not the end of the cycle.
Friends come into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime. Being someone with few solid family connections, I created my own in my adulthood, consisting of a few good friends I thought would stick around for life. I was naive. I hadn't yet learned about the "reason/season" part. This is an important lesson because the sooner we learn it, the sooner we can cease fighting it. For most of my life, when I let go of something or someone, it always had claw marks in it. I've never been good at letting go.
I think the best way to approach friendship is to stay in the moment and have as few expectations as possible. Sometimes people change. I realized one of my friendships consisted of us talking about things we used to do when we had things in common--and sometimes friends change in a way that we are no longer compatible. Change in professional or economic status, marriage, divorce, relocation...and sometimes people just change. Economic disparity is a rough one--one friend may want to do things that are not in line with the others budget. I think the ideal thing to do when this happens is to let go with love, allowing more room for more compatible (and new) friendships. No more hurt feelings over being excluded from their social activities or watching them uncomfortably squirm out of mine Just like a romantic relationship that fizzles, friendships can do the same. It's part of the cycle.
I have a friend I've known for many years who I used to keep at arm's length due to their addiction. One day I looked up and realized they'd cleaned up and our friendship entered a new era. This person is blossoming and it's a beautiful thing. Now we have more in common. Our relationship is growing in ways I never expected. Being in 12-step recovery, losing friends usually goes in the other direction when they relapse or die making this situation extra special. I wanted to include this because sometimes relationships can enter a new era and change for the better.
I don't like to use the term "best friend" because it often leaves someone feeling excluded and hurt (even though they will probably never say it). I've had a few that have cycled through over the years, one I call "best friend" posthumously because she committed suicide. We marched in step, shared our own slang and I considered her family. I just realized in writing this that she wasn't a "season", she was a lifetime friend because we were friends until the end of her life. Ours was a waxing and waning relationship but we always picked up where we left off even if we hadn't seen each other in a couple years. The last time I saw her, she asked me to go to Disneyland, which I consider about as enjoyable as being sodomized with a cactus. "I'll only be in town for a day. You can meet us for dinner after we're done or you can come to Disneyland with us and spend the whole day together." I considered the throngs of sticky, bratty no-neck monsters high on sugar and adults snapping selfies, all with the same phony, cartoonish grimace on their faces...but I went. Because I was with her, it was a great day. I treasure the Splash Mountain towel she gave me. It was the last time I ever saw her and I'm glad I didn't skip that day. We'd had many fun days together. Sometimes we have to get sodomized by cacti for friendship.
This part is a rough one because people are extra touchy about it and tend to misunderstand me when I bring it up: Facebook and other social media have created types of friendships that didn't exist when I was younger. It also prolongs the letting go process of in-person relationships when they are over, keeping those who would have naturally fallen out of our lives in our friends list. Through social media I re-connected with people I hadn't spoken to in 40 years. 3 of them have since passed, I would never have found them otherwise. I've made new friends online, meeting some of them in person. With others, we've shared trials and tribulations for more than 10 years and have never met. Now north of 45, it's more difficult to make new friends. Younger people poo-poo this, but it's true. Why? I don't know, it just "is". I'm also pickier about who I let into my personal space and how I spend my time. The thing I don't like about social media friendships and hours-long ongoing texting is that we sit in the dark with our electronic devices when we could be hanging out in person.
Most people make friends via work and common interests. Changing these moves the "season" along as do changes in geography, income and marital status. People "like" people like themselves. The "we" people who abandon their friends to devote all their energy to 1 person will often come crawling back when it falls apart. Do I welcome them with open arms? Usually. Do they do it again? Usually.
Can we do something to change the cycle? I think so. I used to deal with a notorious celebrity on a regular basis. I loved eavesdropping on her conversations with her wide circle of famous and incredible friends. One day she said to her assistant: "remind me to invite Susan to dinner for Monday, I don't want to lose the friendship". That quote stuck with me. We have to cultivate our relationships.
