The Anatomy of Friendship
The concept of friendship really is indefinable, if you think about it. It’s said that we decide whether we like a person within 30 seconds of meeting them. I think we decide whether we want them to be our friend in as much time. I’ve been thinking about this topic, specifically what to write about this topic, a lot lately. Either my head filled with words about all the friends I’ve had throughout my life, or I found myself unable to articulate a single thought. I’d been wanting to see what all the fuss was about, so I enlisted the help of ChatGPT, asking the AI bot to describe different types of friendships. The 450-ish word essay I got back (watching it type was a little unnerving) wasn’t wrong. It provided an antiseptic summary of several different kinds of friendships: childhood, work, casual, acquaintances, online and then a section on ‘best’ friends. But it definitely didn’t understand the deeper meaning of friendship.
I didn’t adopt any of the AI verbiage, but it did clarify one thing for me. While the circumstance that initially connects us to our friends may fall into one of these ‘classifications”, every friendship stands on its own. You can’t define a friendship inside a neat little paragraph.
Like most of us, my first friends were my siblings, my cousins, a couple of girls who lived on the same street, and my schoolmates. Since I went to a private Catholic school, I didn’t ‘grow up’ with most of the kids in my neighborhood. By the time I got to junior high those friendships were already long-established and I was an outsider (my elementary school was very small and since we all came from different parts of town, we scattered). I’ve watched a few of my high school classmates evolve into lifelong friendships. Most of them still live near enough to get together regularly and they take several trips together each year. Their shared history spans decades of their lives and because of this, the way they understand how to be a friend to each other has grown into a rare and special thing. I envied their friendship then, but now I can simply be happy for them. The difference is I’m now content being an outsider.
Just after high school I became friends with a couple of people I worked with at the Sonic Drive-In. There’s nothing quite like bonding over french-fry grease and massive Styrofoam cups of Coke while spending 40 hours a week with roller-skates strapped to your feet. After closing, we’d sweep the parking lot, turn up the music and skate even more, into the small hours of the morning. When you’re 18, you don’t need much sleep, and you can skate forever.
My work friend, Cheryl, was married and her younger sister, Teri, who lived with her, was looking for a roommate. I was ready to move out on my own, so we moved in together. We were later joined by Billy, one of the fry cooks at Sonic and lived our own version of “Three’s Company”. We were broke, barely getting by, but we were young and never worried about that much. Life eventually took us in different directions but the four of us stayed in touch throughout the years, always able to pick up where we left off. When Teri died last year, the pain was as real as if we were still a daily part of each other’s lives.
It's a bonus when your sister-in-law becomes your best friend. My ex-husband’s sister, Barbara, and I raised our kids together. We bonded over family, the lifestyle that comes with being married to a cop, as well as our common interests. We spent years’ worth of weekends together keeping the kids, and ourselves, entertained. If the guys were around, we were also compatible as a foursome, getting together to cook and play cards. That was the case until we both ended up single within a year of each other. My divorce wasn’t such a big surprise but her husband blindsided her (and everyone they knew) when he left her. She once told me she was grateful that I was there to teach her how to be single again. I was glad to be able to do this for her. Instead of a foursome (kids or husbands) we became a duo. We took Western Swing dance lessons (where she met her current husband), donned our Rockies and boots and danced our way across Harris County (in either two-step or polka time) several nights a week. Sadly, I found it difficult to sustain our friendship in the way it had been for almost 20 years. Both my ex-husband and I remarried, as did Barbara, and the logistics became too complicated. She would juggle family invitations, excluding her brother for me and I wasn’t comfortable putting her, or the rest of her family, in that position. She’s the best friend I’ve ever had, though, and I’d drop everything in a hot second if she needed me. I know she’d do the same.
Throughout my career, I’ve typically kept my co-workers at arm’s length (I know, I just told you about my Sonic crew, but I mean after I became a full-fledged grown up), except for Vic.
Without a doubt, Vic and I kept each other sane. We shared a workspace and innately knew how to respect each other’s boundaries. We knew when to commiserate, when to call each other on our bullshit, and when to keep quiet. For ten years our running joke was that we were the best of friends who’d never see each other again once we no longer worked together and we were right. I’ve tried to find her once or twice, with no luck. I’m neither surprised, nor offended. We understood each other on an entirely different level.
When the internet infiltrated our living rooms in the late 1990s I thought “uh oh, I’ll never get off it”. Turns out I wasn’t alone. Within five years, I'd made a whole new group of friends, some geographically close and others across the globe. These connections were built around common interests, but also the ability to articulate thoughts and carry on conversations using the written word. You had to be clever, smart and pithy to keep up. While a good many people were just passing through, I made several significant friends who are still in my life today. Some are close enough to see in person. All are still connected through the magic of the internet. Too many to name, I’d inevitably forget someone and I hope, if you're reading this, you know how important you are to me. We’ve watched kids, and now grandkids, grow up. We’ve seen each other through marriage, divorce, remarriage, job changes, cross-country (and countries) moves, and more beginnings and endings of every sort, than we can count.
The Covid19 pandemic added another facet to my online friendships when we all found ourselves having to pivot and connect online. Once again, I became a part of several online communities, grateful for the people whom I visited through the little square boxes on my screen.
Sometimes friendships end simply because it’s time. But sometimes they go wrong. Meanings and motives are misunderstood, or even manipulated. Alliances shift and feelings are hurt. You’d think, as adults, we’d all behave like adults but it’s far too easy to revert to a high-school mentality if one person chooses to take it there, and others follow. I’ve been there, too. The friendship survived, but it’s forever changed. That’s okay though, friendships must change if they’re going to last, because WE change. It’s how we go the distance and a friendship that survives such a challenge is stronger for it.
I’ve entitled this week’s column ‘The Anatomy of Friendship", referring to the parts that make up a friendship, similar to the parts that make up the human body. Like our human shells, each friendship shares a basic structure, but there are an infinite number of differences that make each one unique. No two are alike, and not every friendship is meant to last forever, in the active sense, anyway. We preserve our most precious friendships in our hearts and memories, like a fragile piece of old jewelry that’s too delicate to be worn every day. It may not be a shiny as it once was, but we still see the fiery beauty and sparkle it had when it was new. We’re not the same person we were at the point where our lives connected, and neither are our friends. But we were important to each other when it mattered. And that’s all that matters.
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