The agony of friendship

Today’s topic is going to be friends. In the last year or so, and especially since I left Perth and moved on my own to a city I knew next to no one in, I’ve learnt some hard truths and been lucky enough to have some absolute blessings when it came to friends.

Maybe it is just me, but I feel like you have less friends as you grow older. People move interstate and overseas, sometimes forever, they get married, split up, have babies, study, have ultra busy jobs, run businesses – there is just an endless list of reasons why your circle of friends dwindles as you grow older. That being said, I’ve never been one of those people with heaps of friends anyway. Just a beautiful handful, who I can always count on and who are just top notch guys and girls. A few others float in and out as I get older, and this is what I find funny. Those floaters – are they there to teach us a lesson? Good lessons AND bad lessons?

Perhaps it is Sydney – a place where I feel like everyone already ‘has enough friends’, because they sure didn’t seem to want to be my friend – or perhaps it is just age, or maybe the wisdom that comes with age. I don’t know. I feel a lot more strongly about my friendships than I used to I think. I also have higher expectations, and when these expectations get slaughtered, or exceeded, well, I think you become a little bit more adult every time.

I once had a friend who I met about four years ago at work. She was the only person I’d ever met who totally got my love of Australian comedy and could quote Rob Sitch in Frontline right along with me. She had the same thirst for travel I did – we even backpacked around Europe and America together some years later – and I could just talk to her for hours on end. It was awesome, and I counted her as one of my good friends. I always think that if you can travel with a person, successfully, then you must be pretty good friends and pretty damn close.

Anyway, she moved overseas and got a new job, but we still kept in contact and travelled together and visited each other. Then when I got my dream job in Sydney, she applied too, and was also successful. It meant we were both moving to Sydney. I was excited, and while not getting too ahead of myself I envisioned us hanging out, bidding to work trips together, walking Bondi to Bronte, having Australian comedy marathons on the couch with bowls of icecream, maybe even being flatmates.

But none of that ever happened. Truth be told she is flighty and scattered and the kind of person who is very hard to pin down, a true gypsy. But still. We had both lived in Sydney for six months before I could finally pin her down enough to catch up at my place.  Then after that I got a text message two months later, and ever since, nothing. That was ten months ago.

Now I understand moving to a new city is a big deal. There’s lots to organise, plus you want to make new friends, settle into where you live, settle into your job. But I truly never expected to just completely be given the cold shoulder. No explanation. Nothing. And I persisted, believe me. But after a while of too many unanswered and unreturned phone calls, unanswered text messages and being pretty left out on the one trip where we did work together, I gave up. A friendship cannot be one sided. I decided if she doesn’t want to hang out with me, then I don’t want to hang out with her. Of course I was very disappointed, and had a bit of a cry, not understanding why she suddenly had ditched me. I’d thought we were good friends, but it’s pretty rude if someone just never answers your texts, never calls you back, never includes you. What had I done wrong? And why didn’t she want to be friends anymore?

I still don’t know the answer. And I’m not going to be totally dismissive here – I know that so many things can pull you away from friendships –family problems, a new boyfriend, study, work commitments, anything. But no explanation at all, not even a simple ‘I’m super busy right now babe, can I call you when things have calmed down?’ text, well that’s just not cool.

I got pretty mad, trying to figure out what the eff was going on. She is the type of girl who loses her phone (which could explain never texting me back), or who is out having too much fun, just totally scatterbrained and a bit irresponsible that she might take a day or two to return your text, but she always used to. But now, nothing.

It was also pretty hurtful because I was having a hard time fitting into Sydney, and my new job for a while there. A job like mine takes a while to get into the groove with, a while until you feel totally comfortable on board the aircraft and know what you’re doing so much that it is second nature, and on top of that I had made very few friends in my new city (as opposed to her, who could make friends with a washing basket it comes that easily to her!), had had a bit of time off work for some major (expensive) dental work (never fun!), and had lost my uncle early on in the year. Death is still a new thing to me – I have only ever lost two people I am close to in my entire 28 years – and it was a horrible time. Having a friend close by at a time like that would’ve been the help I needed.

Anyway, finally, a few months ago, we had to work together again. This was the first time I had seen her in eight months. I was not happy, having come to all my own conclusions as to why she cut me off, so I was determined to give her as cold a shoulder at work as what she had given me for almost a year. I spoke about 5 words to her over the course of four days, and it felt good. Maybe that’s spiteful and childish, I don’t know, but I felt I had to let her know I was not happy. And I could have gone up to her and said straight out ‘what is the deal?’ but I don’t have that much balls, so I gave her the silent treatment.

And this brings me to today. In typical gen y fashion I suppose, I have blocked her on Instagram and unfollowed her page, which also felt great doing at the time, as stupid and petty as that may seem. If she doesn’t want anything to do with me then I don’t want anything to do with her. And really, I am pretty sure I know why it is that she doesn’t, and it centres mostly around the fact I am not ‘cool’ enough to be her friend – I don’t drink often enough, I don’t enjoy going out to bars and such on the weekends, I haven’t dabbled in any drugs, I’m not into the things she thinks are cool, I’m not pretty enough or skinny enough, to be her friend. Well, that’s fine. We don’t need people like that in our lives. Sure would’ve been nice if she could’ve just been an adult about it though and told me the truth and let me down quietly and kindly. But I guess it’s easier to just ignore someone. The coward’s way out.

Wow this has turned into a long post! Apologies if I sound a bit grouchy – this chick kills me! I don’t even care if she reads this – but since she can’t even return a text message, I highly doubt she will read a blog post.

I promise that I have nice friend stories too that I want to post about, but because this entry is so long I think I will make a part two and post it later!

Until then,

Jorgs