…is the title of the first Lemonheads record,* and any direct relevance it has to this post is a little tricky for me to write about because if anyone still reads this blog—and I have my serious doubts about that—they are my friends, or at least people I know.
But I’m having serious issues with friendship, and specifically with some of my longest-standing friendships, right now. “Longest-standing,” in this case, includes people I’ve known for about eight or nine years, I guess, which for me is practically the equivalent of a lifelong friendship for many people; I’m always amazed by and envious of people who are still friends with folks they’ve known since high school or grade school or whatever, because I’m sure not.
In fact, I’m worse at maintaining friendships for any length of time than anyone I’ve ever met. One of my best friends from high school stays in sporadic touch despite my failure to reciprocate in any sort of timely fashion, and the same goes for some of my friends from my just-post-college days in Austin, TX, but that’s about it. I don’t think I’ve talked to any of my college friends since 1990, the year my first husband and I got married. I have a stalwart friend and former co-worker from my Minneapolis years who refuses to let me drop out of his life entirely, and I’m grateful beyond words for that, especially since the rest of my Mpls. friends** finally gave up on me a year or so ago.
With a couple of notable and still painful exceptions,*** my friendships usually end because of distance or a sort of natural growing apart (at least, I think that kind of thing is natural; I am so bad at friendship and human contact in general that I honestly don’t know), not because of fights or one of us suddenly deciding we hate the other or really any active hostility. And maybe that’s an entirely typical experience, especially for someone who’s changed major aspects of life as frequently as I have; like I said, I don’t really understand the way friendship works for other people, so I don’t know for sure. Maybe it’s just that I take it harder than I should when friendships change or dissolve. But of all my many personality failings—and there are a lot of them—I’ve always considered my inability to sustain/manage/”do” friendships the biggest and most damaging of them.
Sometimes I think it’s because I’m such a loner, but then again, sometimes I wonder if it’s the other way around, if I’m a loner because I avoid human contact because I’m so awful at it. I know that when I’m in social situations for more than an evening, I need to hide for days, sometimes weeks, afterwards. I don’t know if that’s something I should be actively concerned about and trying to change, or if it’s okay that I just need time to myself after time with other people; it’s just another of those things about human contact that I don’t seem to get.
And okay, I’m not saying I hate my current crop of friends. (I wouldn’t say that even if I felt it, because it would be bad manners to say the least.) But this weekend, in the company of several of the ones I’m ostensibly closest to, I had what I sometimes think of as a “Bye Bye Blackbird” moment, because of the lyric “No one here can love or understand me…”: I was talking and laughing and drinking and apparently having fun with all of them throughout the weekend, but by Saturday night, it had gradually started to feel like pretty much none of them understood or even knew or cared about me. (Yes, I know how self-pitying that sounds, and is, and I hate sounding that way; one reason I sometimes think I really do need to become a hermit is that I don’t like myself when I’m self-pitying—does anyone?—and I think it’s a good idea for me to avoid people and things and situations that make me not like myself.)
The feeling subsided some, especially after a totally painless and non-fraught short social encounter with someone not in that crowd later in the weekend, but it didn’t pass entirely, and it hasn’t yet. I don’t think any one thing or person triggered it, and I can’t put my finger on why or when I started feeling that way, but I did, and it wasn’t fun, boy howdy. It didn’t make me not like the people involved, but it threw me, badly. Driving home from St. Louis, I spent most of the 225 miles in tears, because I was suddenly starting to think about tossing my whole life out the window yet again and moving somewhere else and not knowing any of the people I know now.
I’m not going to do that, and even when I was feeling like doing it I knew I wasn’t going to do it or even seriously entertain the idea of doing it, because despite my apparent inability to learn from my previous mistakes, evidently one thing I have successfully learned after doing it one too many times is that just throwing out my current life and moving to a different city is something I can’t do anymore; the fact that I was able to do it successfully twice was just a very lucky fluke, because the plain fact is that is just doesn’t work.
Maybe it was just that I was tired; certainly, a few days of sleep deprivation plus a bunch of Red Bull couldn’t have helped me feel calm and serene. Maybe it’s that I’m a little depressed again. The euphoria created by changing jobs has definitely worn off; I still really love my job and the people I work with are great, but the inevitable realization that making one extremely positive change in life doesn’t make the whole rest of my life all better has hit. Maybe it’s all hormones, who knows. Maybe it’s just that drinking more than a drink or so really doesn’t work for me anymore (actually, it’s definitely that in some small measure; one thing I figured out decisively this weekend is that I really don’t enjoy being drunk or being around people who are drunk). I don’t know, and I’m not going to make any rash pronouncements about anything for a while, till I’ve had some time to process what exactly is bugging me about my friendships at the moment. Except this one pronouncement, which really isn’t all that rash: I definitely need to have some friends whom I didn’t meet through the Internet. I’m not sure how I’m going to go about doing that; as terrible as I am at keeping friendships, I may be even worse at making them in the first place. But it’s something I need to figure out how to do.
