Has Facebook changed this? Is "friend" now what "acquaintance" once was?
My consideration of a friend is someone who you could go to and whose house you could stay at if you were down and out. They'd help you if someone you love died, they'd let you mooch off them for a while if you lost your place, they'd drive you around if your car broke down. They talk and listen, share and accept. They are both actors and acted upon. They really care, and expect the same from you. To me, that is friendship.
I don't seem "work friends" or "church friends." Someone either is my friend, or they are not. If they are not it doesn't mean I don't like them, or that they don't like me, or that we can't become friends. What it means is that we're not to that point. I don't feel I know the person, or I don't feel they know me. I don't feel I could come to them with trouble, or cry in front of them, or deep down I hope they never come to me with lots of trouble. If it's not equal, and it's not what I described than it's not friendship.
And while I do call people "friend" who I don't see or speak to often it is because of some intense life event, and usually that even is South Korea, that created a real sense of solidarity between them and I. They are someone I would put up at a moment's notice if they showed up in my city, and I would expect the same from them. When we talk there is never tension, and usually these people were extraordinary aids in my emotional survival during a period. Clearly, there are some exceptions.
So, yeah, I don't call a lot of people friends. And there are a lot of people I say used to be my friend, because Facebook doesn't mean I know you. Facebook is the modern equivilant of sending someone a Christmas card. Just because you got a card doesn't mean we're tight.
People who I barely know call me their friend, and I can't help but feel there's something implied in that word that I don't understand. If I am a friend than what is expected of me, and what should I expect from you? Do you believe friendship can go only one way? Can you feel moderate distaste for a friend? Can someone you've just met be your friend? What do you people want from me?! .....#^,^#
It also makes me wonder what time is passed other people consider friends, and how much time they spend with them. I spend evenings with virtually no one, but if shows like "Friends" and "How I Met Your Mother" and even " Big Bang Theory" are to be believed friends spend virtually every night together (and are also moderately successful and roommates).
I wonder if everyone else in the country is somehow spending every (or nearly every) evening with their friends hanging out at someone's house, not getting things done, sharing food and just lounging on couches and somehow I've missed the invitation. I wonder if that's why I'm not married, because no one invites me to hang out at their house with their other friends in the evenings, because I don't have a "group."
I know how to hang out with people in Europe and Asia, even South America, it's the US that has me puzzled.
That being said I fear I have upset a friend of mine. A real friend. But unfortunately the relationship between us goes through periods of strain, largely, I think, because of me. I feel as though his and my relationship has gone through precious little evolution in the five years that I've known him. I still know little about him and often times the things I learn are not things I particularly like. But, he is a different person than I am and I know that it's okay for me to not enjoy what he enjoys. We have precious little in common besides our alma matter and a proclivity for soul searing depression.
I also struggle with feeling that our relationship is unbalanced, mostly with him and I on the instant messenger for hours, me often typing the entire time with few comments from him, often hashing out my day or issues that I've yet to resolve despite going over them a thousand times.
And, also, I feel that perhaps he is using me as a crutch because he feels he cannot find a girlfriend, so he uses me to feel like he's being needed and a "good man" and to tell a girl she's pretty. I wonder if I'm holding him back. Particularly because I do not like him "that way," and never will.
And lately I have not had time for the pattern we have established these years, first while I was depressed and recovering from mental illness at the tail end of university, then when I was in Korea, and then when I had no job. Now I have a job, two actually, and school. And, I'm not terminally depressed. And, those issues I hash out seem a lot less important in light of the possibility of my success in a graduate program. And, I want to hang out with people for real. And, I want my hours to have purpose. But I feel as though I am rescinding an invitation or reneging on our arrangement. So, I feel obliged to talk to him but guilty both for the doing and the not doing and it gets worse as he sends me a message, or several messages of "hi" and "poke" and "how are you," every day.
I tried to ask him to stop in a simple way which I feel may have hurt him. So I sent a letter explaining. It may help, or hurt him more. I don't know.
But he's my friend. With friends you try.
No comments:
Post a Comment