On Friendship
This week I have been thinking, reader, of friendship.
More so than usual. Part of this is because of the recent slew of friendship-oriented articles on the net — both exploring the ways friendships can be toxic, shunted off to the side, and/or the wellspring of joy — and part of this is simply because I have been spending a lot of time with my friends.
I am a proponent of the long friendship model: most of my close friends back home have been in my life for over a decade. I have known my best friend for longer than I haven’t known him; growing up, I’ve celebrated far more Galentine’s than Valentine’s Days. For most of my life, friendship has been the axis around which my world spins, the secret superpower that fuels my sense of self-regard in low moments when I wonder why anyone bothers with me at all. One of the things that drew me to my partner nine years ago — another long relationship — was the strong, sustained friendships in his life. Over the course of our relationship, we married our friend groups, and when we finally got engaged, it felt very much like a village celebration.
The night of our engagement, surrounded by almost everyone I loved (a few kept apart by circumstance, geography, etcetera), it seemed to me that I was experiencing a crescendo, that I was tasting the sweet fruit of love after years of deep friendship. Before me, in one place, were the friendships that had shaped me, shaped our relationship, and would continue to shape our future; I felt that I could see clearly the next few decades of my life. So much of a writer’s path is uncertain — I don’t even know which hemisphere I will be in later this year, let alone later in life — but having a home in my people, my tribe, gives me faith that even if everything in my life collapses, things will be fine.
In other words, there are a few things that I can say with certainty. One is that I am a good friend. I work hard at my friendships, I take pride in being a good friend to others. Another is that I have not always been a good friend to myself.
This was never as apparent as when I moved to New York. To me, investing in my vocation, my writing life, was the single most selfish thing I’d done. It was a disgusting amount of money — my money, but still — which could have gone towards far worthier causes. It took me away from my friends, my family, my partner. Suddenly, every dollar I spent — for a pillowcase, for a bathmat, for the train — seemed self-centered. There was no shared communal good that could be harvested from each action, it benefited only me.
Call it eldest daughter syndrome. Call it culture shock. Call it whatever you want: it didn’t change the reality of sitting with immense guilt day in and day out. Eventually, I convinced myself that the only way I could justify this choice was by achieving every single thing I set out to do in New York, so that I wouldn’t disappoint the people back home. I would go to New York and come back a Real Writer™. It was something I, too, wanted desperately. But I would be lying if I said that the expectations of others didn’t factor into my thought processes.
Call it inevitable. When the pandemic hit, bringing with it a series of disasters outside my control, slapping me with an extended period of being completely unable to write creatively, interrupting my MFA, and funneling me back home, where I was once again useless — I completely broke down.
I relied heavily on my friends during that period, who sat with me through a shattered temperament and wrapped me up in love. But I was stuck. It became quickly clear that although I was happy to accept their love as something I deserved, I could not extend that same graciousness to myself. I could not enact friendship to myself in the way they could for me. In the way that I would for them, should our positions be reversed.
That first year of the pandemic was my year of self-reckoning. A friend asked me what it would mean to forgive myself for failure. I told her I didn’t know. I had never allowed myself to fail before. It took me a long time to understand what the problem with that statement was, and how unfair I was being, to myself and to the people around me. It was difficult to draw a line from recognizing this to actually taking action to change.
It was a painful learning process, but I do have a kinder relationship with myself now. After almost thirty years, I am learning, slowly, to be my own friend.
And how wonderful this has been.
Today, I try to behave as I would like my friends to. For example, I no longer torture myself by tolerating interactions I would otherwise counsel them against. Now that I’m not handcuffed by courtesy, the social exhaustion of existing in society has evaporated. In its place, a new source of love has sprung up. I’ve discovered an unexpected capacity to be interested in life, in people, in experiences; I’ve made new friends, whom I like very much. I don’t feel guilt over enjoying time spent with them, nor punish myself for long hours spent talking instead of working. Being a friend to myself has made me a better friend to others. And in turn, their friendship allows me to be more generous with myself.
The effect of this has been tremendous. How interesting it is to be free of guilt, how much more available I am to the vibrancy of everyday life! How could it have taken so long for me to realize that I, too, qualify as a candidate for my own friendship? How foolish I was, how much time I’ve wasted. But I catch myself, before dwelling on this. I will not berate myself; it is not what a friend would do.
