Let's Talk About Her (LONNNNG entry) in Days of My Destiny

Someone asked me recently why I thought that my friend of 17 years would suddenly go ahead and plan her birthday without me.

I feel like there is a short and a long answer. The short answer tells the story of her birthday, and the long story tells the story of our friendship - from the very beginning. I’m going to write Part B first and try to keep it brief.

You know, I’m ready to write about her now, because I actually did some maths this afternoon and I feel like it makes a difference. It’s pathetic, I know, but it makes a difference to me. Because numbers and stats, at the end of the day, aren’t just numbers and stats.

In 2001, my brother was working in one of those complexes that was typical of that day (at least in Australia). It typically had a Dominos Pizza, a video shop, a fish’n’chip shop, and maybe a few other takeaway shops and a random real estate agent. I was looking for work at the time, and my brother talked to the regional manager of a newly establishing cake shop there. A week later I was put on a trial and was given the job pretty much straight away. I was asked if I wanted to be store manager. I was 17 years old and mostly empty of any confidence to do a job like that so I declined. About a week after that, a new girl walked in and introduced herself to me as the new manager. Naturally, being young and dumb, I took a dislike to her, because that could’ve been me. (Go, 17.) Not only that, but she was highly critical of how I did certain things. At least that’s how it felt. Three months after that, I was still kind of in dislike of her when I got an opportunity to travel to South America for three months and meet my mother’s side of the family for the first time in my life. I asked my manager if she’d possibly hold my job for three months.... and she did. Upon my return, she organised a small , surprise Welcome Back gathering/party for me with our very small team. I went to her house and hung out. I’d never been in a bedroom like it before. There were these cool pieces of material hanging on the walls, with images of different gods. There were candles/incense sticks. It reminded me of a hippie shop my sister and I had been to on occasion in the city growing up. This room represented somebody who actually LIVED the life that that hippie shop catered for, according to my sheltered little perspective. And a friendship began.

There were a few parties, although none of us were really into partying necessarily. I knew she smoked a bit of weed, though I wouldn’t know just how much. She originally came from a very small town somewhere. She seemed to have this quiet strength about her. She listened, she actually listened. I’d never experienced that with anyone other than my big sister who had moved away 5 years prior. She also had a way of offering alternate views to mine. I’d get all angry about the way someone had behaved towards me and she’d challenge my underlying assumptions, but never with any judgment or criticism. Through her compassion and understanding, I grew into a better person.

I moved overseas for a while a few years after that. Having had spent a year overseas herself, she sent me little parcels full of things that might remind me of home. She messaged me etc. I was mostly disconnected from the western world, so upon my return I was surprised to learn that mobile phones really were an absolute MUST all of a sudden. At least that’s how she made the situation seem. She kept nagging me to get a phone, and I just didn’t have the money. She had a new friend that she’d made during my time away. I didn’t like this new friend, and was frankly a bit jealous. They were always spending so much time together, and when she wasn’t with that friend and with me instead, she spent a lot of her time talking about that friend. It was like her world had come alive. They were constantly partying and I think smoking a lot of weed. I tried weed for the first time at some point then, on a roadtrip I did with her to visit her hometown. Anyway through that time, our friendship was strange and we distanced ourselves. Being in my early 20s I suffered a lot through that, not knowing if our friendship had come to an end for good, and wondering what was going on. Thankfully around this time I met L and soon was spending all my time with him anyway, so even though I was suffering (which I was doing in my friendships in general), I was also having fun with my boyfriend and his mates. Soon my boyfriend and I realised that we had a good thing going and that we could probably do this forever, so we got engaged and then began organising a wedding with not much money to either of our names. Through all of this, my friendship with her was .. you could say estranged. She found it odd that I’d become “obsessed” with this guy, and so our lives were just too different.

About a year later, the friend she’d gone and made and replaced me with (or so it felt like) moved overseas for good, and she was left with nobody. She lost that friend, as well as the circle of friends that all hung out with her. Our friendship had a chance to slowly heal. She made time for me again. Soon I was pregnant with our first child but I was committed to getting my friend back and it felt mutual. We started hanging out some more, getting to know each other again. Long story short, the married/settled/family life really began for me, while she went through awkward relationships with douchebags. One night we were catching up, hanging out at her place, when she told me that about a year earlier she’d had an abortion and that she hadn’t wanted to ever tell me because she thought I’d hate her guts, given that I had a child and was therefore probably anti-abortion. This made me realise that really, I just wasn’t the first person she turned to, and maybe not even the third or fifth or tenth. She didn’t really have many friends, and yet she didn’t turn to me for things, or share openly about much, at least not until many months after the fact. This baffled me. I thought we were extremely close, but maybe I was wrong? This was the first time my belief about our closeness came into question.

Life continued at its normal busy rate for us both nonetheless. I fell pregnant with our second child and I knew that this was kind of IT for a while. I knew that I’d have my hands full for some time but by now I felt that our friendship had found a strong enough foothold that these life events wouldn’t necessarily change us and our commitment and love and care for each other as friends.

