The smoke and who’s still standing when it clears
November 18, 2007 – 1:23 amI am trying to wrap my head around friendship and what constitutes friendship as an adult. Is it someone you know that you can be comfortable enough to go up to in a restaurant and say hello to or is it the person that you can tell your deepest, darkest secrets to without scrutiny and judgment, or at least, minimal scrutiny and judgment. Obviously, there are varying degrees from best friend to close friend to good friend to old friend to new friend to acquaintance to person I used to know in school and am now "friends" with on Myspace. But is that person who you are friends with on Myspace good enough friends to call if you are in desperate need of an ear, a shoulder or a ride home after a bad date has left you stranded?
When my ex Zack and I had first broken up in early April 2003, I realized that my entire world in that small section of California was entwined, somehow, to him. Or the relationship. All my friends at work were married; they couldn’t commiserate in my sudden single-hood after four years. Everyone else I knew was somehow tied to him and his family and would most likely side with him if it ever came down to taking sides. I couldn’t call my best friend - she was living in London and we really weren’t on speaking terms due to my relationship with him. My cousins hated him just as much and pretty much everyone I had known pre-Zack I had lost contact with. What kind of a cow would I be if I were to call them up after three years to cry to them that I was broken and alone in BFE California?
So it took every last gut and ball I had inside of me to call up an old co-worker from Gottschalks, who had quit and gone to work elsewhere and ask her to be my friend. I called Cathy, nearly in tears, clearly exposing my pathetically sad ass for what it was . . . I had lived there for over a year and all I had to show for myself was . . . nothing. Please, will you be my friend? Will you and your girlfriends from childhood, high school, college take me in as if I have always been a part of the group and quickly help me forget what I am suddenly lacking in my life? It was one of the hardest calls I ever had to make, because I was putting all my hope and faith into someone I really didn’t know. How would I have responded if I had been the receiver of that conversation?
But Cathy was (and is) awesome and was totally understanding and sweet and kind about the situation. She was more than happy to call me up and invite me to the next get together, girl’s night or whatever that she and her group of friends may have planned. She listened to the situation and I tried to tell her about his new girl, in case she’d known her, but she didn’t. She pitied and she made me feel hopeful again. She probably even called. But a day after that conversation, I called my parents and they were on the next flight down and before I knew it, I was back in Washington with a changed number.
Cathy even added me as a friend when I found her on Myspace. She is still that awesome.
So how are we supposed to handle these less than close friendships? You can almost imagine circles being drawn around yourself and the people (non-family people) in your lives being placed in these circles. The best, the closest, the friends, the acquaintances . . . yeah. Everything is a circle in itself.
How are we supposed to handle a friend or an acquaintance - an old friend that holds little sway in your life anymore (if ever) that is no longer that close? When they deliberately delete you as a friend on Myspace and do it in a manner that its supposed to hurt. They email you and call light to it - You aren’t responding to me so yeah, I am deleting you. Are we supposed to let that hurt? I realize that Myspace is just Myspace. If nothing else, it is just a playground for the adolescent that is trapped in all of us. Ranking friends and counting friends and leaving comments and bashing foes and stalking people we like and people we hate and people we want to know more about.
I had an old friend from high school delete me today, complete with a carefully worded email to boot. I didn’t realize what they had done until I received the email and when I tried to respond, I saw he only allows emails from friends - so I have no way of apologizing or fixing the situation or at least saying my peace. Does it really matter? No. I haven’t seen the guy since the day we graduated high school. Will my life be any different tomorrow because he isn’t my Myspace buddy anymore? God, no. But it still sucks that he made this definite decision in the course of our relationship that is unrepairable. Maybe we’ll run into each other at a bar somewhere in Vancouver and I can say what I would have said in an email, but he probably would be standing on one of those outer-most circles in my orbit of friends. I am not going to say that he didn’t matter, but he wasn’t one of the people I wish I could have called when things were crumbling in 2003.
There are the people who boast at their small group of close friends and that’s all. I like the fact that I have the three or four best friends, the five or six close friends and the handful of other friends that I run into throughout the year and can hug and catch up with and stay in touch with. My life is rich with the varying degrees of friends and the varying histories too. I don’t erase many friends from my life because most are too worthwhile to keep around. But still, it stings when someone deems you no longer worthwhile in any degree.
P.S. I am totally tipsy right now, so forgive me if this rambles at all.
