Friendship’s a weird thing. Throughout my life I’ve had ‘best friends’ who turned out to be frenemies. Best friends who really were the real deal. Faux friends who stuck around for a little while before fading away, neither of us maintaining contact. Don’t get me wrong – I have amazing friends. Over the last three years I’ve met true friends for life, without whom I’d be utterly lost – especially this beautiful lot :)
But, one friend told me I was her best friend in the world, wrote me beautiful letters, texted me all the time, treated me on birthdays and Christmas before deciding, almost completely out of the blue, that she hated me. And she told me as much over social networking site of the moment, Myspace. To say I was pretty gutted about receiving a massive message detailing exactly the reasons she felt she couldn’t be my friend would be an understatement. Suddenly I understood how celebs feel under constant public scrutiny. What gives you the right to judge me?
She did apologise not long after but by then, the damage was done.
And she’s not the first. There’ve been a couple of ‘friends’ who, at crucial moments in my life – namely the aftermath of breakups where you need your friends to drag you from under your duvet – were resolutely absent. Whenever I see them, there’s still an undercurrent of sadness and bitterness that when I sat next to my phone in tears, it never rang.
But, more recently I’ve been hurt by the vanishing of two friends from my life. One got a new girlfriend and is so absorbed in their life together that it seems the life he had before they met is irrelevant. I know that when you’re in love, life is wonderful and when it’s a brand new relationship it’s entirely natural to want to spend time together. But it seems to me to be a bit excessive when all your time is spent either together or thinking about each other or making photo albums of your time together or not communicating with anyone else. No word for three months. Granted, I’ve made no contact either, but why should I? I’ve done the desperation thing, I’ve all but got on my hands and knees, begging to keep people in my life before and I’m so over it.
The other seems to have no reason for his desertion which almost makes it worse. He means the world to me but makes it impossible to get hold of and makes me feel I’ve done something wrong. Maybe I have or maybe he’s just busy. Either way, it’d make me feel a whole lot better if I just knew.
At the start of the summer I was deeply upset about both of these friendships. Other friends and families told me to just move on. And, in principle, moving on and not questioning the changes in our relationships is the right and best thing for me to do. But, as is always the case, in practice erasing people physically and their memories emotionally from my life is much harder.
This time of year reminds me of both of my absentee friends. I look back at old photos and desperately want to be able to frame them for my new uni room but know that I can’t. The smiles emanating from those happier times just make the current situation more difficult.
And it’s harder to deal with than that message popping up in my Myspace inbox. An onslaught of abuse and criticism? I can handle it. But the silent treatment? Watching our memories and closeness fade from view? That I can’t.
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