BFF

Friendship is such hard work. I’ve been thinking a lot about the friends I’ve made in my life. I guess more than the ones, I’m thinking about the ones I’ve lost. I try to invest a lot of time, effort, and emotion into my friendships and so when they disappear, a piece of my heart walks away with them.

I’ve notices three different trends in ways that my friendships disappear. The first is the most obvious one of busy lives. I’m busy, he’s busy. We work in big companies, we work too many hours. We mean to call. We mean to write. When we get together, it’s tons of fun. It’s just that we never do get together. We don’t write. We don’t call. One’s traveling, the other is at work late. Fact is, we’re never as busy as we think we are. There’s always time for a good friend and for good coversation. It’s good for the soul. A good friend and I had found a solution to this when I lived in NYC. We’d set up a regular date for Thursdays after work. The two of them and the two of us had a regular date at a bar in SoHo. We always showed up and spent anywhere from one hour to five hours at the bar chatting. Somehow, because it was regular, we never ditched it. There was never the worry of scheduling, it was ongoing. I wish I could do this with all my friends. Maybe a regular phone date. Or email, even. Good friends never really disappear and even ten years later we can catch up but there is that little bit that vanishes and once daily life isn’t shared, we do have a bit of distance between us that never closes.

The second is a bit more painful. It’s the case similar to the one above but one party is obviously making a bigger effort than the other. This is painful when I’m the one making the effort and it’s painful when the other party is. If I am making the effort and calling and writing with no response, I feel hurt and rejected. If the other party is doing it, I feel guilty and frustrated. There’s something obviosly out of balance here. Sometimes, it balances out randomly when the other person changes their mind but it’s rare. What generally happens is that resentment builds and the friendship whiters away to nothing.

The last one is my least favorite one. It’s the one where something happens. Big or small. Something that makes you question the friendship. Something that leaves you with sour taste in your mouth. It might be a bickering that should have never gotten out of hand or a true betrayal that hurts deep down. Either way, there’s no going back. You can try to apologize, forgive and go back but things will never be the same again. That thing is now there. It’s like a thorn that is too deep in your flesh. This only happens with really good friends because those are the only ones you give a shit about enough to have this pain. And it hurts like hell.

There are days when I feel it’s easier to just be with my family and books. There’s much less potential for pain there. But then a friend calls and I remember why it’s important to have him or her in my life.