Everyone is on their own journey, growing and changing in their own way. People grow together, people grow apart. The older I get, the more I realize friendships and good romance are just about the same thing. I think the secret to enduring the cycle is to just accept it, and let go if and when it is time. Is anyone a lifetime friend? Absolutely. Treasure them, they are rare.With all the rest, I learned from my elders to hold onto the fond memories and not the end of the cycle.
Just before 2am, I was headed to the local market a just up Hollywood Boulevard from my place to pick up a couple cans of dog food, coffee and whatever produce might be on sale. Two girls were walking in front of me at a brisk clip. I tuned into the kind of gulpy chatter brought on by a evening of guzzling liquor and snorting a few lines of coke. They moved in unison, their 7" platform shoes clunking in step, their micro-mini clad behinds sashaying like the tic-toc of a metronome. The spoke in dialed-in slang, the kind developed in and understood by their likely tight circle of friends. They were in their early 20's. I remember being them, running around the same neighborhood, guzzling hard liquor and snorting good coke--except my uniform was v-neck shirts, Gibraud jeans with a fat belt and biker boots. That was a lifetime ago. I still hang onto a little of the slang from those days. Most of the people are long gone, in their place are fewer but more solid relationships.
I was partially raised by my great-grandparents. Their stories of the places and people they had known covered parts of 2 centuries (they were born in the 1890's). They owned the first car when there were not yet roads in their area "we drove across the prairie", saw the advent of the airplane, saw vaccines cure plagues, television...everything up to the beginning of the internet. Seeing my great-grandmother's reaction the first time I handed her a cell phone was priceless--she was in her 90's. They regaled me with colorful tales--I realized that they seldom included how relationships ended unless they were exceptional or part of the story. They focused on good memories and they were happy people. They focused on the good times, not the end of the cycle.
Friends come into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime. Being someone with few solid family connections, I created my own in my adulthood, consisting of a few good friends I thought would stick around for life. I was naive. I hadn't yet learned about the "reason/season" part. This is an important lesson because the sooner we learn it, the sooner we can cease fighting it. For most of my life, when I let go of something or someone, it always had claw marks in it. I've never been good at letting go.
I think the best way to approach friendship is to stay in the moment and have as few expectations as possible. Sometimes people change. I realized one of my friendships consisted of us talking about things we used to do when we had things in common--and sometimes friends change in a way that we are no longer compatible. Change in professional or economic status, marriage, divorce, relocation...and sometimes people just change. Economic disparity is a rough one--one friend may want to do things that are not in line with the others budget. I think the ideal thing to do when this happens is to let go with love, allowing more room for more compatible (and new) friendships. No more hurt feelings over being excluded from their social activities or watching them uncomfortably squirm out of mine Just like a romantic relationship that fizzles, friendships can do the same. It's part of the cycle.
I have a friend I've known for many years who I used to keep at arm's length due to their addiction. One day I looked up and realized they'd cleaned up and our friendship entered a new era. This person is blossoming and it's a beautiful thing. Now we have more in common. Our relationship is growing in ways I never expected. Being in 12-step recovery, losing friends usually goes in the other direction when they relapse or die making this situation extra special. I wanted to include this because sometimes relationships can enter a new era and change for the better.
I don't like to use the term "best friend" because it often leaves someone feeling excluded and hurt (even though they will probably never say it). I've had a few that have cycled through over the years, one I call "best friend" posthumously because she committed suicide. We marched in step, shared our own slang and I considered her family. I just realized in writing this that she wasn't a "season", she was a lifetime friend because we were friends until the end of her life. Ours was a waxing and waning relationship but we always picked up where we left off even if we hadn't seen each other in a couple years. The last time I saw her, she asked me to go to Disneyland, which I consider about as enjoyable as being sodomized with a cactus. "I'll only be in town for a day. You can meet us for dinner after we're done or you can come to Disneyland with us and spend the whole day together." I considered the throngs of sticky, bratty no-neck monsters high on sugar and adults snapping selfies, all with the same phony, cartoonish grimace on their faces...but I went. Because I was with her, it was a great day. I treasure the Splash Mountain towel she gave me. It was the last time I ever saw her and I'm glad I didn't skip that day. We'd had many fun days together. Sometimes we have to get sodomized by cacti for friendship.
