Friendship In All Its Forms

The relationships that we make in this life are what make life worth living. You can go out and date a bunch of different people in your lifetime but for the most part those people pass in and out of your life. I’m sure there is some statistic out on the internet saying we all date 5.5 people before finding the ‘right’ one. 

But a friendship is something that can outlive any relationship. I
would argue that a friendship is more important than any person you might wind up marrying and spending the rest of your life with. I know that might sound a little crazy but hear me out before you start calling me Lady Gaga crazy.

                
Think about it. Chances are your oldest friends you have known longer then the boy/girl you are going out with right now. They have seen you at your lowest of lows and at your highest of highs. Years before boy/girl X came into the picture they were telling you how much of a mess the last person you were going out with was. Chances are they have taken care of you when you couldn’t take care of yourself. We all have those moments you look back on when you had to go above and beyond for that friend in need. At the time you don’t hesitate to even think of the consequences of your actions. Like the time I stood between my friend and the guy trying to stab him with a knife because my friend thought it would be a good idea to take the guys cellphone and rough him up in the bathroom. It was probably not the best thing to do considering I wanted to live a long and healthy life. But when your friends need you nothing is going to stand in your way.

                

I mean all of us have had those moments when you do something maybe you didn't want to do but because your friend asks you you do it. I call this the “friend card”. As a person you can say no to anything you want. It is in those moments when a friend wants to do something so badly that you have no interest in doing and they have no one else who they can turn too. All my friends know about the friend card and when it is invoked that it’s obviously something important to that person cause you just don’t waste the friend card on getting drunk on Friday night because you want to get drunk. When the friend card is brought into play you cannot say no to it no matter how much you might want to. This is for special occasions. It can be used on big things but often more so then not it is used on very simple things like getting food at a certain place or going to a museum. In my lifetime I can only think of the friend card being used a handful of times that is how infrequently it is used. Just as an example I can think of one time my boy was getting married and the day before his wedding he wanted me to go with him and watch 50 Cent’s magnum opus “Get Rich Or Die Tryin”. Needless to say I was complaining like a little J baby not wanting to waste any money on horrible movies (yes Chef I pay for Transformers films in the movie theater and buy them on blu-ray) but then my boy said the two magic words “friend card”. And then the complaints ended and the day before my boys wedding I am drudging through the snow to the movie theater to watch 50 get shot 9 more times. I cannot recall the Chef ever using the friend card on me but then again I have a pretty crappy memory in some respects. I say maybe the time we went to see Duran Duran but she probably didn’t need to use the friend card because I want to go to concerts all the time. Anyway Chef if you can think of an instance let me know.

                
I can be honest and say I do not have a lot of friends. At most I can count the friends I have on two hands. I have been lucky in the sense that the friends I have had in my life have been lifelong friends. Most of the people who are friends with me now I have 10+ years with most of them. One I have known 20+ years. I knew the kid in elementary school for God’s sake. Even the Chef I knew in junior high school albeit we weren’t in contact for a good chunk of our 20’s and did not re-meet each other till we were 30. I don’t know if that means I’m not good at making friends but at least the ones I really consider best friends aren’t ones who I just met them other day.

                
With that amount of time with a person there is bound to be bumps in the road. You just cannot live life without problems. Attitudes change. People change. You grow up. Sometimes you grow apart. I can tell you a personal story about my oldest friend who I have known for 20+ years. After college he was super successful. Great paying job. Had his own place in Manhattan. Had so many friends he had no free time for me. Every weekend he was partying living his life. Then one day he has an attack on the subway platform and hits his head. Turns out he has epilepsy and he gets robbed of everything. His motor functions get taken from him. He can no longer party like he used to. He loses his job. But worst of all his friends all abandon him. Only two people stuck with him myself and his other best friend. We all knew each other. He spent months in the hospital as they tried to figure out what was wrong with him and the only two friends who came to visit him every other day were the two friends he knew from junior high school. Everyone else came but not with the dedication the two of us had. At one point we even worked out a system so one of us was there at any one time and that he wouldn’t be alone.

