Post Mortem

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the death of a friendship and to pick it apart to find out what killed it.

And that is about all the dark humor I can manage. One of my longest-standing friendships is officially dead and it hurts my heart. It hurts my heart so much that I have been trying, and failing, to write this post since Thanksgiving. And since I need to write this, to get this pain out of my heart and onto the page, I haven’t been able to write anything else.

I should console myself that it wasn’t the best, strongest of friendships, but I can’t be so flip. The thing itself wasn’t built to last but somehow it did for over two decades, off and on. Our friendship was not built on the bedrock of the heart, but on the shifting sands of appearances.

Now, I was loyal as a puppy dog, kind of pathetic really. But if I stepped out of line, even a little, she dropped me like I was make of fire. If I embarrassed her, I could expect a passive-aggressive letter dismissing me from her life. One time I got the dreaded letter for not spending her working hours alone and pining away. I selfishly insisted on leading my own life outside of my working hours and this was not to be tolerated.

I think it’s important to add something here. She could probably tell you all the many things I did wrong, all the many ways I failed her, perceived or actual.  But this is not a tally of who did what to whom nor is it told from her perspective. This is told from mine.

Now I can laugh at the absurdity and out-of-proportion-ness of the ridiculous letters, but they really hurt at the time.

Looking back I can see that we were both young, foolish, selfish. I was not perfect and there were certainly times when I should have been more empathetic, understanding. There were times when I let her down, but there were times when she should have been more forgiving, flexible, accepting of my all-too-human flaws.

Whenever I was so casually discarded, I never approached her, never begged her to take me back; my self-respect wouldn’t let me. But after the first time, I knew that she would eventually soften and want to be friends again. What I didn’t realize at the time was that she only softened her hard-line stance when she needed something from me. The things she needed weren’t really things at all. An antidote to loneliness, someplace to stay, a shoulder to cry on. When tragedy struck, I rushed to her side.

As the years passed, our lives took divergent paths. I married young and stayed that way. It was easy for me to transition from single girl to staid and stable matron. She married some years later and moved away. We kept in only the flimsiest touch; Christmas cards would be exchanged and nothing more.

One year I got the Christmas card back. Worrier that I am, I called her parents and got her new address and phone number. Our friendship re-thawed a bit. She had need of me again–her first marriage hadn’t worked out and I offered a sympathetic ear, commiseration, and no judgement.

When she married again and then had children, I expected our friendship to move into a new, more mature phase. We had all these things in common again and I hoped that we had both grown up a little.

About this time I noticed something troubling- I was the one doing all of the catch-up calling, the one doing the drudge work and general maintenance of a friendship. She would call me only when she needed advice or when she needed to be talked down from the new-mom-ledge. I had been there before, I had the road map, she needed it.

I began to have the sneaking suspicion that she was “slumming” a bit by being my friend. Although I am a loyal, defend-you-to-the-death, got-your-back, grade A friend material, I was chopped liver to her. I was Rhoda to her Mary, Jan to her Marcia, Velma to her Daphne. I was the nerdy, awkward bookworm, she was the head cheerleader.

The friendship certainly didn’t feel healthy, so I decided to do nothing. Stop calling, stop emailing, and see what happens. Then came Facebook.

We became Facebook friends; this seemed like a nice way to transition into a more surface-type friendship. Unfortunately, I don’t do surface very well, which has always been our problem. I am all me, all out there, come what may. Once again I embarrassed her or outraged her, or something.

Anyway, I have been able to pinpoint, if not the moment of actual death, the cause thereof. Politics of all damn things.

I posted a “Why I am the way I am”-type of essay about my personal political viewpoint. We hold rather divergent viewpoints, with me being somewhat to the left of center. It was enough. Apparently the fact that I exercised my first amendment rights and didn’t hide my liberal head in shame, and refused to bow and scrape and apologize for having my own opinions, was beyond the pale.

After a bit of back and forth and general misunderstanding on her part, she stopped communicating with me altogether. I didn’t even get another passive-aggressive letter.

The friendship became totally unresponsive and I have had to face the unpleasant reality that it is truly gone. There is no there there, anymore.

Even if, sometime in the future, she were to decide that I wasn’t so bad after all, I don’t think I could do it. There would always be a nagging doubt. What would it be this time? Which opinion or behavior, which appearance would she find intolerable next time? I don’t have the energy to always be schooling everything I do or say or write just to keep from offending her. But I do have the self-respect to say goodbye.

If you are reading this, which I doubt, I wish you well. We had good times when we had them and survived the bad times. I don’t regret anything. Take care of yourself and your family.

Me