And You, Friend?

Lately I’ve been considering the idea of friendship. Brooding is probably the more accurate term rather than considering. Recent events have me questioning the concept of friendship. What is it? Does it truly exist? How do you kill it, if it truly lives? And if you kill it does that make you a bad person?

I always hear about these people who’ve been friends since grade school. And it’s not on-again, off-again friendships these people are claiming but the hard-core bff, bound by blood (metaphorically and sometimes literally) sort of friendship. I can maybe claim one or two off those friendships, but for the most part I’m stumped.

Which leads to my big question: are high school friendships the real deal, or are they just something we cultivate to make the years less troublesome? Based on the majority of my relationships with friends and acquaintances now, I suppose it is the latter. Some may disagree, claiming their friendships are for life. But I would love to see these people in ten years and if they are still together. Call me a cynic but I doubt it.

My freshman year I took health class, just to get it out of the way. Of course there was a chapter on healthy (and not so healthy) relationships. The teacher droned on about how each of has different circles of friendship. We’re in the center and each ring around us is a different level or circle of friendship. Best friends or confidantes are the smallest and closest to us, good friends in the next smallest, acquaintances in a bigger ring, etc. the base idea is that we have fewer best friends and more “average” friends, and that sometimes these people change circles over time. I’m not arguing with the idea, it’s quite clever, but I’ve heard it before in Dante’s Inferno.

Think about it. Our friendship circles are basically levels of hell. The ones on the outer rims have committed minor friendship crimes or like the atheists they just don’t know you too well. The closer you get the worse it is. Your good friends maybe dig on you a little or “forgot” to invite you to something. Now your best friends are the highest level of betrayal simple because you trust them. The flames of Friendship Hell are hotter here in this circle because you just don’t see the knife coming. It will though, without fail.

By writing this I’m essentially cementing my cynic status, and I’m sure some of you who are reading this are rolling your eyes or saying something like, “That’s just not true.” But when you leave this blog, your thoughts are going to get to you, and you’ll realize (unfortunately) that I’m right. Normally I would consider myself a loyalist where friendship is concerned; I’m like a dog, defending without question. But sometimes other bitches bite back.

Obviously I’m enraged by something a “friend” of mine has done. I won’t bother describing the event because it is petty and unworthy mentioning in and of itself. What is of note is that this incident is one in a ridiculously long line of friendship travesties, and each one hurts more than the next. This is a girl for whom I’ve kept secrets, defended against slander, and weathered various storms with. I know I am not faultless in this friendship but I still feel betrayed. The question: Why do I keep her around? The answer: I tolerate her betrayals because of the hell we had to walk through to get to this point, and it forms a twisted bond.

I think more than anything the keep word in that sentence is tolerate. Returning to my original thought, friendship is merely a mutual tolerance of another person’s flaws. The closer you are with a person, the better you tolerate them. Sometimes your patience snaps with a person. Returning to my dog, master analogy, you can only kick a dog so many times before it fights back. I think we reach a point in our friendships where we have to fight back, and not in petty ways but in major ways.

Can a friendship be killed? Of course it can. Most deaths occur when your patience snaps, and you no longer tolerate their BS. Killing a friendship doesn’t make you a bad person it makes you a human; a human with emotions and most importantly a human with limits. My patience has about snapped, and I’m ready to pull the knife out of my back and kill this friendship, which is damn shame. I’d like to think that I stuck with this girl so long because ours was a friendship that lasts. But I’m beginning to think those friendships just don’t exist. I hope they do, but I also hope to see a unicorn and a pot of gold at the end of my rainbow.