What Friends Don’t Do

I just lost a friend.

I don’t know why. When I went to her the other day, after over a month of sudden and unexplained silence, to ask her what had gone wrong, she told me that nothing was wrong: things were exactly as they should be, with me out of her life. When I asked what I’d done, she wouldn’t say. She didn’t want to explain herself, she said. She said: “I’ve got a tendency to talk too much, so I won’t say anything.”

It’s always been a troubled relationship. My friend—D—is funny, compassionate, generous to a fault. She’s a prolific writer, an inspiring teacher, and one of the most blindingly intelligent people I’ve ever known. But she is also one of the most difficult people I’ve ever known. She’s exhaustingly intense, easy to anger, quick to take offense, a holder of unyielding grudges. She’s incapable of apologizing or admitting she is wrong. She has told me stories, over the years, of former friends she excised from her life over a single comment, a single action.

D and I have been through this once already, over the death of someone close to her. I met this person a couple of times in casual social settings, but otherwise had no connection with them. But D believed that, as her friend, I should have endeavored to become her friend’s friend, too, in order to comfort her in her final illness. That I’d failed to do this was a slight D could not forgive. D never explained any of this to me, of course; I found out through third parties after her friend died and I suddenly became persona non grata.

We did eventually patch things up. But the shadow of that old conflict remained. I always knew it could happen again.

I’ve never had an easy time with friendship. I was shy as a child; interacting with peers was terrifying. My family moved around a lot, too; until I was fourteen, I never lived in the same place or attended the same school for more than a couple of years at a stretch. I’d go through the stress and dread of making new friends and new connections, only to leave them behind a year or two years later, knowing I’d never return. It’s instilled in me a deep sense that friendship is transient. That it’s easier to be alone than to work to build relationships that time or circumstance will inevitably force me to abandon.

I’m aware that this is not a good way to live. I fight it, and I’ve managed, pretty much against the odds, to build a handful of lasting friendships, as well as a full and loving relationship with my husband. But it’s a struggle. And I still often feel that friendship is a challenge I’m not up to, something I will never fully understand.

So maybe the rift with D is somehow my fault. But even if it is—and even as friendship-challenged as I am–I know that there are some things friends don’t do.

Friends don’t refuse to explain themselves. When something has gone wrong, they are willing to talk about what it is. They don’t look you in the eye and tell you that you don’t deserve to know.

Friends don’t refuse to let you explain. They are willing to hear your side. They don’t shut the door on discussion, end of story.

Friends don’t define you by a single action. They look at the whole of the relationship. They balance your good qualities against your bad, your faults against your virtues. One mistake shouldn’t be enough to kill a friendship, if it has a firm foundation.

Friends don’t make friendship contingent on keeping the upper hand. D’s and my relationship has never been one of equals. I’ve always had to dance around her hot temper and unforgiving nature. Where we’ve had disagreements, I’ve been the one who yielded, because anything else would have caused an unbridgeable rift. I might yield now, if I knew what was wrong. But I don’t—and in keeping that secret, D has once again made sure she holds all the cards.

My husband, and other friends, have told me that all of this demonstrates what I know intellectually to be true: D and I never really had a friendship at all.

Emotionally, though, it’s pretty devastating. This is a relationship that’s been part of my life for over thirty years. And there’s another dimension to the story, which makes it much harder to walk away: D is disabled and in failing health. Over the past year I’ve taken on something of a caregiving role. That’s at an end now too.

I don’t know who she’s turning to for help. I hope she has someone.

Goodbye, D.