Friendships are funny things.
Any relationship has a definition, I suppose, from marriage to partnership to contractual obligation.
Friendship, however, seems to be one of the most tenuously defined.
I've heard it said: "A friend is someone you can depend on 24 hours a day. You can call them up in the middle of the night and they'll come a-runnin'."
That's pretty extreme; I'd say that's a friend you grew up with and have known since grade school type of friend.
I've heard it referred to in more general terms: "A friend is someone you can share things with."
Pretty vague. Junkies share needles. Are THEY friends? Ew.
Then there's the cynical: "A friend betrays you last."
I'm not kidding. I actually heard that one. I'm not entirely certain that person has any friends left.
I lost a friend a while ago. It happens sometimes. However, when I lose a friendship (as opposed to ending a friendship myself) I need closure. I need to know why. I need these questions answered so I can move on.
Now, this recent friendship had been over for a year, and I pretty much knew the whys-- and wasn't interested in debating them. All I cared about was that I had a friend, and then I didn't. But although HE had been clear about ending the friendship, I was not.
So I emailed him and asked him to forgive me. Which he did, but said he was not interested in rekindling the friendship-- and told me to move on. He said "a year is too long to mourn a friendship."
THAT'S what prompted me to write this.
A year is not too long to mourn a friendship if it means something to you. If you really care about the person.
Now, please understand, I am a big SUCK. Friendship MEANS something to me. I'm very emotionally attached to the people in my life.
And let me define something here: The difference, for me, between a FRIEND and and ACQUAINTANCE is this:
The Friend is someone you WANT to go out of your way to spend time with, share your common traits, and remain willing to discover the traits you don't share, simply for interest's sake in this person.
An Acquaintance is someone you know and have things in common with, but for whatever reason aren't driven to seek them out.
So when this Friend told me I'd mourned too long for our friendship and I should move on, I realized that it had NEVER meant as much to him as it meant to me.
And here I realized something else: I don't think friendship means as much to ANY of my friends as it does to me.
I had to end TWO friendships of ten years because I felt abused, and taken for granted-- and it took me months to work up the ability to cut these people out of my life; I don't think they even noticed I was gone.
THAT's pain, by the way.
Other friendships have simply faded; and each one of those was an "ouch," too, because I thought I should work harder to keep them. When I realized I just didn't want to make the effort, in effect demoting these people from Friends to Acquaintainces, I felt I was being unfair to them.
Which is me just being fucked up, but that's how I feel about people. I sometimes still get a pang of guilt that I let the friendship slide, but mostly I'm comfortable with it. People grow in different directions, after all.
But I want it known: Yeah, I care about my friends. I go out on a limb for my friends. And yes, I put up with the girlfriends of my friends for FIVE YEARS, even though I despise them utterly, for my friends.
And if I were being honest? I don't think a single one of them would do the same for me. Is that because I have an overemotional definition of friendship? Do I take it too far? Am I expecting too much in return?
I'm worried, now, that I put too much on my friends and thus might be dooming myself to disappointment because of unreasonable expectations.
To my current friends: This isn't necessarily factually true of all of you. I don't know this for sure. It's just an observation.
This is a test of the M Files Field Journal.
Inspired by Burke of burkeandwells.com, I've decided to overhaul the M Files to make things a little less clunky.
Besides, I was tired of that whole 1980's "War Games" black-and-green motif anyway.
Cheers,
Agent M