A friend asked me, "Is it important to keep old friends, even if they drive me crazy?" After she assured me that she wasn't talking about me (because I'm only a medium-old friend?), I tried to think about the question objectively.
The words that strike me most are keep and crazy.
Keeping stuff always reminds me of Depression-Era mentality. You know, when somebody can't get rid of anything, including a broken iron or stained clothes or sometimes a still-good item that they never liked. Their underlying fear (and I can relate to this--I've felt it at times) is that someday they may not be able to replace these things because they'll be too poor. So the keeping does not stem from a positive feeling about the item.
And, in fact, when somebody carries this holding-on too far, we call it hoarding and consider it a sickness. We think they're crazy.
So, what about friends? Is there a true analogy to human relationships here? If we hold on to an old friendship mainly because it buffers us against our fears of being alone, because in our hearts we believe that if we let this one go, we'll have nothing--is that being crazy too?
Or is it a form of intuitive wisdom? Maybe we can have too many things, but we can never have too many friendships?
That may be the key, now that I think about it: deciding what we each understand by the word friendship.
Maybe its deepest meaning for us is somebody who has known us since we were young, who links us to that earlier time, even though we may both have changed over time and wouldn't necessarily seek each other out to become friends now. But our presence in each other's life helps comfort and stabilize both of us, especially as we're growing older and starting to experience more and more losses.
Or maybe it's a term we need to at least revisit periodically with all the people we know, weighing whether what we have with them is indeed a friendship, a friendly acquaintanceship, or an unhealthy connection. That way we might have more realistic expectations of what each relationship can give us and feel less crazed when it doesn't bring what we believe it should.
I know I've had strong friendships with women friends over the years that remain, in my mind, central to my well-being. I still speak of them as my "best and oldest friends." But the reality can be quite different. They're not in my life in the same way they were. We've been separated by location and experiences and time. Sometimes we've been able to stay closely in touch; sometimes there have been long periods of silence. Either way, we've both changed, because we're living, breathing organisms.
When we meet, while it can be wonderful, there is always an element of confusion for me. This is the real person now, not the idealized version I've kept in my memory. Accepting that has helped me bring the relationship into the present better and find out what we are to each other in the here and now. Sometimes it's painful, sometimes exhilarating.
But for me it has seemed the best way to renew--or leave--old friendships rather than simply keep them for the sake of keeping them. I don't think this is the right, or only, way to deal with old friendships. In fact, I'm very curious about what other women think about this.
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