And I was right. In fact, when my youngest was 1 and my husband got a job interstate at a mine, I was pleasantly surprised that our friendship continued. She was very strongly anti-mining, whereas I didn’t really know anything about mining and therefore had no real stance on anything other than supporting my husband. So we moved and he worked at a mine. My friend came to visit me and asked questions that made me think more about what I really felt about being where I was, and it was good. I’ve always loved that she could challenge me and yet listen with such compassion and lack of criticism or judgment.

She believes in tarot reading; I would never take it seriously. She believes in Buddhism; I have a Christian background. She has experienced ghosts and beings which she believes need help to be released into their next life; I never really did. She believes in reincarnation; I believe that once you die, that’s just it. She has connections with some of her other friends where they have almost telepathic communication; I’ve never had that with anybody. And so on. So despite our differences, we’ve always respected each other and stayed connected.

I grew up taking things quite personally when many times I simply didn’t need to. I eventually learned not to take things to heart, but to accept people’s opinions/statements at face value. One of those things with her was that she’d always say she never had any REAL connection with people. In the years I was interstate, we’d have conversations about how she felt like she didn’t really have any friends, like she didn’t really have anyone she could call on at any time of day or night, and she didn’t have anyone she could feel intellectually stimulated with, including (especially including) her boyfriend. I always felt a little bit excluded from this feeling, because she’d say how I was busy raising my two children and she respected my time in that sense. I’d tell her that even though yes, I was a busy mum now, I’d always make time for a phonecall. That being a mum shouldn’t change who I was capable of being as sister, friend, and so on. I personally always felt that we had an intellectually stimulating connection, at least I did with her compared to other people I knew who thought I only ever wanted to talk about being a Mother. With her, I could share this, as part of so much more that makes up who I am. It’s what I really always appreciated - loved - about our connection.

I moved back home almost 3 years ago and at first we were really excited. I told her that even though before moving away we only ever saw each other every three to four months, I’d learned how to hang out with people and I’d be happy to see her way more often than that, maybe even once a month! The reaction was a little bit, whoa, easy tiger, in a way. I didn’t take too much offence to that because in the years I was away, we’d learned so much about each other over phonecalls and I knew she was an introvert as much as I am. In other words, I accepted that she wouldn’t want to see me any more often than before, because like me, we can only handle so much of people-ing.

In the last 3 years, we’ve been on a couple of hikes together and hung out at each other’s places a couple of times. She still hasn’t found someone to spend the rest of her life with, but she’s reached a point now where she feels like she would actually really like that, along with some children, maybe. She’s ready to settle. She ended a long-term relationship about a year or two ago, and her father also died, leaving her a bit of an inheritance that she’s saving to use when she finds the right home to purchase. In the last 2 years or so, she met a guy from India (a place she has strong connections to - she spent a year there just before I met her) who was highly intellectually stimulating for her. In fact, he’s a top leading scientist in his field. She LOVED hanging out with him and his friends. She found, for the first time in her life, , a group of people she actually felt “dumb” around, because they knew so, SO very much and she soaked it all up like a sponge in love. She was truly happy, and actually I was happy for her. I was also secretly surprised that she was into all this stuff she’d never mentioned to me before. Turns out I have an interest in those subject areas as well, but nevermind, I guess the opportunity just never came up..? Maybe…?
And then a year ago, this friend of hers left. He moved to America. And again, she experienced the loss of a friend plus their circle. And again she felt lonely, I suppose. She had to start again, to find new friends that would be intellectually stimulating for her.

And now we come to March this year.

I called her, asking her what her plans were for her birthday, because there was an event I’d like to take her to, that I thought she’d really love. And that I would really love, too. (It was a talk on the science behind believing.)

Turns out… her friend from Sydney was coming up, and she already knew about this event, and her and her Sydney friend were already going. And wow, “I didn’t know you’d be into that kind of stuff” sentences came up. And, “I was going to call you on the weekend, but-” sentences came up. And she said that aside from this event she and her Sydney friend were going to, she was also in the middle of organizing a birthday dinner with a whole heap of other people - communicating on a messaging app that I don’t actually have (which, she should know, because after 17 years of friendship, you kind of know these things. And she also said that she didn’t want to mix family and friends this year, and she wasn’t really sure what to do about me, because she thought that maybe she could invite me to the family thing: that way, I could show up with my husband and daughters because my daughters got along with her niece once, two years ago.

I get it, it’s not like I haven’t ever attended her family birthday do’s. There have been many years that I’ve been around her family, celebrating her birthday. BECAUSE..... she hasn’t had many friends in the past. At all. In fact, the year she lost that first friend who went overseas, I was the only friend that showed up. And the way she barely interacted with me that night, I felt like I should’ve even be there (granted, our friendship was all weird at that time anyway). And when her other friend called from overseas, she looked SO relieved, like FINALLY someone who mattered had called.

