Friends

Getting to know new people as an adult is so different than when you're a child.  When I was a kid, I think I just expected people to be jerks at one time or another.  Maybe they'd get mad at something you did or said but it didn't mean that was the end of the friendship.  Being grown, it feels like one wrong or misstated comment can tear that relationship apart.  I do know that I felt a lot freer when my pride was not so much at stake.

From the time I was in 2nd grade, let's say, my best friend lived across the street from me.  Her name was Carla and she was a Jehovah's Witness.  Carla was 2 years my junior but that didn't seem to matter.  We would literally spend the entire day together in the summers.  During the school year, we walked to school together, after school time together, and lots of times after supper together, depending on the TV schedule of course.  Her mother's rule of thumb was Carla had to be home by the time the street lights came on but besides that not much else.  We stayed within our neighborhood or at the pool which was half a block away. 

The fact that Carla was a Jehovah's Witness did not mean she didn't get presents, far from it.  In fact, every Christmas she somehow managed to conveniently get more and way better presents than I ever got from Santa Claus.  Carla had a pink three story barbie doll house with an elevator that I would have killed for.  It was plastic and couldn't take much weight but none the less was so awesome.  All I had were my sister's doll houses from the 1950's and the ceilings were too low to play barbie dolls in making them useless.  Today you would find these dollhouses in any antique store.  They were metal with painted wall details, really special.  In fact, I took one home from my parents' basement awhile back because it had been there for the last 50 years and when my sister saw it in my house, she suddenly remembered she owned it and wanted it back.  Funny how that works, anyway.  But I digress.  And Carla had the cool store bought clothes for her barbies and several of the dolls themselves.  I had the leftover had made barbie clothes from when my sister's were kids.  And their 1950s style barbies and Ken.  I did have a Malibu Barbie with gorgeous blond hair and a baby blue swimsuit and an inferior brunette girl, totally forgot her name.  She didn't get played with much.  I always went for my blond beauty.  Oh yeah, no red head to be found, doll that is.  And I kept all my stuff in a round, pepto bismul pink carry case.  I still have my dolls and my case, just can't bear to get rid of them.  One more toy I remember Carla had was a plastic Pillsbury Dough Boy.  I don't know why but that sticks out in my head.  All this talk about toys got me sidetracked.  My point was that Carla did not go a wanting for the material items in life.  I envied her stuff, her cool clothes, and especially her.

Carla was everything I wasn't growing up.  She had straight brown hair, a sprinkle of freckles on her nose, which was slightly pug, and a tom boy, very athletic, naturally coordinated.  When she was young, she was cute bordering on adorable.  When she got older, she was pretty and very popular with the boys.  Her mother bought her trendy clothes including blue jeans and the right tennis shoes.  If I was to compare her to a famous person, Kristy McNichol would be a very fair comparison.  On the other hand, I wore a combination of home made clothes dutifully made by grandmother when I was younger and K-Mart clothes as I got older.  Why was polyester so fucking popular anyway?  Oh yeah, no ironing.  Pastel polyester pant suits are an abomination against mother nature.  The point here was I totally idolized her and followed  her around like a lost puppy.  Her coolness rubbed off on me, so I thought.  And because I thought so highly of her, I was willing to put up all kinds of humiliation to keep that connection.  Carla's sisters made fun of me to my face.  The one example I can remember is this.  The two of us were standing outside the house and for some reason Carla and I both had on monochromatic outfits, hers mostly white, mine entirely pink.  They called her the toothpick and me the pink elephant.  That happened when I was probably 11 years old and I can see the whole thing in my head, where we were standing, the yard, the house, everything.  That feeling of surprise, of embarrassment, of what did I do to deserve this?  Every time I get a snotty out of nowhere emotional assault I still feel the same way.  First my heart beats a little funny, my head gets light, and then the tears come.  Sometimes I am in such shock of what I've heard that disbelief holds back the tears.

As life would have it, Carla and her family moved away right before high school and I only saw her once after she moved.  When she told me she was moving, she cried, I didn't.  She was mad at me because I didn't cry and I don't know why I didn't get more upset.  Maybe because she had left me so many other times in little ways along the years by choosing different girlfriends over me, by not defending me against her family and friends.  To this day, I haven't really missed her all that much because it never felt like a true equal friendship.  Sometimes I feel like this first relationship has set a life long trend of unequal relationships, that I am used to be not considered.  If this is my normal, man oh man.  Being the weaker one of any friendship is no place to be, feeling not worthy, just wanting to give up.  Why do we repeat these patterns?  Even we see what we are doing and we continue to do it, to edit ourselves, to try and be what the other person wants, it's tiring and draining and discouraging.  And if this is how I think friendships are, no wonder it wears me out.

I was going to end it there but I need to say this.  If I don't call you names and bully you around as my friend, it's not because I am weak, it is because I couldn't live with myself if I did.  There are very few things that I think are black and white in life but that is one of them.  Friends don't make life fucking harder, friends make it easier.