Content warning: this piece includes mentions of drug abuse and addiction.
Caleb Hearon once said the scariest six-word story is actually “okay thanks for letting me know.” There is a certain bleakness to it, especially when imagined as a faceless text or email. I’ve been reminded lately of the emptiness of that kind of statement, when it’s given in response to something perhaps emotionally charged, or colored with finality. Or perhaps it signifies a lack of intimacy or care which was once present. I don’t know. Whatever the cause, it is indeed chilling to me as well.
If I am being honest—which I’m trying to do more often these days—it scares me to write this. There’s something inherently embarrassing to me about discussing my lack of a best friend. I suppose there are several potential sources of this embarrassment, many of them stemming from shame. People who express their loneliness at having “no friends” are often told there’s something wrong with them, because everybody has at least one friend. It’s often a response quite lacking in compassion.
There’s buzzwords like the male loneliness epidemic, which some have argued is not exclusive to men, and some have also argued does not exist at all. I am hesitant to diagnose myself with this, but at the same time I recognize I’m far from immune to the isolating effects of living inside late-stage capitalism.
I think it makes other people uncomfortable to think about someone having NO friends at all (though that’s not what’s happening here), because for a lot of people, friendship blooms from proximity, and if you’re lucky enough to remain in the same place for a while, best friends are seen as a naturally occurring phenomenon. But that’s not how it works for many people—including me.
For some, there is a knee-jerk response of “you just need to go outside and meet new people,” or something to that effect, when they learn a person is lacking in very close or long-lasting friendships. The assumption is that there’s simply not enough effort being made. To me, this way of thinking is just a byproduct of neoliberalism, whereupon every result in an individual’s life is solely the result of their own decisions. It lacks compassion as well, in addition to lacking curiosity.
If I can defend my own honor for a minute: I have friends. I have close friends. I have old friends. I have local friends and long-distance friends. I have so many internet friends. I have a husband who may technically hold the title of “best friend,” but he & I both know I need more than that. I have acquaintances who are on their way to becoming my friend. I’m simply lacking in that singular area of “best” friend.
Sometimes I wonder, is the concept of a “best friend” as some sort of social imperative simply rooted in more neoliberalism, with a dash of monogamy culture thrown in? Why do so many people see a lack of best friendship as a red flag? I don’t know, but I’m also too busy living it to really dig into the answer to that question right now.
I do get nervous to “come out” to folks as someone who is sans bestie, especially those who are on their way to becoming my close friend. Truthfully, I’m afraid they’ll think there’s something wrong with me and not want to continue knowing me. Kinda like how being unemployed makes you less desirable to hiring managers. I don’t want to place undue pressure on people to become my best friend, or to make others feel like I am rushing into closeness with them. I have a deep appreciation for the process and love to take my time nurturing new friendships. My garden is rich with blossoms old and new, seasonal and perennial, and I am happy to tend it.
But with every garden, there are the fallow seasons. And I guess I find myself in one of those seasons now, when what I really want is an old-growth forest.
There’s a loud chorus of voices in my mind (who sound suspiciously like my mother) trying to get to the bottom of this. They want to figure out why I don’t have a best friend—presumably, so we can fix the root issue and make sure it never happens again.
This cacophony of rumination often looks like mental checklists of the best friendships I’ve had and lost, some due to time & distance & difference in lifestyles. Throughout high school, I was lucky enough to have two best friends. Now, a decade and a half after we all graduated and parted ways, one of them won’t speak to me anymore for reasons unknown, and the other one remains something of a friendly acquaintance at a distance, as we have lived very different lives in adulthood. We like each other’s private Instagram posts of our adorable children—her daughter and my son. There is love there, but not familiarity.
Two best friends I have lost through the nasty & unsettling discovery that I’d been blocked, out of the blue. There is nothing quite like having someone you called family suddenly disappear from your life, with no explanation and no way to contact them, to kick-start your professional career in rumination, I’ll tell you that for free.
And it’s so gorgeous, so tempting to wrap myself around the belief that it’s all me. I’m the common denominator, right? So if I can’t maintain a best friendship and have proven that several times over, the issue must lie solely with me. I would love to believe that I’m just uniquely flawed and unlikable and too avoidant to ever be anyone’s best friend again.
There are practical factors at play here, too: my life—much like the rest of us—has changed drastically in the last five years. More specifically, I went from “single and not looking” to “married with child” in less than 2 years, and then my husband & I both incurred fresh family trauma in the aftermath of me giving birth. We moved back and forth from Portland to Orange County and then back to Portland again, and have been navigating the early phases of parenthood with a fraction of the village we were told to expect. This, of course, has changed who I am and how I express myself in a multitude of ways (I am a way bigger bitch than I used to be, much to the chagrin of my people-pleasing parts).
There’s also the neurodivergence, the ongoing housing instability which damages my ability to socialize or think about anything else, the constant demands on me & everyone I know to keep proceeding as usual when fascism is at all of our front doors to varying degrees. Just girly things.
Lately, as I’ve been processing this reality which I denied for a long time (my state of best-friend-less-ness), I’ve also done the uncomfortable type of internal inventory where I acknowledge my own contributions to the ends of friendships, and some of that was indeed due to my tendency to avoid and run away from conflict, for fear of losing the entire relationship, which in itself becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m not blind to that fact, even though it hurts to look directly at it. I’m well aware of my participation in friendships which have transformed from soul-level connection to text messages that say “okay thanks for letting me know,” in that hauntingly brief tone.
It’s deeply annoying to be so flawed in this human type of way and to be so aware of it at the same time. But I have to strike a careful balance in that awareness practice, because there’s taking healthy responsibility, and then there’s believing I’m the problem, which—and I cannot emphasize this enough—still feels so much better.
God, it feels good. Like a warm vat of molten gold I can sink into and be engulfed in waves of comfort. I heard someone recently refer to heroin as “liquid contentment.” That’s what I imagine it feels like, giving into the belief that I am just unworthy of having a best friend—or, more acutely, I am unworthy of being a best friend. The realest ache comes from knowing I don’t hold that title in anyone else’s life. It is a physical ache, most of the time.
I can’t give into this belief, I know that. I know that it’s not only incorrect, but would also lead me down a path with results I do not desire. All it would do is give me permission to stop trying, stop seeking. I know all of that. But where does that leave me now? What do I choose to believe about this?
It does feel like pursuing a type of sobriety to not fall into that luxurious, desirable pit of self-pity. I have to wake up and make a different choice every single day. Any choice is better than that one. I’ve known and loved many addicts; I know how to extend that specific type of compassion to myself which is required to love an addict. I know how to be my own best friend. But it doesn’t make distance, rupture, or drifting apart in my friendships feel any less excruciating.
There is a hole there, and I do intend to fill it, but I’m not going to rush the process. I suppose I am “single and ready to mingle,” but strictly in the platonic sense.
Thank you for reading!
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