The last day of Christmas break, I made the dangerous decision to start rifling through the closet in my high school bedroom. I pulled down a small cluster of boxes, one of which I think I had painted at a birthday party I attended in the 7th grade. As I unfolded scrap after scrap after scrap of crinkled paper, I couldn’t believe what was in there.
A paper flower made for me by my high school boyfriend.
A birthday card that included a sketch of an extremely muscular right arm.
A postcard that addressed me formally as “Mud Lord.”
A farewell poem from my middle school friends from when I moved away.
Somewhere in the midst of these long-forgotten memories, a letter from a friend that was worried they were losing me.
I couldn’t even bring myself to finish that letter because it was too real. Like this multitude of paper scraps, I have a particular gift for striking up friendships with an abundance of people. The flip side of that is all too many of those friendships are cast aside like these long-forgotten scraps of paper.
I’m much more likely to cling to fictional friendships than I am to real ones. Almost every year of my life since about the third grade, I have returned to the Harry Potter series, poring over the latest illustrated editions and falling asleep to the sound of Jim Dale’s voice reading them aloud. At one point in my life I introduced these books to a close friend, telling them that reading these was something like meeting my childhood friends.
Whenever I find myself facing some sort of significant life event, I turn to the corresponding episode of Gilmore Girls. Have I watched the dance marathon episode twelve times? I would say it’s highly likely. Have I pondered the reason behind Lorelai’s break-up with Max Medina a thousand times? Surely yes.
I heard the song “Netflix Trip” by AJR for the first time within the past year. These lines in particular stand out to me every time:
But who I am is in these episodes
So don’t you tell me that it’s just a show.
I can’t deny the fact that part of who I am comes from the books and TV shows that I love most. But I’m constantly wondering why it’s easier for me to spend time with them than the friends that I love the most.
If you are someone gifted with the skill of maintaining friendships, I cannot relate. I have always been jealous of my friends who have had the same friends since kindergarten. I am not sure how I feel about New Year resolutions. Sometimes I think they perpetuate how toxic our culture of productivity can be. But if someone forced me to make one, it would be to rekindle some of the friendships that I shoved into the shoebox in my closet.
If you are reading this and you have felt crumpled up and cast aside by me, I would like to apologize. If you regret some of your own friendships that have become dusty from disuse, I am right there with you. If you are bitter about friends who have cast you aside, maybe your friends are like me and they didn’t mean it maliciously. The skill of friendship is not necessarily innate. I wish that it was.
Susannah currently lives in New Jersey and works as a 7th grade ELA teacher in East Harlem. When she is not teaching or writing, she can be found exploring independent bookstores, going backpacking, and trying to roller-skate on all the cool trails in the city. She is also recently experienced in the art of citrus skunk repellent (I know you’re impressed).
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“The skill of friendship is not necessarily innate.” This resonates SO hard.
I loved the friends I had as a kid during my school years, those I had in college, and those I had even after that. I grew and learned from them all, and I hope I helped them do the same. But, I no longer live in any of those places, plus I’ve changed in ways true to who I really am over the six decades of my life, sometimes in ways that made those former friendships incompatible. Though I don’t necessarily feel I should have maintained them all, I still look back on those friendships with fondness. So can you! Please don’t beat yourself up over the friendships you have not maintained. It’s ok!
I still have a few friends from back then, and some others who I don’t communicate with much, but when we do, it’s like we were never apart. Those are precious! I pray you will be able to accept the friendships you’ve left and lost and that you will be able to nurture a few friendships that will continue to uplift you through the years of your life.
Thanks for sharing!
Friendships. So simple, yet so complex. You capture it snugly. May we all be more inclusive with our friends.