Sunday #10: Letter to a Friend

Sundays are a good time to catch up with friends, I have found. They are a nice day to lazily lounge on the patio, chit-chatting, with no deadline pulling one or the other off the phone line. These days, "catching up" is necessary in order to maintain friendships based on in-person shared activities, but it is also necessary to keep life in long-distance friendships, I find. One might say that Sundays are Relationship Maintenance Day, and relationship maintenance is crucial right now. 

These are tough times in general for friendships, aren't they? Where we once buffered ourselves from the slings of stress with any number of wing-folk and confidants, we are now forced to decide who will be "COVID-buddies" and who will be set aside until this passes. There is no easy way to make these decisions. Pre-pandemic, it was enough to be surrounded by potentially hostile strangers on a simple trip to the grocery store, now we have to see our friends as possible threats as well?

I have one friend who, early on, let others know that he was quitting Facebook (understandable) and that we all had his email should we want to contact him. Fair enough, but what I heard from his announcement was, "I'm checking out, y'all!" Needless to say, I have not emailed him, not because I don't value his friendship, but perhaps because I don't value it enough. He has not emailed me either, so perhaps we are in sync. These silences are the unspoken casualties of COVID.

While I am content to see this as temporary, the current state of affairs heightens my sadness at the perceived disconnect I feel in some long-term close friendships, particularly those that are long distance. Where once letters, calls, and the occasional visit sustained long-distance relationships, today, we settle for "likes" and the occasional post comment. I can't be the only one who finds this to be a rather empty substitute for thoughtful correspondences of yesteryear. 

This makes it harder to keep lives joined. Lives don't always travel on parallel paths, do they, and without regular rendezvous, it is all too easy to find oneself out of another's eyesight. Perhaps this is preferable to some, requiring less time and commitment, because god knows we are pulled every which way these days by work and family demands. How do we keep a friendship as an adult over the age of 40? 

***
I recently received an email response to something I shared with a friend on the east coast who I have known since I was 19 years old, and while I appreciated the response, I was conflicted because it arrived a month after the initial email that I sent. I was hurt by the delay, and felt that perhaps I was less important to this person, after nearly 40 years of friendship, than I wanted to be. Granted, the foundation of our friendship was not so much shared experience as it was shared intention--when we met we both had a desire to transcend our family legacies. You could say that we were intent on both honoring where we came from while also stepping away, and in the process, elevating the baseline for the future. We were only in each other's local orbits for one short year before I returned home and diverged from the path that threw us together. My friend would return to her home as well, though she was forced unjustly, whereas I departed voluntarily.

The friendship grew on written correspondence from that point on, both of us being writers after all. And over the course of several years we leaned in and out of one another's lives, never straying too far even though the details of our days became less interesting than the developmental milestones we faced. Our friendship continued because we recognized that we shared a desire to prioritize love over fear in our lives, and this was easier to do this with someone else in the ring. Would you agree?

But time changes things, don't it?

Over the years, even great friends acquire responsibilities that are outside of the initial draw toward one another. Where one lands amidst the changing landscape is due to actions of all involved parties, making mindful choices. Friendships that last for years don't glide together so much as they veer close and apart over time; longevity is based on not losing sight of one another no matter the distance of the veer or the players in our sight line.

And then came COVID.

COVID as done a number on intimate relationships, and I should know--my couples practice is booming right now. But it has also done a number on friendships, since we are forced to decide who will be our trusted buddies--the ones we actually hang out with together. But it has affected friendships in other ways too, since it has elevated new priorities, so most of us wake up to new information every day that demands our attention. In other words, COVID can't be ignored, and it has pulled focus from relationship connection to relationship problem solving. Imagine trying to eat a picnic lunch under a park tree with a hornet's nest above your table, and you will understand what it is like to pay attention to others with COVID looming nearby. 

Personally, I don't do online friendships very well--I have little interest in them. It seems like a bore to just like or comment on what someone is doing or eating (even though I sometimes share what I am doing or eating and people like and comment on that, for which I am appreciative). For me, this peripheral type of activity feels like I am not really participating in the friendship, but instead looking at it from the outside, like peering over the fence at a neighbor's backyard BBQ. I may enjoy the smell of the ribs, but it is not likely that I will get to eat any. I would rather be at the BBQ, which is probably a feeling many of us have right now. 

I prefer to participate with friends rather than observe and comment on their lives apart from our shared activities Perhaps I just prefer the shared activities to be a greater portion of the friendship than the outside observations and comments. Unfortunately, we currently have to accept the latter as dominant until we are able to safely resume the former. 

I do think that online observation is easier at times though, because effort is involved and required for shared in-person activities, and this may be why online action proliferates. We don't have to actually do anything with others to "like" their status--and voila, friendship attended to!! I suspect that you, like me, enjoy being involved in activities with others and validating activities we are not a part of--it doesn't have to be either/or. I long for the time when we can find a proper balance again.

