On "Friends"

Last night was pretty great. I went downtown to see a rock show all on my own, which is not something that I usually do. I usually roll with my homies, the quiet one among a group of confident, artsy, funny friends. But I just haven't been feeling as friendly as usual lately, if you couldn't tell by some of my blog posts. 

I find that when I do go out on my own, without anyone to tell me that they'd rather to this, or go there - I have a better time, and I find (maybe not better, but maybe) different people to hang out with that I normally would not. Working for Daryl's campaign over the summer made me lots of new aquaintences that are quickly becoming new friends, and the time I spend with them is fun and free of drama and hangups and the weight of everything that has happened in the past - because we have no past. It's so unbelievably refreshing to spend time with people who I don't have grudges or baggage or bad thoughts between. With new friends, it's hope and fun and positivity all the way, and lately I've been doing everything I can to seek out new experiences with new people. 

See, I've never fancied myself a good friend. I can't even hide that fact about me. When things get tough, I often get going, and it is nothing to be proud of, so at least, I feel, that if I own up to it and don't try to hide it or deny it, I save at least a little bit of face. However - and here's the catch - it's not that I jump ship from friends when things get tough for THEM - I do it when it's tough for me. 

The truth of it is, I just have a very narrow personal definition of what a friend is, and it's very self-centered and selfish:

Friend: (n) 1. Someone who you enjoy spending time with. 2. Someone who never makes you feel bad about yourself.

It's simple, really. I'm ditching "friends" to make my life better and more enjoyable for me. In the last few years, there have been a lot of people in my life who I've spent time with and called friends, but I never felt that closeness, love, and yes, devotion, the way I feel those things for Alisha and Brian. Oftentimes I've sat in houses and at bars surrounded by "friends" wishing I were someplace else entirely. I haven't enjoyed the time I spent with them. I am so terribly sick of feeling like time has been wasted with people I didn't want to be spending it with.

And worse? I've had "friends" who have kept me up at night with memories of things they said about me or other people I care about - ugly, hateful things. I've had "friends" who can't get themselves out of their own judgy pants, who seem to glow in the hot light of putting other people down. And really, that is what gets me the most. If you make a joke, even if you are "just kidding" and "don't mean it" - but if you say things and they hurt, and you laugh and I balk? Are you a friend? 

No. Not by my definition. 

Alisha and I spend more time together than I've spent with any other person in my adult life, Brian is the only other one who comes close, and now Dan, Alisha's husband, has become another person who I've grown close to and consider to be a real friend. 

With Alisha, I can reach back into a decade of memories - ten years of memories with a person I have always been close to and cared for - and can I can count on one hand the times she has actually made me upset and feel bad. Once, I was very upset over something that was going on with Elise when she was a baby, and Alisha said something that seemed at the time to belittle my personal plight. I was mad, I was annoyed, but I forgave her. It was a misunderstanding. Then there was that time she started a book club and held the meetings on Mondays when she knew I couldn't go because I had Elise, was raising her by myself and couldn't leave my house at night. That annoyed the shit out of me, and the only reason I never made a big deal out of it is because the book club fizzled out after one book. Years later, after I brought it up, she apologized to me for that. She didn't realize at the time, she says, that I wouldn't be able to make it. I forgave her. Obviously. Then there was the time she had this crazy potentially catastrophic thing going on in her life and she waited nearly a week to tell me about it - and of course after I'd already found out most of the details. In a way, I was hurt that she didn't come to me, but at the same time, I knew exactly why she didn't - because she already knew what my reaction would be to her news and she knew exactly what I would have to say, and she was right. 

There are no jokes at my expense. There are no behind the back complaints or shit-talking. There is no hurt, no shame, no resentment, and no anger between us, and that is why we've been friends for ten years. 

One of these days I am going to have to publish a manifesto: I'm sorry, people I've called friends. I was just kidding. I'd rather not see you all anymore. 

Until then, I guess, until I own up to this and have the talks I need to have with people to peacably and hopefully not painfully remove them from my life - I guess until then I'll just remember the smiles and the laughter and the fun I have with people who don't have that word "friend" attached to them. They are just beings flitting through my life, making me happy with their lives. It's what I like right now.

