Principles of Friendship

Last week I had a student give me a smug little parting shot as she walked out of my class for the last time. This is nothing out of the ordinary, and usually these types of things are far outweighed by the other small gratitudes students cast off at semester's end. But it was the little laugh she made as she walked out, this little "mmm-hmm," which was entirely concealed behind a close-lipped, sphinx-like smile, that stopped me cold.

I remember this laugh because my best friend from elementary school laughed exactly the same way.

You know how there are some relationships that, when you experience them, seem on their surface like one thing, and then in retrospect you realize they were something else entirely? My formative experience of the girlhood Best Friend, the BFF, the one who writes L.Y.L.A.S. ("love you like a sister") at the ends of her complicated folded up notes, the one whose sleep-overs always included a de facto invitation to me, was one of these shape-changing relationships, and the more I reflect on how I actually felt around her, and how she treated me as the years went on, the more I feel this sick sinking sense in my stomach.

In short, bold strokes, our friendship looked like this: we met in the first grade and were friends until the sixth, more or less. She was from a very wealthy family and I was not, and this fact played a larger and larger role in our friendship as we grew up. Her family went to a wealthy Baptist church, and I was not even baptized. What started out as genuine companionship evolved, I think, into more of a complicated patronage. I can recall several poignant moments when A. used her buddy-buddy relationship with Jesus to bring me to tears of shame. I also recall feeling increasingly as though I were some sort of foil, the not-rich heathen kid, by which A. graciously exhibited and then retracted her powers of generosity and grace.

Finally, in the end, she forgot me. I moved to another town 30 miles away and wept myself hoarse at having to leave her, only to find that she could never be bothered to return my phone calls. Two years of silence passed between us before I called her to tell her my family was moving to the Middle East. She seemed shocked, but that was all.

My lasting impression, the one I can still remember as if I were standing there, was her bedroom. It was massive, and always a total wreck. It had its own attached bathroom, and a T.V., VCR, and telephone; her bed was king-sized; her closet spewed clothing in great undulating heaps. Everywhere, everywhere, were toys-- those expensive Breyer horses, Barbies, My Little Ponies, dolls, all with ratted hair and missing pieces, and pile after pile of Sweet Valley High books, which I now recognize as providing the social recipes for cold, viper-like feminine behavior. A.'s room was like an archaeological layer cake of decadent wealth, and every time I saw it I had this horrible, itching urge to clean it all up before she got in trouble, which, of course, she never did. A.'s world didn't work like that.

And yet, I missed her terribly. On some level I still do. If dreams tell the truth about us, then mine say I still wish that I could have held her attention, made her like me even though in so many ways she seemed to find me deficient, even embarrassing. I dream often of being a kid again and desperately trying to make A. laugh, which often seemed like the only thing I could do right, though with diminishing results as we got older.

In the third year of college I saw her again. She worked at the book store where I'd gotten a job, and I hoped, briefly, that she'd offer some satisfying explanation for why she'd dropped me so completely. I even thought about asking her-- perhaps the girl I'd considered her polar opposite, my girlhood foe, J., with whom she later became close friends, had lied to her about me. In the end though, she continued to be lukewarm to me, not even mildly interested in where I'd been in the years since we'd last spoken. She had some boyfriend she was really into, and soon she quit the job.

My last contact with anything having to do with her was brief and bittersweet. I saw her mother at the funeral of one of my other childhood friends. A. couldn't make it. I'd always loved A.'s mom wholeheartedly-- even when A. would go into a snit on some expensive family vacation where I'd been invited to tag along, A.'s mom was always warm and kind to me. She even wrote me letters when I went away to summer camp, though A. did not. At the funeral, A.'s mom hugged me with all the warmth of a long lost friend, and encouraged me enthusiastically to contact A., reconnect, but by then I knew I wouldn't. Some things hurt too much to keep doing them.

I'm writing about this because I'm at a point in my life where I really need my friends, old and new, and I'm starting to look at the structure and scaffolding of friendships with a more critical eye. There are principles of friendship, and I would be wise to understand that not everyone's are the same, even though I've assumed for most of my life that they are.

For instance, in the military, there are ranks and destinations. Someone might not be part of the same working community as you, and they may look at this information with the practical concern of, "how much effort is this friendship worth if we're not going to be stationed in the same city in the near future?" I find this incredibly depressing, but I can see how such a question might have value.

On the other hand, questions of rank and stature absolutely infuriate me because they hearken back to the time when A. used to lord it over me that she had new dresses for church when I had to wear the same one over and over if I spent the night at her house on a Saturday. I realize that's it's not possible, and even potentially unwise, to completely disregard information about a person's military rank, or their spouse's rank, but it grates on me like sand on a sunburn to remember the toadyism required to stay in A.'s good graces.

Despite these limitations, I have managed to cultivate a few good friendships within the community, and often I'm torn between wanting to lean on them and confide about the stresses in my life, or hold them at arm's length and be pleasant because you never know what might come back to bite you in the ass, even seemingly innocuous things, like I found out on two separate occasions this weekend. There are rituals and formalities here, and I'm trying to work up the guts to learn them through trial and error.

Outside the military is another world of equations. I feel much more comfortable interacting on my own terms, (i.e. not worrying if what I say is going to jeopardize my husband's career or standing among his peers) but I run into the same problem there that I do with trying to find work: I'm not going to be here forever. In fact, I may be leaving soon. As such, I feel like there's this discount tag on my friendship, a caveat to potential friends that I have some sort of shelf life. Remembering the cavalier way A. tossed me onto her heap of broken toys without a backward glance, this also gives me pause.

None of this would be a problem if I didn't need friends or gainful employment, but the fact is, I've tested both ideas and the results are drastic slides in my mental health and general tolerability. For now, I'm feeling kind of clueless and vulnerable, which is familiar.