Hallway to Nowhere

Tag: friendship

  • The Loss Of Friendships

    Since the pandemic hit, I’ve lost most of the close friendships I had. I gotta wonder, what does this say about them? What does this say about me? Why couldn’t we sustain them? Many of them were with people in my same town. The phone works just fine here, as does broadband. And yet they failed.

    I tried with my usual means: calls, email, making playlists, sending recipes, asking about family members, etc. But all of these couldn’t weave a strong enough web for the strictures of this time, evidently. I think this has to with a multitude of factors, which I’ll list below.

    The BIG one: I’m not FAMILY. During this time, everyone has retreated into their cocoons and, rightly or wrongly, been focused on taking care of those who related to them. THESE PEOPLE are their primary concern. I get this. IF you have kids or aging parents or both, this is definitely going to be where your attention goes. So you will not have much time or space for extras. Now, don’t get me wrong. In an actual EMERGENCY, folks do come through. When I was really sick, people kindly brought me food and groceries n such. But this is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking CONVERSATIONS (remember those?) and regular contact (via internet or phone).

    Another one: I don’t drive + I live in a small apartment. This means that I could not host any outdoor gatherings OR attend any, really. SOCIOECONOMIC class rears its ugly (and seldom discussed) head here. But. This was a thing. Friends would tell me about it. Early on. Or ask me if I’d attended such and such play at Barter-At-The Moonlight. While I wondered silently if they’d taken leave of their senses. And maybe it just finally became too glaring and much. So.

    A third one. I’ve withdrawn from most of the activist organizations from which I once belonged. Perhaps I’m not as interesting to talk with. Now that I don’t do THAT any longer, I’m just another older person of slight regard. I can’t advance any interests for anyone or promote any cause. I’m just me now.

    A fourth. Perhaps, and I’m going to check with my therapist and few remaining friends on this, I’ve become personally more challenging to interact with. I don’t wish to be rude, unpleasant, impolite, or not compassionate. But I am asking people to do things I think are reasonable, setting boundaries, and sometimes it doesn’t go as planned. (Case in point: A friend, who might now never speak to me again Idk, had developed a habit of telling me they would call me back but then seldom doing so. Now, this friend has a complicated life for all sorts of reasons, so I didn’t mind the not calling me back part. But I really wanted them to refrain from saying that to me, as I would expect them to call-EVEN AS I TOLD MYSELF NO THEY WON’T. it’s just not good practice, yeah? So I asked them to NOT say this. It didn’t go well. My fault, I’m sure. But I still don’t know how else I could have done it really. Sigh. ) And continue to work on my path.

    A fifth. Things, even friendships, just change. That’s the nature of ALL things. So I accept this, find pleasure in those friendships that DID survive, cherish the memories of happiness I shared with former friends, wish them well, and look forward to what new friends, experiences, and most definitely challenges, will come.

  • Unsteadiness

    I have a sense of …unsteadiness these days, regarding the world around me in all sorts of ways. Physically, in that I’m getting older and more easily apt to fall or be knocked down by some mishap; politically, for sure, as I live in the Commonwealth of Virginia where I’ve seen a three-ring circus starring our top three elected officials lately (and may I say, Mark Herring in particular broke my heart); but what I especially want to address is INTERPERSONAL transience.  I’m not talking about the change that occurs when a loved one moves, falls ill, or even dies; these are life-events that are normal in the course of a friendship and something that I take into account. What I am referring to is relationship instability and unreliability.

    Two examples: I had a friend (NOT a millennial) who was supposed to pick me up from the grocery.  He had sent me a text offering to do so. I replied saying I would take him up on his offer and told him I was waiting outside the grocery. I waited and waited AND WAITED. He didn’t show. Finally, luckily some other friends came along to offer me a ride, otherwise I would had to wait another hour, b/c I had missed transit. He never replied to a text I sent telling him I was going home. I’m unsure now if he’s getting my texts or what, and calling is no good historically with this particular person. But okay, whatever. Maybe he had an emergency or we had a failure to communicate somehow.  But I’m left with having to process this. Ugh. Today I sent him a text asking what he was doing for lunch. No answer again.

    I had a friend tell me yesterday that SHE had a good long-term friend IRL just drop her and not tell her why. She said she has no idea WHY the friend did this-they had had no argument, fight, disagreement or anything resembling anything that should cause such a move. I told her that I think it most likely had nothing to do with HER. But something these days is causing people to lose their ability to make friends, keep friends, or just to plain BE friends. The simple things that I was taught:   Communicate (listen; talk); show up when you say you will; let someone know if you CAN’T; keep in touch (preferably via some human method) regularly; BE THERE…..I just don’t think people can do these  that much anymore. They’re either forgetting how, if they were taught (like people of my gen-and I gotta say, I’m picking up some BAD HABITS from some of my younger friends) or they’ve never learned in the first place. It’s like DEEP READING…it’s something I try to keep doing and sadly fear I fail to do very well any more.

    So, for those of you out there reading this. I hope YOU are faring better than I these days! Maybe if you have a family or a partner, you are not experiencing such a sense of precariousness and impermanence. And I’m not saying that most of my friends have exhibited such behavior. But I’m saying that in general  people are less reliable than PUBLIC TRANSIT……and that’s a sad commentary on the state of affairs.