Among Friends

WALKER

Among Friends: An Introduction

Friendship is noble, ‘tis love refined.

— SUSANNAH CENTLIVRE (C.1667-1723)

Sitting here, fingertips linked to the keyboard, I wonder how I will put into words what it means to be a good friend, both in everyday ways and in ways vital to a woman’s well-being. Ways that demonstrate that I at least have some understanding of what it takes to befriend someone well. I’m also wondering how I will make sense out of the hodgepodge of emotions common to anyone who decides to befriend another?

The answer is: I can’t. But I can write about what has worked and, perhaps more importantly, what has not panned out for me in this realm of intimacy. And I can offer the stories of other women I talked to or exchanged emails with. I think experience is the most clarifying tool there is.

And though I don’t believe the subject of friendship is of less importance to men, I want to speak directly to (and about) women because I can’t begin to claim that I have the same level of entree into the minds of men.

But I’m no expert. I’m not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or psych-anything. I never added a doctorate or a master’s degree to the fact of me. I work as a writer/speaker with the ordinary experience of workaday life at the heart of my subject matter.

And, unlike a scholar, I didn’t consciously set out to make a study of friendship or to uncover what friendship may have to teach. More like, over the long haul between grade school and middle age, friendship, unknowingly, made a study out of me. In that sense, whenever I replay my life, I can hardly believe how idealistic I once was about my friendships. It’s taken me years to slowly absorb and digest how ambiguous they can be.

For instance, each friend I make gives rise to a different part of me that needs to flourish. Yet if this newer bond causes a less satisfying friendship to fall away, a friendship that, at some point, forced me to accept the fact that it just isn’t working, I’m demoralized even though relief is what I feel on another level.

I guess I still have a long way to go before I’m not overly tolerant of some of these friendships that, if I’m honest with myself, add nothing to my current life. I question myself instead of trusting the voice inside me yelling, Oh dear God, please no! when I hear her voice on my answering machine.

But why?

First off, it’s not easy to move on. Ugh. I can find the whole process of letting go excruciating. Even though some friends I made as a younger woman no longer fit, I find the work of making new ones at this stage of life — when aging is sneaking up from all sides — no longer fully suits me either. When I meet someone I’d like to get to know better, I can have these big, awkward, unnerving moments of melancholy that are mixed with my hope for a new friendship. If I compare an emotional parting to pruning, I handle it better. I tell myself that a part of me needs to shed a branch now and again in order to thrive.

Secondly, I want to address the fact that sometimes the very mention of friendship can make my insides tighten and sink. This is when I really need to pay attention. Not because I particularly love the process — digging into ourselves can be exhausting—but because I find the whole topic necessary. And exciting. And terrifying. It’s like that first roller coaster ride when you’re a kid. You stare at it, scared silly. But you take the ride.

And I have no desire to instruct. Zilch. Or to write a how-to. Good God, no. I’m just going to let my thoughts catch up to me, one-by-one. I want to take a hard look at the myths that surround friendship, is all, and try to take each out of the sentimental box they are usually wrapped in. You know, like when someone labels friendship between women heartfelt., a word so banal it makes me shutter.

Not too long ago, a dear friend, a visual artist, asked me a question that caused me to take a deep breath and pause: What does friendship look like to you? I remember trying to stumble through an answer and not being able to formulate my thoughts. In a way, this entire book is an effort to answer that question more clearly.

Today, my answer comes easily: I see laughter. Lots of it. And acceptance, of my friend and of myself, and a desire to learn from each other.

Her next question was one more easy for a writer to work her way through: What does it feel like if a friendship is working?

Here is my answer, written in a style workshops call a free-write because you let the words fall without lifting your pen from the page: We are ourselves and there is nothing to prove.

And then I wrote: Friendship is the opposite of loneliness, not aloneness, which I think women need more of, but loneliness. My marriage can’t fill the void I feel when I’m at a loss for a girlfriend to laugh with. Some of my friends have been supportive. And not-so supportive. If I compared friendship to music I’d say it’s a smooth groove mixed with a rap gritty as sand. And the sand is wet. So it slows us down. Good. Maybe then we’ll be able to figure out how to move in sync without one or both of us falling on our ass.

When I look up, I realize I didn’t take a breath while writing those words. I laugh when I re-read them. I think they will always ease the tension I feel when, say, a friend says something that hurts and a part of me wants to distance from the bond for good. I’ll remind myself that a time out from our waltz is okay.

So here I go. I’m going to plunge into this book about friendship.

Then I’m going to swim into it, way out over my head.

And laugh. Especially that. And especially at myself.

And I’ll write about all of it.

