Friends and How to Lose Them

When I was about seven years old, I slowly lost a friend. My best friend. She stopped being available when I called and asked if she wanted to hang out. I didn't understand. We lived in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn't like I had kids lining up to take her place. At the time, I think I blamed school. She'd gone to a public school a year before I did, so she was starting to make other friends. In retrospect, that is in fact probably the biggest reason for our friendship's decline. But I think my brain learned it differently.

When I entered school at age 8, I no longer had a best friend. Everyone else had been at the school long enough to form ties. There was no room for a vegetarian non-believer with no siblings and no TV. My classmates didn't know what to make of me, but they knew that I was different from them in ways that they didn't understand. It wasn't anything immediately apparent, or it didn't have to be, but I hadn't yet learned to hide who I was. I was outgoing and unapologetic and proud of my differences. And very quickly shunned. I wasn't just missing a best friend, I was missing any friends at all. The girl I'd been friends with before effortlessly fit in with her new group, sometimes by picking on me. I was a pretty easy target, and I don't blame her now. At the time, though, I was hurt and confused. This was someone I'd trusted! This was someone I'd whispered under sheets with, built snow forts with, endured boring parental parties with. How could she now be pointing and laughing and whispering about me? Had I done something?

(I hadn't done anything but be myself. I just hadn't learned yet that being myself wasn't always acceptable.)

A few years later, I finally made a couple of consistent friends. I'm not actually sure about using that term to describe Shana and Rose (sure, let's call them that), but it was the word I used at the time. It was never a very stable friendship. I got the impression that they were good friends with each other, but that I was someone they sort of tolerated. I don't know why, because most of our interactions consisted of them laughing at me for little things that I was only starting to understand.

(They were laughing at me for being myself. I was beginning to learn that some questions were shameful, that I shouldn't admit to knowing some things, or to not knowing other things. Fifth grade was a minefield of potential, socially catastrophic mistakes.)

The year after Shana and Rose, I met a new girl. We hung out on the playground, we talked to each other, we spent time at one another's houses. I don't think I would have survived that year without her, because that was also the year that we joined Debbie's group of friends. Debbie was bigger than either of us, and she thrilled in her power. She held trials for us over imagined slights in which she was judge and jury, and the punishment was to be ostracized. One week it was me, the next it was my friend. Why not leave? Why didn't the two of us strike out on our own and form a stable and affectionate group of two? We were vulnerable on our own. Debbie gave us a place to sit in the lunch room, and a group to fit in with. Without her, we were nothing but two smart kids that no one else seemed to like very much.

(That same year, I stood on the playground nearly immobile with rage and shame while my classmates threw rocks and pinecones at me. There wasn't a reason for doing it. They were bored. I elbowed one of them in the stomach. None of us said anything about it for years. I forgot about until, years later, one of them sent me a friend request on Facebook. I accepted. We've all changed since then, and she may not even remember the incident.)

I began to take for granted that I wasn't the kind of person that other people wanted to keep around. In high school, I overheard a couple of boys in my class talking about me. "Why doesn't anyone date her?" one asked. "She's got the perfect body."

"Because," the other said scornfully, "she's got a mustache and she smells bad."

How did I know they were talking about me? How did I know they weren't discussing someone else? To be honest, after the first boy's question, I thought with some disgust that they were talking about the cheerleader across the hall. Sexist pigs, I thought to myself. But then the second boy's reply washed over me in a cold slimy wave of shame and filth. Because she's got a mustache and she smells bad. These were two things that had been said to me before. I was a teenage girl, but I didn't wear perfume. I showered, but only once every three days or so. Probably not enough to keep up with the new hormonal changes. I have dark hair, and it has shown itself on my upper lip since I went through puberty.

(Many years later, in college, a valued friend would look at my upper lip while we were on a walk and say contemplatively, "Remind me not to go outside with you in the daylight.")

Clearly, my self was not good enough to be out in public. I learned to crush my brashness, to hide my opinions. I learned to say "What?" to people who asked "How are you?" in order to give myself time to come up with a lie convincing enough that they'd get bored of the conversation and move on to something else. Showing my feelings to others was dangerous. The only time they really wanted the answer was when they wanted to know if they had crossed the line from acceptable, friendly abuse into actionable consequences. I learned to redirect the conversation, to ask them first. No one really wanted to talk about me, did they? Not when we were already talking about someone as interesting as them?

(No. No one really did.)

I learned not to trust that anyone would like me enough to stick around. So I did two things. I became a mirror, reflecting their best parts back to them so that they'd like me better. And I started leaving before they ever could.

I left in several ways. I moved, physically, to other states, other schools. I developed a reputation as a hermit. People who didn't know me very well would invite me to parties or events. I wouldn't go. During some of my worst times I actively tried to drive people away by behaving badly. I was short with them. I yelled at them for trying to help me. They were going to leave anyway, and at least this way I could have some control over when our friendship was over.

It's only very recently that I've started to try to figure out how to reverse some of this staggering lack of trust in other people. I still sometimes find myself leaving. They're not really interested in me, I find myself thinking. Better to back away now, while I still have some dignity. In my better moments I imagine that this is probably very confusing for the people in my life who love me. In my worse moments I imagine that they're relieved not to have to pretend anymore.

I have hesitated to publish this in such a public forum, because I'm not looking for sympathy or platitudes. But having open conversation has always been one of the ways I find I think best. And this is a thing that I really need to think clearly about.