***

My long-term long-distance friendships have both benefited and suffered from social media and internet access. Where we used to talk on the phone, exchange letters, or physically visit one another, we now seem to interact less and observe more. Granted, as we have gotten older, it is not only COVID that has pulled our attention, but I am not willing to feel as though I have been reduced to just another profile on a "Friends" listing. If all we are doing is commenting and liking, are we still actually friends? What would you call that? What the fuck is that called? 

I have been known to hold a hard boundary at times. I will ask guests to put away their phones when hosting a dinner party, I will request a firm commitment regarding a get-together or an invitation, hating when I am told, "Let me see what else is going on that week." I don't like tardiness, unless there is an agreed upon flexible arrival time. I could go on and on, but I suppose all of this comes from feeling dismissed, unimportant, and disregarded while growing up due to have my developing sexual orientation understood and accepted. I didn't make it easy for my family, but they certainly didn't go out of their way to help either. So there you go. 

So whether it is my continuing developmental gaps, an old-fashioned resistance to cultural changes, or a healthy push to keep the relating in my relationships, I am faced with how to respond to the things I cannot control, such as what others do. And this is why I struggled with my friend's delayed email response--I didn't know where the line was between my needs and hers. 

So I wrote her a letter, and I decided to say just that. I spent a few days thinking about my feelings of hurt and sadness and neglect, and in the end I knew that I needed to give her the benefit of the doubt and admit that I wanted to understand rather than criticize. I also wanted to be understood. In short, I concluded that the best route to take was to be the friend that I wanted her to be with me. And so I wrote her this letter after careful deliberation (some edits for clarification and privacy):

***

I will respond to you here even though it will likely be buried in a shit-ton of work emails.

I always love your responses to my emails, even if I have to wait for them, though truth be told I am conflicted regarding this latest. I admit that I hate the idea of my messages being buried in work emails, or being overlooked in your personal email, and yet I also realize that there are forces pulling at you that are more relentless and demanding than I am.

I hate that.

I hate that it feels so hard to reach you these days. I miss the ease and frequency of our past correspondence, when it felt to me that we were always no further apart than each other's back pockets. How is it that the internet has created more distance between friends instead of less?

I hate that.

But this is not the past, and that is what I need to accept. It is the times that have changed, not our love for each other, nor our friendship. The current times are demanding your attention and I am sure that I am not the only one who is asking, "What about me?"

I took a few days before writing this email. I talked to my boyfriend about my feelings and my sadness at feeling less important to you. And I knew that I did not want to respond until I came around to the idea that what is going on with me is not about you or your responsibilities or your emails; it is about me, fearing that this virus is taking away a friendship that has lasted for over 30 years.

I hate that.

And yet, you are my beloved friend and will be forever. You are family and will be forever. I know that you have a school year and student needs to figure out, and a grown kid to care about. Meanwhile, I have no kids. I have a career that is thriving, even in, and perhaps because of, COVID. I have the power to set healthy boundaries with my clients, and the power to decide when and if I want to respond to them. I am fortunate to have this life (though it did not come easy). I am fortunate to have chosen a career that would not be impacted by COVID in the way yours has been. I know this. But I needed to remember this before I responded to you.

Because I need to grow up a smidge. I need to grow up so that I can say to you: "I still love you as thee of we." That will not change no matter how long I have to wait for you to respond to my emails. I need to grow up a bit so I can tell you that I cannot imagine how hard this time must be for you, not having a vacation and not having any easy solutions and probably not having time for your wife or yourself or anything beyond the desire to fix fix fix problems. I need to grow up so that I can appreciate that even with all of that, you found my email amidst all the noise and you took time to read my essay and then share your thoughts in a way that let me know that you not only read it, but also thought about it. You noticed, unlike some, that I intentionally link my inner world to my outer world, otherwise why would anyone bother to care about what I write? You did all that even with everything. 

Which makes me ask myself, who is the good friend here--me or you? Is it me, who has the ease and time to write essays and emails and the time to ponder when my needs are not being met? Or is it you, who with no time for any of the above, still responds with love and care?

Sometimes it takes me some time to talk myself out of myself, to step back into the man I have become over the years. I love you and always will. You are the one person I know who I feel is a shit-ton smarter than I am, and not just in education, but in wisdom, patience, and kindness. If I believed in this kind of crap, I would say that you were sent to me in the early 80's to remind me that I can trust myself, that I am not alone, that there is value in both a good cry AND a hearty long laugh. But I don't believe in that kind of crap, which makes it even more astonishing and remarkable that we found each other. And that we have lasted beyond that one short shared year in our common orbit. You have always been the "good friend". Always.

So please know that. I will not let silence or sadness or COVID change what I know about you, what I know about us, what I know about myself.

The school you run does not deserve you, I suspect, and it does not deserve your compassion and dedication; the students do, because they need to be shown what love looks like. My hope for you is that your hard work pays off sooner than later, for them and for you. That your hard work affords you the time to be with those you love, not just those who need you. As they say, this too shall pass.

Enough. I have said what I needed to say, worked it out in writing. I will continue to write you because, well, I like writing you, and I imagine that you get some joy in finding my emails, even if you have to dig for them. In responding to you, I have come back to myself, and am no longer conflicted, but instead grateful. This, among many other reasons, is why I will love you forever. My dear friend, my thee of we.