And you know.. even though I’ve attended many of her birthday things with her family, it’s not like I’ve become part of her family. I barely interact with them. They are fairly out there, and while I enjoy that and the ‘exposure’ of it if you will, it’s just not who I am. I was brought up in such a traditional, conservative home, that it just isn’t me. And they’ve never really gone out of their way to get to know me necessarily. It’s like, they are the show, and I, the spectator, happen to be there.

Anyway so really… at face value, her thought of including me in the family celebration seems genuine. It’s true, I have a family, but see, it’s also true that I’ve never been the kind of person who shows up to everything with that family. In fact, I quite enjoy showing up to things as ME, because ME is who I am, and ME enjoys attending to my friends with a full heart, all ears and eyes. She’d know that, because we’ve known each other for 17 years.

She did actually ask if L was coming to this event I was thinking of, too. I said, “No, just me,” and she quickly replied with, “Oh, yeah I thought that’d be the case, I didn’t think he was into that stuff.”

Which just pissed me off. Because I’ve known her for so long, I knew the hidden message behind what she said. First of all, JUST BECAUSE HE REMINDS YOU OF YOUR EX DOESN’T MEAN THEY ARE THE SAME PERSON. Stop making assumptions about who my husband is. And secondly, HOW DARE YOU ASSUME MY HUSBAND IS TOO DUMB FOR AN EVENT LIKE THIS. How dare you!!! What, you think I’ve settled for a bum?! Or you think I’m a bum, because I live in this socio-economic area that my husband was born in?

(She was with in that long-term relationship for about 8 years with a guy who she always said was really similar to L. And while the two boys did get along, it didn’t mean that L was exactly like that guy. In those 8 years, she always complained that he seemed too intellectually boring for her, and that he just didn’t enjoy the things she did, and that she couldn’t share with him deep thoughts of anything significant in her world. And although I sometimes found the same thing with L in the early years of our relationship, we have both grown TOGETHER over the years and we CAN share so much. Yet she always put L in the same box as her ex.)

The phonecall really did get awkward and it soon became apparent that, even though I’d had her and her birthday in mind - LIKE I DO EVERY YEAR - I was, in fact, an afterthought in her plans.

She even said to me, “I was talking to (my other friend) last week, I was all depressed telling her that no-one would come to my birthday because no-one ever does.” By now, I was quite pissed off (I’m the one who’s always shown up, I’m the one who’s always helped her move house… I guess I’ve been invisible this whole time…), I said, “Yeah but you forget Little Me from Little (Town).”

And her reply was, “No I know, I know, but for years you were the only one and it was like, I only have ONE friend that has shown up.”

I didn’t say anything, because I don’t understand that thinking. I grew up with teachings of the you’re better off alone than in bad company variety. And being an introvert, that suits me just fine.

But it seems that my lonely little appearance at her birthday parties have never been enough for her. I guess I’ve never counted. I guess she’s always gone for quantity over quality.

And that’s when I turned around, dumbfounded, we said an awkward goodbye, and she said she’d let me know when she’d bought me a ticket to this event that I wanted to take her to, and then I never heard from her BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE THE MESSAGING APP SHE WAS REFERRING TO.

I was dumb-founded.

And I’ve felt hurt.

And I’ve looked back over the years and seen them differently. I’ve seen all the times I didn’t really count. I’ve seen all her visits as desperate attempts to keep one friend rather than none. I’ve seen her company as attempts to keep one friend while waiting for something better to come along.

Because you know what? Now she HAS found more “intellectually stimulating” friends, and I guess I can move on down the rank now, because they are much more stimulating than I am.

And you know what? That’s fine. Because if you’ve been all about quantity over quality all this time..................................................... then you never really knew me.

This afternoon I LITERALLY scrolled all the way back to 2007 in our messages (in the messaging app we actually use together), and I did a tally of who started communications/interactions. I counted the first messages that started a whole heap of interactions and conversations that lasted days.

I started 59 of them, 22 of which were random greetings, or random follow-ups to things she’d told me. For example, “How did ____ go today?” Or other messages were like, “What inspired you this week?”

She started 43 of them, 6 which were random greetings. Zero follow-ups to anything.

And a lot of times, my interactions have gone unresponded (if that’s a word) for days. Or with messages like, “Oh heyyyy, I’ve been thinking of you heaps lately,” but she’s always too busy.

So… I see it now.

And that’s okay.

I can let go.

I won’t suffer as much as in the past.

Because I know now that for you, it was always going to be quantity first, THEN quality.

She had a BIG turn-out for her birthday. I saw the photos. There were about 15 people there. That’s big. In the past, it’s been one, maybe two. It was 15 this year and it looks like she had a great time.

And you know what? I’m glad I was “sick” (I was, but not that bad) and chose to miss it. Because I’d rather show up as a Priority than an Afterthought.

Last updated April 04, 2018