JAR OF CARROTS — for Meg

When we were young, say, college age,

we swam together further and further

out into life, toward any rock

large enough to stand on.

Measuring my clumsy strokes against your grace

I came up short and envied you

that spring morning when it rained

until a sepia wash of earth slid right up to our door

of the dilapidated farmhouse we rented. Envied you

because you had the guts to skip class,

preferring to surface quietly

with a mug of tea and a book.

Years later, in my well-ordered kitchen,

there is this shelved jar of carrots, a refusal of sorts

to give up on us. Carrots you cut up

during our last visit that went so wrong:

Awkwardness undermined our reacquainting

until, though we stayed together, each of us left

for some other place.

I won’t eat the fruit

that floats and bobs and pickles.

How long has it been? I love you.

Never said as much

but I’ve dropped my tough act

and say those words when I should.

Odd, don’t you think, how much we used to talk

way into the night. Nowadays …

so much goes unspoken. Each rise of pleasure

we feel in our lives has nothing to do with each other.

We’ve stored our closeness away

like a tin of ornaments

to bring out later in life (I hope)

when we aren’t so consumed

by motherhood, marriage, aging parents,

security, financial or otherwise,

or when we just want to

remember. I think about you,

I say to myself.

I think about you, too.

ONE

New Friends

All friendship between women has a uterine air about it, the air of a slow exchange, of an original situation being repeated all over again.

— MARIA ISABEL BARRENO (1939- )

It occurs to me that when I’m bored or dissatisfied with certain aspects of my life, say when my work is going badly or the only living creature I can relate to is my cat … the list reads on: When I feel stuck, unable to focus on what I have instead of what it is I think I want. When I’m overly compelled to do more and be more. When I can’t seem to practice or even remember my rescue catchphrases: Failure vs. success is a moment-to-moment thing. Or: In the course of becoming there is no arriving (my personal favorite). Anyway, when I’m in this rubble of a mood, I sort of retreat from the world because I lose a sense of my 5-foot-2-inch self.

When I go limp in this way and don’t take responsibility for what it is I need to change, self-doubt sits itself plunk down and I begin to see myself as a victim of my life rather than in control of it. The unfortunate outcome is that, now, I’m not only bored, I’m boring. I don’t think of myself as a boring person, or I don’t want to think of myself as a boring person, but as I fall into the grips of what I know darn well is boringness, I start to criticize the very things about myself (oh … and about my husband) that I normally love. And I know I’m at my lowest when I begin to attribute others, even my friends, with some of the dissatisfaction I feel, which is something I thought I might never be able to admit, but there it is. Whether this dip in mood is psychological or physiological, I haven’t a clue, but, on the other hand, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Because either way it feels awful.

Finally, one day something changed: I woke up, and for whatever reason, I could see how a large part of my ennui was fear. Plain old fear of nothing specific. Just of everything. When it was happening, I just kind of froze. But I made myself listen. The day went on from there, a day that had a lot to teach me about how fear can make me spineless and resistant to the changes I know I need to make. And to the best advice I receive from friends, books, even my conscience.

That day was a signal that I needed to get back out in the mix, that a part of me had become too isolated as a writer and that I needed to shake things up, try something new, someone new. No, I’m not talking romance.

When we’re younger, dating, of course, is directed towards finding a mate. We read magazines full of silly ideas that steer us toward snagging a date. But as we move on in life and become more confident in our sexual fulfillment (and even if we don’t), I think a lot of us need to apply a few dating techniques toward the pursuit of friendship. And, as in dating, with all its uncertainty and embarrassing what-was-I-thinking-this-man-is-a-moron situations, we may also need to follow through with a if at first you don’t succeed mind set in order to weed out the bad dates from ones good enough to pursue.

And, for the record, I have endured a few really bad dates. No, truly, they were really bad. But that’s the point. They were exactly what I needed.

Such as: A few years back, while visiting Manhattan, I looked up an acquaintance who lives in the city. We’d met months before at a writers conference in Seattle where we were both hired as consultants. Our meeting in New York was to be our official second date. A friendship-spark had clearly passed between us at the conference, so, I thought, here’s where my new mix begins! Ready. Set. Off I go.

I bought tickets to a production of a play entitled (and this is such a weird and funny coincidence) Bad Dates, starring Julie White. It was the story of a divorced, middle-aged, shoe-obsessed, ebullient New Yorker who resolves to re-enter the world of dating. Staged at the Playwrights Horizons Theater, it was a cozy theater in keeping with most off-Broadway venues, seating about a hundred people.

Our seats were front row center. No more than ten feet from the actress at all times. Now, I agree the lonely-heart in love with her shoes theme of the play