A very bullet list Wednesday

• Today Alisha called me at work from HER work to tell me a secret. "Don't tell anyone!" she says to me - "No one is supposed to know yet, but I have to tell you!" It's a good secret - one of our friends is pregnant. I LOVE finding out when friends are pregnant. It makes for a good day for me, knowing that there is a little bundle of joy coming into the world that I can kiss and cuddle and spoil.. and then give back.
• I'm supposed to be helping my friend Brian move the last of his things out of his house tonight and I don't want to do it but I am going to because he has helped me with so many things in the past (including moving) and I would feel like a total bitch for telling him no. So I told him yes, and even though I don't want to do it, I will. I feel like I should feel NOTHING in particular about this. Do I feel bad that I don't want to do it even when I know I should? Do I feel bad for feeling bad? Do I feel bad just because of the fact that I don't want to? I guess the bottom line is sometimes we do things for our friends that we don't want to do just BECAUSE they are our friends and they ask. And that's enough for me.
• I want to go to BlogHer. I am jealous of all of the people who are heading off to San Diego today and tomorrow to attend the conference, but since I don't have any real blog friends, why would I go? I'm working on the networking, I am. I need it. I have been so let down by the people I know and am "friends" with in my hometown area, I need the escape of the internet to stay sane, I know this now. Some people (people who just don't know better I guess) don't understand it. Why would you meet people online? Isn't that creepy? Your mom is creepy. What.
• I have to dedicate a considerable amount of time to a blog post that I have been meaning to write for a few days that regards Elise - and it's hard and I haven't been able to bring myself to do it yet, but it's coming soon, and I hope it changes things.
• Let's call this a well intentioned cop-out.

So Much

- from Exploding Dog

+ It was another great weekend - Sailfest weekend, actually. For as long as I can remember (seriously) I have been going downtown to enjoy Sailfest. Sometimes by myself, sometimes with friends, sometimes with Elise - but this year I didn't go. I had no wing-men, Alisha had invited me to her house, so I just went there instead. We ate summer food with her family in the backyard and watched the fireworks from her living room window, then drank more Mojitos until the wee hours of the morning, again. It was like any other day, but with fireworks. I didn't miss the hustle and bustle and commotion of the streetfair, I didn't miss getting fall down drunk with hundreds of people who aren't really my friends, I didn't miss throwing up gallons of beer at the end of the night like I usually do when I finally stumble home from the last downtown bar at 2:30 in the morning. Maybe I'm growing up. Maybe I'm just growing into myself, and letting myself admit that this girl I keep writing about really is probably the best friend I've ever had and I'd rather do anything with her than anything without her, and that includes things that I once thought were the most fun ever.

+ You see, I spend a lot of time by myself. Five nights a week, the nights I have Elise, after she goes to bed I am alone unless someone comes to visit me. This makes my time without her, the time I can spend doing "grown-up" things, or at least childless things, that much more special. I've had an increasingly hard time lately pretending to give a shit for people, and I am not sure what to do about that. I am not a confrontational person by nature, so I can't see myself sending an email or text message saying: "I know you think we're friends, but we're not. Let's just stop pretending, ok?' But lately I've gotten more and more unsolicited invitations from people who I don't really want anything to do with - but because these people are friends with my friends, it makes it uncomfortable to just say no. How do you tactfully tell someone to leave you alone when you are 28 years old and your group of friends more closely resembles a street gang than kumbaya?

+ I need mental help. It's something that I've talked to Alisha about extensively and she's given me all of the resources that I never sought out for myself - who to call, and what to say to get the help I need. But I haven't done it yet. I don't know why, exactly. Is it laziness that keeps me from making a simple phone call? Certainly one hour of my life per week talking to a therapist would be well spent, and not an inconvenience. So, it's apathy I suppose, and isn't that a sign of depression? I'm not a sad person, for the most part. I'm anxious. I'm afraid of things that aren't real, things that don't exist. My fear stems from the impossible, the improbable. I guess I just keep telling myself that whatever it is, it's not that bad. People are way worse off than me. But is it normal to constantly have terrifying things running through my mind? Do normal people hear a truck coming down their road and freeze up with terror that it will just come crashing through the front of the house and kill them? Do they? These are things I think a therapist would be able to tell me, and then maybe help me relax. 

