Friendship Is...? 6

Losing friends is particularly hard, sometimes it can be almost as traumatic as divorce.  There are no established rules nor written code for friendship.  This is a completely unregulated social phenomenon.  One cannot sue another for failing to deliver as a friend, nor for abruptly ending the friendship.  As much as we need friends, and to be friends, in order to do well in life, to thrive, to even have a reason to get out of bed in the morning, friendship is not an obligation.  It is not a right.  Friendship is always a gift.

I have lost many friends.  In many cases we simply slowly disappeared on each other and one day we were no longer available for coffee.  Sometimes there were personal issues involved.  Sometimes familiarity does, but doesn't have to, breed contempt.  Or our values and belief systems have changed, have diverged, and even though we insist that we remain the fondest of friends, we never see each other and eventually forget each other's birthday.  Or we simply get stuck and seem to see and hear always the same boring nonsense and it repeats over and over until we can no longer stand the sight or smell of ourselves in each other.  It never seems worth the energy to say or do anything about it.  We wake up to other and new realities.  We move on.  Or we simply absorb ourselves into a new circle of friends who share different interests and passions and cannot accommodate the disappointing wanker you once did everything with for years.

Some friendships end abruptly, even dramatically.  A betrayal, one disappointment too many, or something so egregious that not even in this hallowed column, Gentle Reader, will it see the light of day.  Or sometimes a grieved individual simply becomes invisible, no longer responds to emails or phone calls, or is suddenly always too busy.  Then one day, a few months or a year later, contact is made again.  Sometimes the friendship is suddenly resumed and it is as if nothing ever happened.  Or then the truth comes out, shit is hurled, feelings are devastated and excuses are made, and it is mutually declared that no circle of hell is good enough for this disgusting douchebag.

I would love to believe that friendship is forever.  Sometimes, maybe, it is.  Meanwhile I think I will try to focus more on being a friend that trying to find one.