                
Finally after months he was ready to come home and one of the things he wanted to do was write letters thanking everyone for their support in his difficult time. So he shows me these long letters, handwritten two or three pages each. The one to my other friend is especially long. A couple of pages thanking him for his time and all the visits, etc. That’s cool. You are showing your appreciation to someone who cares. And you are telling me all these amazing things he has done and I agree they were amazing things that he did. And then he gives me my letter. And it’s this small thank you card that you would send after a wedding or a birthday party. Now I don’t remember the exact words written but I can tell you I didn’t get pages of heartfelt thank you’s like my other friend did. No I got, “Thanks for visiting me”.

                
Wait what?

                
Now I am not the type that needs to be told how great he is. I really don’t. I am more than content with someone else getting the spotlight as long as the job gets done. But I was one of the two people who was there after everyone else left you. Your girlfriend left you. All your friends left you and you only had the two of us. And we spent virtually the same amount of time visiting you and spending time with you. And all I got was a little thank you card? I won’t lie I was extremely hurt. And this was compounded by the fact that now that he was out of a job he would call me and ask me to hang out with him now that he was home all the time. And I remembered how I when he was flying high how I was not even called to hang out or come visit him. I was a friend of convenience and now that all your other friends abandoned you now you came back to whom your real friends were.

                
Honestly it took me close to a decade to get over how I felt about how he treated me at the time. It only got better because one day his social worker asked him to collect testimonies about people who had to deal with him when he first got epilepsy. And I basically wrote that I felt like I was treated like a friend when he had no other friends but any other time I wasn’t that important. He and I are fine now. No matter how much he frustrates me some of the time I just could not give up his friendship so casually. No matter how much he makes me mad I always try to be positive and think of the good times and that gets me through any negative thoughts I might have about seeing him.

                
Being positive is what I try to do with all my friendships. I figure no matter how bad things are between friends you have to keep fighting. Even if when you see each other and you hate even looking at the person you have to keep trying to fight for your friendships. Because I hate the idea that you give up on your friends when the going gets tough. Even if all hope seems lost and that you might not be able to be friends anymore you have got to keep trying to figure things out. You owe that to your friendship.

It is sad but I choose to look at it this way. Man those good memories are so good and I will cherish them forever. But sometimes people just grow apart. The other friend who I mentioned always visited my friend in the hospital, was one of my best friends. He and I we enjoyed the same things. We loved video games. I would come over to his house and even into our 30’s a great night could be beer (or soda when we were kids) and Super Nintendo or a Playstation. We could just spend hours playing these games. We liked a lot of the same things. I was always ok with just sitting around and just bs’ing about life with some random show or cartoon playing in the background. The simple things are the best things and that was some of the moments that were the best. Things changed for us a couple of years ago. We started butting heads a lot. I don’t want to get too much into details because it could not change the course we were headed. We were all negative at the end and finally it was over. At the end it was almost a relief because we no longer would be fighting all the time. Any ill will I had towards this person ended at the moment we stopped being best friends. I didn’t want to wish any more ill on him. I wanted him to have a chance to be happy after all the negativity he and I were throwing at each other. I could not hold anymore malice in my heart for this person. Especially because of all the great times we had together. Ironically I was contacted by him a month or two ago and while we will never be best friends again I was ok with saying hello. He is in a good place and I am glad for him. For me when I think of him I will think of those good times just sitting around playing video games. 

Anyway what I am trying to say is friendships are the most complicated and maddening relationships you will ever get into in life. This brings me to my partner in this endeavor the Chef. I’m not a social butterfly who has ever gone to lots of parties of other people or even to bars in general. I was never very outgoing. Typical shy guy who stuck to his circles of friends. And then into my life stumbled the Chef. I have said this to her many times but the person who is here right now typing this a lot of who he is, is because of the things Chef has shown me. She opened my eyes up to a world in a way that only happens once in a lifetime. Everyone has that person who they feel expands their borders and opens the world up to them. Chef was there just at that point in my life when I was ready to open myself up to the world. It is the timing of life. It gets to you exactly when it is supposed to. I could honestly write a whole entry about her so I will leave the love-in for another blog entry in the future. But I will say that the fun, always open to doing something different, wanting to go somewhere new is your fault Chef for better or worse.

And I thank you for it.

