A Personal Examination of Friendship

An old (yet still relevant) musing on adult friendships and connection

When I was younger, I had very idealistic views about how my life was supposed to pan out. Married, with 3 kids and our own home by 30. A close group of friends and family. A dog. My own little Utopia.

HAH.

I threw a grenade into my life at 29 because everything I expected to make me happy didn’t. I felt unfathomably alone, untethered, and so so lost. I won’t spoil the essay below, but what became wildly apparent during this time was the incredible friends that came out of the nooks and crannies… and the friends that I lost, maybe forever.

One small anecdote that didn’t make it into the essay below, but has been incredibly poignant and sticky, is a friend asking me, “Well, what do you want?” It may sound absolutely wild, but I hadn’t thought about it. And no one had really asked me that in a long time… it’s begun a years-long search for what I want for myself, my life, and my legacy. (Thank you, M!)

Adult friendships are hard. They’re tenuous, fragile, and slow-building. But when you have them, they are worth their weight in gold.

I’d love to know what your take on adult friendships is in the comments—or just email me!—both in making them and keeping them. Is there a secret sauce? A fragility unaccounted for? The fear of being vulnerable? Or, more depressingly, the fear of not living up to your peers?

Now, for our 2020 throwback.

Far too often the most trivial or ordinary moments have changed and defined my life. This fascinates me. An otherwise perfectly boring memory imprinted in my mind forever. The mental (or self-directed?) movie reel of my life filled with these banal scenes—sitting on my living room couch with a dog-eared book, crying at a dinner (oh, how I loathe emotions in public but am all too susceptible to them) with LL Cool J sitting at the table over, holding hands at a concert. 

One of my more recent¹ and vivid “life-changed-forever moments” happened at a sticky dive bar. A place where you pause outside the entrance thinking about what diseases you might catch inside. And we were in Washington Sq. Park for crying out loud. There were a thousand nicer places we could go. But it wasn’t my turn to pick, so I followed my husband (now ex) and his brothers down the steps. At the counter, on the fringe of their group, I was sipping on bad wine, eating less than mediocre chicken wings, and listening to them talk. I don’t even remember what the conversation was about. All I remember is it was the moment I knew our relationship was over. There were so many reasons that it didn't work and wouldn’t work. It was both of our faults. But it’s this ‘nothing’ instant that sticks in my mind. 

The bar sucked. It was dark. The smell was reminiscent of a frat house the night after a big party. The wine was straight out of a bottle of vinegar. And even I, someone who barely knows how to turn on a stove², could have made better chicken wings. The place practically stole my money. And now I have yet another reason to never go back, because in this dark, nasty place I had made a decision. It was the tip of an iceberg, I would soon learn, as the repercussions unfolded over the following months. I just couldn’t do it anymore. 

The dissolution of my marriage, which has been incredibly sad and disappointing and embarrassing, and already a lot to mourn, made me realize there was even more I was going to lose. A pain I couldn’t begin to fathom. Friendships evaporated, almost like they were never there.

Friendships end for all sorts of reasons—because they no longer serve us (or them), an unhealthy emotional balance, lack of communication, distance. I know this. All these instances are because of us, the two people it takes to form a bond. But what happens when you lose good friends in a breakup? I wasn’t ready to lose those people, too. 

Finding, making, and keeping friends has been tricky for me in the past. In fact, I am so bad at making friends that I notoriously used my younger sister to make friends for me. To some degree, this even continued in college. Whoops. Self-doubt pervades my thoughts—am I supportive enough? am I funny enough? interesting enough? cool enough?

As a writer, I’ve often been given the advice “show, don’t tell.” Well… in relationships, I struggle with showing and lean heavily on telling. And with the tell, there just isn’t enough depth. Telling friends my truth is easy compared to living it and letting them sit with those feelings, too. It’s immensely different.

I tell my feelings in a way that is almost clinical. A classic over-sharer—I am from an open-kimono family, after all—I use information to make connections as well as curate what I put out in the world. Just enough drama for you to think you are getting the real me. 

When I told my friends I was unhappy, it was easy for everyone to assume it was my job (to be fair, it was a contributing factor) or that tough times would pass. But as I lost myself a little more every day, I didn’t let them in. My barrel was empty. I was a sinking boat. And I wouldn’t let anyone help me stem the leaking of my happiness. Some friends saw me fading into a shadow of my former self. I continuously told them it would be okay. That I would be okay. 

I lied. I had no idea how to fix it. Me. Anything.

And lying is a tell, too. 

Maybe it is deep-seated insecurity about whether my feelings are melodramatic. Or maybe I am just unwilling to ask someone to share my burdens with me. Or worse, my feelings are unbelievable. Whatever the case, I pushed away my friendships outside my marriage when I needed them most. 

This has been quite the lesson. I don’t cultivate my friendships as much as I should. There are only a few people I have let in so far. But many more that I could, if I let myself be vulnerable. Sadly, sometimes I don’t realize how important someone is to me until they are gone.  

I felt this keenly during isolation. One of our couple friends, who had subsequently become a friend of mine—dancing on the countertops to Beyonce, laugh till we cried, weekends away kind of friend—was posting an Instagram story with and about my ex-husband’s new girlfriend. 

For a while, I couldn’t even wrap my arms around how much this small unintended betrayal hurt. 

Mourning the end of my almost thirteen-year relationship was one thing. But mourning the collateral damage in friendships has been a completely different process for me. There was a hole in my heart about how easily these “friends” of mine had slid someone else into my place. They picked a side and moved on.