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*That was when the Lemonheads were a really young little punk rock band and Evan Dando was the drummer rather than the frontman. I like both the pre- and the post-Dando-as-superstar versions of the band, in different ways.
**A particularly fine set of friends, which makes it especially sad that they gave up on me, but geez, it’s not like I can blame them. And not that I go around ranking the groups of friends from various phases of my life or anything, except that I do, and they were among my favorites.
***I think last year was the year I finally completely got over one of those exceptions, a best-friendship (the best friendship I’ll ever have, I think, which isn’t a reflection on later close friendships but just a result of my belief that you don’t form the same sorts of joined-at-the-hip friendships when you’re not a teenager that you do when you are) that ended, badly, in 1982. Marina. Maybe I’ll write about her at some point. I really am over it, but on the other hand, I can’t say I wouldn’t love to talk to her again someday.
Yo.
I do read your blog.
I often feel that no one understands me, too–I don’t think it’s a totally universal thing, but I do think it is fairly universal among people with any degree of complexity. (That sounds like a snotty thing to say, but so be it.) When my friendships dissolve over time, I always assume it was my fault because I consider myself “bad at friendships.” But maybe a lot of us suck at it. I dunno. I always suspect there are a lot of people out there who are better at it than I am, at any rate!
I have pretty much gotten over the drinking thing, too. I can’t remember the last time I finished a beer. The only downside is, it’s awfully hard to stay up all night if you’re not drinking, Red Bull or no Red Bull.
Wouldn’t a nice, refreshing trip to the southeast (once the weather finishes cooling off!) be nice? We could pick you up at the airport. And would be glad to.
I’ve suffered the loss of dear friends before (through a combination of drugs and circumstances) and it’s a terrible thing to experience, regardless of whether you instigated the loss or not. My heart goes out to you, Amy, but know that you have friends out there, even if you’re not in touch with them regularly.
If you want to keep friends, you have to make an effort to keep in touch with them. That’s my failing as well.
As for the drinking thing, well, I physically can’t party like I used to, and I miss it. Not terribly, but I do miss it.
Amy, I’m still occasionally flying by to check for your posts too…if only few couple of weeks or so. Today just happened to be one of those days…
There’s probably not much I can say that offers any insight you don’t already have…I’m not one for cutting friends much slack when I get that (pretty regular) feeling that they don’t get me — though rather than telling ‘em what frustrates me, I usually just let ‘em slip away (which really is a problem for me, because there aren’t that many of ‘em anyway, and while I often don’t mind being alone as I frequently am nowadays, I don’t like it all the time).
I will suggest it’s the rare person who *does* understand how friendship works, and even those who seem that they do probably are making it up. Most folks either don’t think much about about it (therefore taking friendship for granted or not even acknowledging it has any importance), while most others (perhaps including us) are befuddled by it — maybe because we are under a mistaken impression that it’s supposed to work in some certain way. I suspect it’s all probably just pretty organic — for better or worse, it just happens, then either lives or dies or runs some course, maybe only somewhat commesurate to to whatever TLC is applied.
Of course, what I’ve just written sounds pretty organic (as in excremental) to my ear, though the subject has interested me enough in the past that I’ve actually cracked open a book or two on the subject (but never finished them — no answers there, either). So, oh well. I just felt like I needed to respond to your deeply felt words, even if feebly so…
I’m reading blogs tonight instead of working.
Lately, I’ve been feeling that I don’t want to spend time with some of my long-term friends anymore at all. Some of my childhood friends or those who don’t “annoy” me I can spend time with, but for the most part I’d rather be alone or find new people to spend my time with…I don’t think any of this is making sense…I’m rambling, but lately I’ve just been in my cocoon at home. Granted, I’ve been working on things at home, but social life? what the hell is that?!
Wow. Apparently people do still read the blog. Who knew?
I appreciate everyone’s comments, and though it doesn’t exactly make me happy to learn that other people struggle as much with the maintenance (and the very concept) of friendship as I do, at least I’m in good company!
Jamie has been hearing from me how bad I am at friendships for about ten years now…during which, of course, we’ve done a reasonable job of maintaining a friendship. (I sure do miss the days when I could call her up and get her to go see a show with me or just go hang out at her house when I felt the need for human contact.) And Brad is exactly right that the tricky part is putting effort into keeping friendships going; that’s something I tend to fall down on all the time. Jack, as usual, articulates a lot of what I was trying to say better than I could. And Lauree, even though I haven’t met you in person yet, you strike me as someone who’s naturally fun and full of energy, so I’m surprised but, again, oddly reassured to find that you go through the antisocial phases too.
All of which is to say that you (and others who’ve responded elsewhere) have made me feel much better about the whole issue of friendship—not that I feel any better about my ability to “do” it, but at least I’m not alone.