I’ll leave you all with this line that the Chef wrote in a poem (one of her secret gifts is the ability to channel her inner Shakespeare) that I still have hanging on my closet door.

The line goes:

               Thank you for being there.

I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

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I can be a total bitch.

J told me the other day that my candor on our last post "Dating is Easy for About 30 Seconds" made him squirm in discomfort. Reading the nitty-gritty about my disastrous dating decisions is not something all people will want to read about. It's up there as one of our highest traffic posts, but we both know it's because I made blunt sexual revelations that not every person would feel comfortable doing in front of people that they actually know on a day to day basis. I'm just of the mindset that I don't really give a whole lot of fucks about what people think about me, because when I stop to worry about things like that, it tends to get in the way of my style of living. 

Well, this particular subject makes ME cringe. I don't like talking about it, especially to J. It was part of a very dark time in our lives, and many bad decisions were made by all parties involved, and it lead to multiple destroyed relationships and hurt feelings. And that's putting it mildly. 

It's a hard thing to discuss. You're getting two sides of a triangle without the benefit of the 3rd side's point of view. I don't think it's fair, and frankly, I don't really see anything positive digging up the past anyway. I understand J's desire to write about it. Just like he gritted his teeth and muscled through my Seabiscuit mental image, he isn't asking any more of me to read and to understand where he is coming from when he chooses to share his thoughts on this particular matter. Any way, triangle or not; between him, him, and her- somewhere in the middle of all that is the truth.

I'm not a good friend. I am no where near the caliper of friend that J is to the people in his life. It's not because I don't care about my friends or I don't want to do more for them, but I don't have the patience that he does. I will try my best to help those who need help, to provide for those in need, and to listen when a voice wants to be heard....But I have my limits. 

I have spent a better part of my early 30's babysitting women who are old enough to know better. Just because we all know better, doesn't necessarily mean we do better. We all have our relapses and stumbles along the way, and a good friend will understand when someone backslides.

This is why I am not a good friend. I can only take so many stumbles and so many backslide excuses before I look at someone and say, "You are either exceptionally stupid, highly self-destructive, or you really enjoy wasting my time. Whatever the reason is; I'm sick of your shit and I have better things to do with my life other than cleaning you up time and time again."

That's a pretty fucked up thing to think about someone you care about, but when does friendship have to go to the wayside and tough love gets invited in to clean house?

J will clean you up. He will come get you in the middle of the night if you are stranded somewhere with no one else to help. He will listen to you ugly cry about the same loser again and again. He will patiently give you time to cool off and gather your senses before approaching you again after an argument. It's not to say he doesn't lose his temper at all, but his fuse is a lot longer than mine. He is ultimately a better person than I know I will ever be able to be.

Instead of a one way entrance like J has had with people who are close to him, I have had a revolving door. People come and go and come back again. I've given chances to people who should have been locked out after their first transgression. But admittedly, despite my cynicism, I really do want to believe that people are good and want to change. Unfortunately, that isn't always true and I've been burned more than once by "friends" that I have known and trusted for years. 

Another one of my major flaws was that I shut out everyone every time I was involved in a relationship. My relationships didn't just run for months; they lasted years. I was with my husband for 7 years. I didn't see any of my friends during that time. I was with my boyfriend after him for 5 or 6 years. I had NO friends during that time unless they were involved in our business one way or another. And I was on and off with the boyfriend after him for a year and change. These are long term commitments where I made my partner my world. He was my best friend, and a night out with anyone else was a rare occurrence.

When J and I became friendly again in our 30's, he was between jobs and I was dating one of his best friends. He lived 5 minutes away from me. I had a lot of free time on my hands when my boyfriend with busy with other things in his life that did not involve me, and it was easy hanging out with J. When I say "easy", I don't mean to say he was there, so why the hell not? I mean to say that he was easy to get along with. It was easy going to a movie, grabbing a bite to eat, running errands, or generally doing nothing but hanging out together. He was easy to talk to. He was easy to enjoy spending time with. He was easy to like and care for as a friend. He is genuine and thoughtful, something I was not used to in a friend, and it was a welcomed and refreshing change from what I had been experiencing.