There are so many times I want to reach out to them. It seems important for me to tell them I miss them and that our relationship meant something real. I want to thank them for being there for the hard times. I even want to thank them for carrying my ex out of the divorce. My heart needs them to know I’ll never forget how they held me when I cried about my miscarriage. And how they showed up when our apartment building was on fire. And that my soul was lifted just by being with them in the good times. 

I want them to know that they were my friends, too. But to do so also feels like trespassing a boundary my ex set long ago. They are his friends. Not mine. I could spend time with them, cook with them, travel with them, sing and dance with them, but at the end of the day, a line was drawn in the sand—I couldn’t call them my own. They were barely even our friends. Just his. 

Their lives move on. I want to send them all the love and congratulations for weddings and pregnancies or heartbreak when they lose a loved one. But I question even this—would it be self-serving? A plea to not hate me for leaving? Or is it always nice to be nice?

Wrangling my emotions on the topic has been its own struggle. 

If they were never my friends in the first place, the loss of them would hurt less. But they were some of the few I let in. And I considered them my friends. Maybe that should be enough.

Friendship doesn’t have to mean forever. Some people could be shooting stars in your life—bright, illuminating everything in magic, then gone as quickly as they came. Others may live far away, and you’re joined only through shared history, the constant sending of memes, and the occasional phone call. Both matter. Friendship doesn’t have to be in the moment. It doesn’t have to be eternal. But that doesn’t mean I don’t wish it wasn’t.  

The doubt of our unwanted friendship-breakup coughed up further unsolicited questions. Didn’t they see how much I struggled? Or how much I had sacrificed to make my ex happy? Surely they had to see what a shell of a human I was becoming?

Were they ever really my friends?

Maybe that’s tilting a little too far into histrionics. It would have been hard not to be close. We were partnered with inseparable best friends. It was like friendship in a pressure cooker. A study out of the University of Kansas found that it takes more than 200 hours spent with someone to become good friends. We easily spent double that time together. These women had become friends I thought I would have for the rest of my life. We would buy houses, raise children, retire together. 

The loss of these friends has brought back all my insecurities. It feels like I’ve been replaced. And that I wasn’t good enough to keep in their life. Though, maybe the hardest part is accepting I shouldn’t take it personally. It isn’t personal. They are being a good friend. Not to me, but to him.

This made me realize that I had neglected all my friendships in service of these joint ones. 

These women had fit into my life like supporting actors to give my life that “perfect glow” I so desperately craved. The image that everything was okay when it almost always was not. Dismantling this image—and relationship—so I could build myself back up to the person I want to be means I no longer need their approval and support. 

Pain is a great teacher. This realization just illustrates how hard good close friendships have been for me. And in divorce and loss, that’s when one needs them most. 

The silver lining in all this was that when I hit my low, my long-neglected friends came out of the woodwork to carry me out alive. I’m at once ridden with guilt for not nurturing these friends, and also immensely grateful. They had seen the ghost of a human I was, and they gave me life. 

So to my friends that have always been there—I am so sorry. Thank you for everything. I can’t wait to hug you and hold you after isolation is over. 

To the friends I have lost, this is my thank you for the part you played in my life. I miss you. But I don’t need you anymore. And it’s time to say goodbye.

Book Review & Wine Pairing

Last week I mentioned a friend’s recommended reading list. Given this endeavor of picking up more litfic, I chose an author on his list, Rachel Cusk, and one of her books at random (either because of ratings, the mention of humor, or some unknowable instinct).

The Country Life is a parody³ of an 18th-century novel of a woman befalling all types of silly misfortunes on her silly adventure. The beginning of the book is light and slightly humorous, if not a little weird, as our main character, Stella, disembarks for the country to take care of the youngest son of a wealthy family. I made all sorts of notations throughout the book, WTF?, and Why is her narration so remote? She’s like a robot, to name a few. I also kept a running list of encountered words I didn’t know the definition of… so that right there is a win. Getting smarter every day.

But as much as this book tries to reach for the levity of an awkward city-girl gone country story, the novel has a more sinister element that prevents the parody from ever really taking off. I won’t spoil the twist for you, but there are some really stellar reviews of this book and it left me thinking… what the hell am I missing here? The motivations behind Stella’s actions were incomprehensible and often completely circumspect. Try as I may, I couldn’t connect to any of the characters in the novel, though that could be, in part, because the narrator is so aloof.

I’m recommending the book selfishly. I need to know what you think. Tell me, am I crazy? Or is Stella?

Because I found this novel a little inaccessible with suspect taste, I’m going to pair it with something a little unusual, from somewhere unexpected given the name, and something not everyone would enjoy. There’s a taste of country and nuance, weight and levity. I’ll tell you a secret—I enjoyed Williamson Wines Bubbles Sparkling Wine a wee bit more than the book.

Writing & Querying Update

Imagine a nice, decadent, steaming cinnamon coffee crumb cake (or insert desired dessert) placed in front of you… now you’re taking a biiiig spoonful and just before this mind-numbing goodness touches your tongue, the cake calls back to the plate. That, my friends, is this week’s querying sitch. Every time I think I have something or think THIS IS IT I’m swallowing a big piece of humble pie. Yay me.

As one of my beta-readers just pushed onto me, I’ll regret it if I don’t send out more queries. Whether it’s this book or the next, it’s not worth regretting inaction here.

I’m competitive and my self-confidence can be shaky at best, but I know one thing about myself… I am not a quitter.

In more fun news, I started character (& suspect) profiles for WIP McMurder. WOO! And my heist story about a 1920s gun moll is finally taking shape. :)

Until next time!

xx, bb

1. Obviously not recent anymore. Early 2019.

2. Rest assured, I cook now. And I’m not entirely bad at it, either.

3. Ehhh, parody…? Not in my book.