I have grown very weary of the propensity people have, in this country anyway, of treating the emotions of other people as if they are controllable and as though there is a statute of limitations on how long a person should be able to experience any given mental state.
You can be happy all day long and individuals support that positive emotion, but the instant any other emotion presents itself, suddenly you become a pariah. Grief for example is tolerated until about a week or so following a funeral, and then the exodus occurs. The casseroles stop arriving at your doorstep, the phone stops ringing, life resumes and it is business as usual for everyone except the individual who suffered the loss. This is ironic because it is in that silence, in that void, that death becomes most real and when that person needs people around the most. Friendship, defined as a state of mutual trust and support, has become conditional. Support is dependent on an individual remaining happy, the life of the party, and maintaining an outward façade of perkiness. Similar to loss of a loved one, when someone has suffered a broken heart, friends are present for a few days, buying wine and hanging out commiserating about how evil the “ex” truly was, and how they never liked him/her anyway. Three weeks later, when you still feel like crap on a cracker, those same people who placated you with platitudes and swore that “if you need anything just call me” have moved on, tired of being around you because you are bringing them down. They begin to whisper, “When is she going to get over it already?” “Get over it” are the three most loathsome words in the English language… Uttering that phrase really equates to invalidating a person and telling them that they are not worthy of your time and attention.
This contingent nature of friendship, as well as the tendency of people to be opportunistic, temporarily befriending those who they feel they can gain something from, and then moving on when the relationship is no longer convenient or beneficial, is one of the reasons people feel lonely. There are people in their lives; however, those people do not hold up their end of the social contract inherent in a friendship. There are levels of intimacy in any relationship. The person positions himself or herself next to you on the bus, and tells you their life story on the way to work is not your friend. He is a stranger who has no obligation to listen to your story any more than you are obligated to listen to his. You may be polite and tune in while he rails on about his cat throwing up on the duvet, but he cannot expect anything from you emotionally because you are strangers. People that you call friend and vice versa should in fact be individuals with whom you have achieved a higher level of intimacy, and intrinsic to the definition of intimacy, a close, familiar, loving association develops wherein that person should be there in a fundamentally sincere way as opposed to the shallow nature that friendship seems to take these days. The 2000 people collected on Face Book and labelled “friends” are in actuality validation mechanism by which people have come to feel accepted and valued. It is a bargain basement facsimile of the real thing. At the end of the day; however, when night falls and you find yourself alone following a traumatic event such as death or heartbreak, the likes you have received on social media are hardly a comfort.
Kindness is free; friendship is both free and priceless. It saddens me some days to be unable to invest in human beings knowing that they will inevitable disappoint me, not be there when I need them. I spent so many years investing in others with everything that I had, only to find that those same people did not return on my investment. He strangers I invest in via community service have given back more just in their gratitude than people who are supposed to care…people who have bandied the word friend about without comprehending its true meaning.
I am edgy lately. It is October, and the 30th is my mother’s birthday. This is my first year without her, so every holiday feels like the day she died. This was her time of year. She loved the foliage and Thanksgiving. There are those who would say “get over it” it has been a year she left us. I try very hard to embody her gracious kind spirit, but every time I hear that phrase, her spirit leaves me and I have strong inclinations toward smacking the insensitivity right off of people.