This part is a rough one because people are extra touchy about it and tend to misunderstand me when I bring it up: Facebook and other social media have created types of friendships that didn't exist when I was younger. It also prolongs the letting go process of in-person relationships when they are over, keeping those who would have naturally fallen out of our lives in our friends list. Through social media I re-connected with people I hadn't spoken to in 40 years. 3 of them have since passed, I would never have found them otherwise. I've made new friends online, meeting some of them in person. With others, we've shared trials and tribulations for more than 10 years and have never met. Now north of 45, it's more difficult to make new friends. Younger people poo-poo this, but it's true. Why? I don't know, it just "is". I'm also pickier about who I let into my personal space and how I spend my time. The thing I don't like about social media friendships and hours-long ongoing texting is that we sit in the dark with our electronic devices when we could be hanging out in person.
Most people make friends via work and common interests. Changing these moves the "season" along as do changes in geography, income and marital status. People "like" people like themselves. The "we" people who abandon their friends to devote all their energy to 1 person will often come crawling back when it falls apart. Do I welcome them with open arms? Usually. Do they do it again? Usually.
Can we do something to change the cycle? I think so. I used to deal with a notorious celebrity on a regular basis. I loved eavesdropping on her conversations with her wide circle of famous and incredible friends. One day she said to her assistant: "remind me to invite Susan to dinner for Monday, I don't want to lose the friendship". That quote stuck with me. We have to cultivate our relationships.
Everyone is on their own journey, growing and changing in their own way. People grow together, people grow apart. The older I get, the more I realize friendships and good romance are just about the same thing. I think the secret to enduring the cycle is to just accept it, and let go if and when it is time. Is anyone a lifetime friend? Absolutely. Treasure them, they are rare.With all the rest, I learned from my elders to hold onto the fond memories and not the end of the cycle.
I agree with you about FB hanging in to friends that would otherwise have fallen away, and that's a huge difference in how we perceive our social circle. I admit that I "unfollow" people I think are "boring," which essentially deletes them from my consciousness. But...still. FB sort of produces a "can't lose this acquaintance" feeling, and it wastes your limited social resources. On the other hand, I have plenty of "internet friends" who I would never have met otherwise. Internet allows us to reach out to people with similar interests like no local social group would allow. Because you're sifting through so many people, you're more likely to find the right ones. On the other hand, people need real life social interactions with quality people. So the virtual age gives us great opportunity while taking away tome we'd spend with our "real life" friends. It's a difficult balance, and I think it's a shame to promote either extreme.
ReplyDeleteI don't recall ever meeting you in my life (I'm told I met you once), but I'm happy to have been your FB friend because you help me think about things in new ways.
I've made a few awesome friends on the internet. In re-reading this blog, I realized I was unintentionally "vaguebooking" and and that wasn't my intention. Sometimes we have in-person friendships that run the cycle and for whatever reason basically end and the only remnant is occupation in FB friends. That's what I meant. It's one of the things we don't want to say out loud but it's the reality of the cycle. In real life, these people would fall away and we might have a chance meeting on the street or maybe we would receive a letter or a random phone call years after seeing them.
ReplyDeleteThrough FB I re-connected with the VH crowd, that never would have happened otherwise. When we met you were just a baby so I don't expect you to remember it. I was able to talk to Gloria, Stacy and Tai before their departures. In reconnecting, I was able to make peace with some things that happened during that period and appreciate the love that was freely given to me.