It's considered a desirable quality on a person if they are a good friend. Accepting, generous, trusting, always there for the other person. I never quite mastered that.
Each one of us has strengths and weaknesses, some traits that come more easily than others and some that, frankly, are always a bit out of reach. For me, being a "good friend" is one which I have just accepted is not something I naturally gravitate towards. I have good friends, thankfully, who are very thoughtful, loving, generous, funny, and wonderful people. I'm nearly a complete parasite in those relationships, though in my pathetic little way I honestly do try to reciprocate. A phone call or text, maybe some cookies. I have a great deal of uncertainty about what is too little and what is too intrusive.
Talking to other people is a bit of a mystery to me, as well. I'm sometimes too candid in my revelations, yet less forthcoming in things that really matter. I have no problem listening to and sympathizing with the daily frustrations of my friends, yet can never find the right words when it gets a bit too personal. The real "party pleasing" stories I can tell are the easiest for me, even when it involves sex offenders in prison, disfiguring accidents, and terrorism. The daily things that say much more about who I really am are extremely difficult for me to disclose. I like to maintain a good arms length (and maybe an extra arm) between me and other people.
I haven't always been as cautious. We moved every year or so while I was growing up, and one side-effect of that for me was to make friendships very quickly but not always prudently. Since I had a limited amount of time to assess the pool of potential friends in front of me, I usually went for the more accepting ones in the bunch. That nearly eliminated the "good" kids who were really churchy and pious, and opened the door to those that could fly under the radar a bit more. I did have some friends who were very good children, but not as many as I probably should have. From out of those questionable friendships, I remember very candid phone calls talking about boys, fights with my parents, parties I had snuck out to. Lots of whispered secrets, listening vigilantly for a suspicious parent to pick up the other phone and listen in. Those are the conversations I wish I could undo, the ones where someone knows too much about me, might remember things I've long forgotten. I've found some of those confidantes on Facebook, cringed at their aging faces, and blocked them in my privacy settings. The thought that some of me could linger in their consciousness disgusts me, and frightens me a bit, too. They wield power over me with their memories, and I resent that.
But for those that I have connected with in recent years, I have the opposite feeling towards. I'm surprised and gratified that they remember me (unless I dated them--that's a whole different thing). I worry sometimes that I'll be forgotten completely since so many friendships I had with truly nice people were so fleeting. To talk with someone from college and to realize what about myself they remember is eye-opening. Are they talking about the "real" me, or someone I used to be? Who was the most authentic version of myself? The high school girl who was a social butterfly in one country, and a shadow-dweller in another, an overly confident college student who had a pretty good secret life going on, the ambitious Yuppy living in Chicago who left the corporate life to explore more socialist leanings with the masses, or the wife and mother in a religiously and politically conservative place who worries about being more open about her opinions because it could hurt her husband's career? Well, I think we can get rid of the last option right off the top. There is nothing authentic or "real" about living like that, and yet that's what I've done for half my life. The rest of it is still very much a part of me, even over the last 25 years, just in a more surreptitious way.
I'm still here, all those parts of me, but the less forthcoming part of me is dying a slow but steady death.
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