Friendship is downright weird. I have never done well with retaining friends, which is to say a life-long circle of people unrelated to me and where there is no conjugal involvement or connection with whom I share meaningful occasions, moments and have just always been there for me and vice versa and are great to hang out with. I'm not sure if anyone older than fifty has any friends like that. I'm not in contact with anyone I knew in high school and the only person from my teenage vintage whom I still communicate with, occasionally anyway, is a man whom I knew in the Jesus People when we were both fifteen in 1971. However we are lucky if we email each other oftener than three times a year and if we have coffee together perhaps twice? There is no one else with whom I am currently in contact who knew me before I was fifty.
I remember well my first friends, when I was a child of five. Four boys on the same road of the semi-rural neighbourhood where I lived and we would run around together, play in each other's yards and homes. That is except for one, who was large, a bit obese and a complete bully. I don't think I was ever inside his family home nor that he was allowed to have friends over. As I said he was a bully, a consummate bully who used to beat me up or shove me in the ditch. Until my older brother and his friends, with our parents silent approbation, took sweet and brutal revenge on him. He wasn't exactly hurt but he never bothered me again. Another friend, a boy with Dutch parents and four siblings was often fun to run around with as well as the Japanese boy whom I considered my very best friend. We all grew apart as we got nearer to puberty and for two years I tried to cling to my Japanese friend until it became evident that we had nothing left in common and he really didn't want to see me.
By that time my family had moved to a different neighbourhood nearby, a rather fancy subdivision. It became impossible for me to make new friends while my brother, my senior by three years, became the most popular kid in the 'hood. I negatively compared myself to my brother who always was receiving phone calls, always out with his many friends, always having fun. I thought he was better than me, superior. I think I accepted his bullying and often savage beatings because I believed that being in all ways his inferior that I deserved it. My father's preference of his first son helped reinforce this way of thinking. I was relentlessly bullied, socially ostracised and persecuted from grade five to grade eight. On three different occasions other outcast kids tried to befriend me, but being friends by default did nothing to create a good bond and the connection was always short-lived and superficial. In grade eight I had pseudo-friends who took delight in mistreating and excluding me. That summer, as older kids introduced me to pot and I began my own search for meaning in life I slowly transformed into one of the cool radical kids and others were seeking me out for friendship. It was too late. I didn't trust anyone and quickly became a Christian, found new friends, older than me, adults, and teenagers from other schools and embarked on an intense life education. While a Jesus Freak I was considered cool, too cool for the other kids in my school. Those who didn't mock and revile me for being a Christian seemed almost in awe of me.
By grade ten I was a young adult, widely respected and completely socially uninvolved with my peers in school. I had a healthy circle of friends, ranging in age from younger than sixteen (my age at the time) to over thirty. I was too busy with all these wonderful, cool people to be lonely and this went on and continued to evolve until I was twenty-five and found myself suddenly alone and isolated for reasons I still do not understand, except that we had all drifted in different directions. I think marriage and kids claimed a lot of them. For years I clung to one friend and his social circle. He was like Jupiter and we were his moons all revolving around him. I moved in and out of other, often short lived and dysfunctional or codependent friendships. When in my early thirties I came into contact with three others with whom we all shared a common cause in mission and community we became very tightly enmeshed together for a few years. When I was in my early forties we became estranged. By the time I was in my early fifties I lost my last friend from the past. Some had died but most didn't seem to recognize me as I went through tons of changes while I was in therapy and mental health recovery. It would seem that the person who emerged out of illness was someone they no longer recognized.
I have since been on a kind of journey trying to grow into a sense of community with others. I think I have made some new friends but I don't think that I have much priority in their lives. I do most of the calling or emailing or inviting with a little reciprocation. When this is mentioned I am met with the same excuses: they are busy. The word busy. Yes. It does cover a multitude of sins, doesn't it? I never get invited anywhere for Christmas and if I invite anyone for Christmas brunch in my home (not exactly a turkey or goose dinner but better than nothing eh? And I make an awesome breakfast bread pudding, if I must say so myself) they are either unavailable or uninterested, so I have for myself anyway killed Christmas (see posts "Hanging Christmas Out To Dry, I, II and III.) I have to admit that neither am I as available as I used to be. I work hard all day and I'm usually tired in the evenings. At best I can spare some time after work for a coffee, but not every week. I prefer most of my evenings at home alone reading, writing this damn blog, painting, watching videos in Spanish, praying, preparing food, eating it, cleaning up and resting, while listening to As It Happens, The Current, and Ideas, programs on CBC Radio One, and not all in that order. I worry at times that I am becoming selfish, or at least more self-interested.
I do value greatly the people I call my friends. Not everyone remains in contact and some drift away. I think this is natural but is it desirable? Or is this even necessary Especially in a culture (I use the term very loosely here) where people and relationships are treated as disposable trash once they have outlived their usefulness. I do not think this is Jesus' way, and too many times we as Christians ignore Jesus' way because it gets in the way of our self-interest. What does this say about our call as Christians to build community? Yes, community, rather different from friendship but they do intersect. Quakers call themselves the Society of Friends and for good reason. What I desire for me and the people whom I call my friends is that we become in a sense a society of friends, a very open and welcoming society. A community.
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