The problem I’m finding is getting to the stage where your friends become like your family. Sometimes that works out great, I have friends that are the family I got to pick and I love them, like I love my family in spite rather than because of their (and my) quirks. Sarah is always late! Christelle has this habit of sniffing food she’s never tried before, but I only notice it nowadays when someone else points it out. And Tina and Charles will always put milk in my tea, even though I haven’t drunk it since I’ve known them (that would be 20 years!!). I am always late too, when I am tired I get whiny, and I can talk for England….
So what’s the problem?
I didn’t pick my family, it’s not my fault that my mother memorizes the train timetables in the most annoying way or my brother….come to think of it he did that at school but with bus routes…..I’m just glad that it bypassed me. But they are my family and the only decision that we have to make is whether we are close or not.
Friendship however is a more slippery thing.
What happens when someone you picked, unpicks you? 14 years of a relationship (someone you used to talk nearly every day, who you saw through a change of career and god knows how many house moves, who supported you through the worst thing that ever happened to you) just stops being interested in you. You wonder why. Did you do something? They don’t call and you have called but they don’t return your calls, so you can’t even ask. You feel hurt and angry and sad and this person that you think of as family is seemingly unmoved. What did you do? The worst of it, is that after a while, this change poisons your past. Everything you thought that you knew about them is a lie, they weren’t really your friend, they didn’t really like you. And remember you picked them, what is it about you that makes such poor choices? Then you start to question your judgment and you begin to worry about everything you do. Does that person really like you? Can you let them close? If you do or say that, will they stop talking to you to?
It’s devastating. I have watched the man I love die, that was truly dreadful and I wondered if I would ever get over the loss. But I never doubted my love or his. He left because there was no other choice. There is some comfort in that (it wasn’t something I could have prevented) this is dreadful in a different way because I feel I must have done something awful to provoke such indifference in one of my closest friends.
I don’t know and I never will, I hope without reason that whatever it is will change and my friend will start to be my friend again, whether that happens or not, with time it will sting a little less and I will make new friends and do other things.
But I’ll always wonder……
Nic Dempsey 