What good friends look like :)
Ideally in life I would have a core group of friends and a hangout that would always conveniently have at least one of these mates already plonked in it when I get there, you know, casually sipping coffee. The problem is, life isn’t a Warner Bro’s production. Instead we are left to deal with the ups and downs of friendships, whose problems can rarely be solved with a sentence ending in ‘let’s go to the coffeehouse’.
Every now and again we are called to reassess our relationships and wonder whether or not the end product is actually worth it. If you’re anything like me, you realise in fact that it’s not, yet still insist on dragging out these friendships that are way past their sell by date. This isn’t a pleasant concept for anyone and again, for me, it’s one I always choose to deny so I can go on dancing around from yearly outreaches with acquaintances to the next big birthday that everyone’s invited to, blissfully ignorant of the fact that I have been long forgotten about.
The awful truth is; friendships probably do have an expiration date. We live, we grow and we move on, so maybe these pals are just marker posts for each stage of your life, there to get you through the stuff it throws at you. And believe me, I’m not the easiest person to break this to.
In actual fact, I’m possibly the worst candidate in the world for realising this idea because I’m terrible with letting people go. ‘Oh god they deleted me from Facebook! But surely that one convo in Beat (Crappy indie bar at home, for those none hometown people) meant something to them!’
Surely everyone’s got those people? The ones you have very little in common with anymore except for the fact you used to be friends once and so you use this as justification because surely, that means you must have had something you loved about them one time, and I haven’t changed, and I'm so unlovable and ...ah!
But how long can we drag out these stories of times gone by? Me, I could sit all day and reminisce about the good old days and ‘the best summer ever!’. In fact, in the Early Modern period, Nostalgia was deemed to be a medical condition, mainly suffered by sailors who yearned for a sense of place. Now I’ve never sailed anything more than an inflatable crocodile in all my life but there has got to be some truth to this as I do fear it’s going to be the death of me. Because, sure it’s nice to talk about the old times, it’s comfortable and it’s safe and it’s what got you here in the first place, but can we really haul these conversations into our adult lives and expect them to still be relevant?
Even in-jokes get old. There comes a point where maybe one hasn’t been aired in a while and you say it to hopefully get some laughs out of a stale conversation when really all you end up with is this imaginary tumbleweed rolling across the bar of your local Wetherspoons because all your secret handshakes and harmless digs about each other have been replaced by new ones.
It’s sad but it’s true. There has to be a limit to the amount of times you put yourself out there and practically beg for a phone call every weekend. My limit was realised when it became apparent that there is a big difference between; sitting at the same table as ‘friends’ when you happen to see them on a Saturday night and continue your amicable evening together and then the much more joyous occasion, where you’re at the same place because you’ve previously set a time and date, rather than relying on good old coincidence.
I’m lucky. I have a handful of friends that I know will always be there for me and score very highly on my ‘Could I spend an entire day with this person and not endure an awkward silence?’ scale. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still nice to be able to walk round, go out and be able to say ‘hi’ to a few people along the way but for me, it’s much better to know which ones are going to stick around for the conversation and for some, forever.