I have a more fitting homage to J rattling around in my head and it deserves its proper place on this blog, not tacked on some long-winded post about friendship. My ultimate point is that even though we are very different people with sometimes conflicting personalities; he is my most treasured friend for many reasons other than just Rock Band.

I don't do friendship very well. I don't stay friends with my exes. (Although, ironically, I'm on polite speaking terms with 2 of them, which is just weird to me.) I can probably thank J for that, too, because he moves my overflowing pot off the stove, so to speak, when it comes to my overly negative view of everyone and everything. Because of his diffusive capabilities, I've been able to get past stuff I haven't been able to let go of, and forgive people who probably don't deserve to be forgiven. Ultimately, he's getting me to rid myself of the hate I've had inside me, which has done nothing but corrode me from the inside out.

I've also walked away from toxic people. When I was at a pretty low point in my life a couple of years ago, I was lashing out at myself and the people around me. I pushed away friends who tried to help me get out of that funk, but I was surrounded by other people who wanted to pull me further down the road to self-destruction. Dragging me out to dive bars, clubs, lounges, and parties to make out with strange men was not what I needed at the time. Hey, I'm no prude. It's not that one of those nights aren't in order every now and then, but every weekend doing the same thing over and over with the same ugly, hungover results each time isn't going to make life get better. 

My "friends" were using me to bait men into buying us free shots and drinks. I was pulled into female on female kisses to garner more attention, thus getting more disgusting men to buy us more disgusting drinks...It was a gross cycle that I fell into. I would do it, though. I would get dressed up, go out, have a miserable time, get drunk, have a miserable time, get groped, get felt up, get tongued by countless, nameless people, and have a miserable time. I would somehow make it home to throw up, pass out, and wake up feeling even worse than I did the last time I did it...probably a couple of days before. 

These friends had to go. I don't blame them for the things I did. I was an adult with my own decision-making skills. But, a real friend won't hand an alcoholic "one more" drink or a heroine addict a "cleaner" needle. If you see your friend drowning, you throw them a lifeline, not more rocks to make the ride down go faster. 

I've been called many names by people who no longer share a friendship with me. I'm "cold", "selfish", "dramatic", "narrow-minded", "judgmental", and "hypocritical". Maybe I am all those things. I will walk away from a friendship before I'll engage in a confrontation. I don't have a problem doing that because I don't like confrontations. I will cut off a person without an explanation and not think twice about it. I can make it so that someone will never have existed in my world at all, and I will not shed a tear over it.

Maybe that makes me a robot. I have a longer fuse now than I did before. I try to have patience in instances where I want to throw up the bird and walk away. I never said I'm a perfect example of a human being. I'm only human; pitifully flawed and imperfect.

I pull people out of their comfort zones to help them achieve all the things they claim they want to reach. If I find I'm wasting my time on someone who does more talk than action, then I get pissed and I write them off as a failed attempt at friendship. 

I want my friends to push me. I want them to tell me when I'm crossing the line or being irrational. I want them to tell me when they think I'm wrong. I want them to tell me that I'm whining and bitching about things that I am not doing anything to change. That will make me a better person. I want my friends to be an active part of my evolution into an all-around better human being. 

Some people say friendship is acceptance. Part of that is true, but I'm not that person. If you tell me you want to be more than what you currently are, I will be your biggest supporter to help you get there. If you tell me you're perfectly happy with no job, no goals, and no dreams, then I can accept you for your honesty, but at the end of the day- what substance is there to that kind of friendship? It's like riding an elevator with someone who only wants to go up half a floor. 

I told you, I am not a good friend. I'm pretty shitty at it. I have a million people I know and very, very few "friends". Frankly, I'm surprised I'm as well liked as I am by the people who know me. My honesty will always be my greatest virtue and my biggest flaw. The high standards I set for myself is transferred to the standards I set for my friendships. I want the best out of the people around me, because I want them to be happy being the best that they can be in this short life we're living. 

If you are unhappy and don't want to do anything to help make yourself happy, then I am not the one you want to be friends with. The cheer-up routine grows old very fast, and my grace period is shorter than most others. I'm all about putting action behind my intentions. If you can't keep up with that, then we will probably not be very good friends. 

I told you I was a bitch.