Surviving The Fall, 11

Given how unstable things are becoming, globally nd locally, and how fraught our lives have become with stress, anxiety and uncertainty, one can only imagine the toll that is taken on our friendships and other close relationships. There is cruel irony here, because during these times when we most need others are those very vectors of stress, fear and panic that drive people apart. I recall how badly impacted some of my friendships became when I was hospitalized three years ago during a multiple health breakdown. After that, I lost some of the very friends who visited me in hospital, three to be exact, and other friendships were put under stress as well. It was as though they couldn't handle seeing me vulnerable and this in time caused the friendships to implode. Some friends. But this also brings to mind how shallow a lot of people are, and how so self-involved that any indication that they might reciprocate the love is taken as an offence and they slink away to their little holes. We are living in an era where we need one another more than ever. We are also, it seems, less equipped than ever to sustain healthy and life-giving relationships with one another. I partly blame this on our consumerist mentality towards everything, including friendship. Somehow, what we get out of the friendship becomes more important than the person we are friends with, and as an awkward excuse to cover the fact that we are simply shallow and bored, we simply say, well, we've grown apart, have different interests now, but there's still Facebook, eh? Some friendships are resilient, but I think this really depends on how much the two friends value each other and in this culture of consumer relationships, everything is going to have a shelf life. We live in very different times now. First of all, the word friend has been really cheapened and debased thanks to, of course, Facebook. I would also imagine that the whole fleeting character of marriages and family relationships has also had its influence. My parents, for example, couldn't stay married. Mom was bored and chronically annoyed with her dull husband who had to go out and cheat with floozies. They both behaved like consumers in their marriage. Great role-modeling. I was not good for my brother's developing branding of cool and so I was ostracised and also beaten, often savagely by him, whenever he felt annoyed with me, and this was an almost daily event. I am not the only one who has had it bad, and others have had it far worse than me. But now, having survived many friendships, most very toxic, I have been taking a different approach. I understand more than before how much we need ballast, not just me with my obvious lack of family, but almost everyone I meet. There is such a lack of stability in people's lives, and I am intentionally cultivating relationships that can provide a kind of bulwark. I no longer easily let people drift away. Yes, I accept that we can't always be together, that we are often going to find ourselves in different orbits, but if things go on like this for too long, say, for up to a year, then I renew contact, and you know something, Gentle Reader? People often do want to come back and reconnect. It can be awkward. Sometimes there's guilt and a bit of shame for not being in contact, for not being supportive, but really, it's more about being a friend than having a friend, right? And it's about establishing and sustaining community. In our primeval hunter-gatherer days, lifelong kinships were forged and essential to the survival of the clan. We have long ago lost this sense of necessity, but we are still lacking if we cannot maintain with others a sense of sustained community, and this is a circle that must be always widening.