+ Online dating sucks. I talked to a few guys, but then went a few days without responding to any of them (because I was, you know, living life OFFLINE) and now none of them seem to want to talk or have any interest anymore. We'll see what comes of this, but I am at a loss. It is my personal belief that for some people, there is only one fish in the sea, and mine has already swum away. 

+ I wrote a letter to my friend Steph last night, and put it in the mailbox today. In the letter, I wrote her secrets that I can never tell anyone out loud, and I worry that the six page letter I sent will become a burden for her, and not a bridge to reconnection. Yes, I told her secrets because she lives so far away, because she isn't friends with my friends, because she can keep them, if she is so inclined. But also, because she was the one who always held my secrets like stars, when we were children and then seemed to mean more. Sometimes I wonder if I miss her for her, or if I miss the relationship that we used to have. Regardless, missing is a feeling that I'm feeling fiercely for her. 

Silence Between Friends

True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.  ~Dave Tyson Gentry

Last night I went to see Super 8 with Alisha. I think it might be the first time we have ever gone to see a movie together in the ten or so years we have been friends, which is sort of remarkable because I love going to the movies and try to go as often as I can afford to and have time. It’s one of those things you do with your boyfriend or girlfriend though, you know? And I don’t have one of those, so often I am out of luck on the nights when Elise is with her dad and all of my paired off friends are otherwise engaged. So anyway, it was nice. For one thing, there was not one moment of that movie that I didn’t enjoy. I had been reading reviews of Super 8 before we went to see it and the media was saying it was like a mashup of E.T., The Goonies, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind - and that was pretty much spot on. I felt like there was something really magical about the story, I guess because it focused on the kids and not the adults in the film, which not many new movies do very well anymore. It’s nice to see things like that though, and slip back into what it feels like to be a child filled with wonder and excitement. 

Earlier in the day I was re-reading my old Livejournal, circa 2003-2005. It covered the year leading up to my pregnancy and throughout it, and I stopped writing there soon after Elise was born. I suddenly feel the need to do something to reconnect with some of the people I was good friends with at that time of life, like Dave, Siobhan, and Sara, for instance. I talked about this with Alisha last night - how I miss the old times, how sometimes these days life feels monotonous and boring - because really, it is. Every day is exactly the same, brightened by a few smatterings of newness that comes just by being in the presence of people you don’t see every day. My hermitude has its ups and downs, you see. 

“I don’t want to go back,” Alisha said, and I felt like I had to defend myself but I knew my words fell short.

It’s not that I want to go backwards. I don’t. It’s just that sometimes you lose friends and alienate people all on your own, with no help from outside forces that you can’t control. And that’s annoying, and sometimes it’s sad, and sometimes it’s for the best.. but sometimes people are just GONE and there isn’t anything you can do about it but try your damned hardest to hold on to whatever shred of friendship you can - and I am just not good at that, the long-distance friendship. 

There are so many people that have fallen by the wayside, and for the most part I can just shrug my shoulders and think: “That’s life.” 

But of course, it’s not that way with everyone. Some people you have to hang on to.

Reading the old Livejournal entries, not just mine but some of Alisha and Siobhan’s as well, I feel so shocked, and also relieved and indescribably grateful, that I still have Alisha with me. That even after she had called me a drunk jerk back in 2003, we soldiered on. 

“It’s a good thing that sometimes first impressions don’t last,” she said last night. And it sure is. 

Alisha, not your average blushing bride

A week and a half ago, I got to stand behind this beautiful bride when she wedded her other best friend. 

Sometimes we lose people. Sometimes we keep them. And sometimes the ones we keep are the ones who feel like they’ve always been there, the ones who fit into you like a puzzle piece you never knew you had been missing, the ones you can sit next to in a dark movie theatre, silent for hours, and still feel like you are right where you want to be and who you want to be with, because the best friends are the ones you don’t have to talk to, to have a conversation.