The Island Of Lost Best Friends

I wonder if my voicemail is broken. There’s probably a message, it just hasn’t come to me yet. Sometimes that happens, you know. Messages get lost somewhere in space, dangling above the horizon, dropping into your voice mailbox days after intended. That’s probably what happened. My wireless must be broken, too. That’s why I haven’t gotten many emails. Of course there’s always the possibility that no messages, emails, texts, or letters are lost and that I’m actually getting all of them, but then how do you explain so many friends not getting in touch. I mean, if it were a guy I’d recently started dating and I didn’t hear from him, I’d assume…Oh, so that’s what’s happening. I get it now. They’ve moved on. Ever since I had a kid, my friends are breaking up with me.

“Maybe we can hang”.

That’s the sum total of the contents of an email I just received from a friend of 20 years, in town already for a month, who, with 4 days left in LA, might want to hang. I only have two problems with the four words of her email: maybe and hang. I’ve been through “Maybe” before, maybe also means maybe not. So this being her third trip to LA, the first two I didn’t know she was here until she was gone, I’ll assume my friend won’t call, so we won’t get together, and I’ll be left hanging.

I also have a problem with the word hang used in mixed company. By mixed I mean anyone over 17. Last I checked I’m not hoping to meet my friend after Algebra class so we can “hang” and watch the new Duran Duran video. I am an adult with a career, husband and kid. I don’t hang, I make plans.

The truth is, I’m losing friends like baby weight. Slowly but surely, many of my long term friendships have gone by the wayside. Somewhere, I assume off the coast of California maybe near Catalina, lies an island. On it are all my 3 month best friends who went bat shit crazy never to be heard from again, the ones who moved away and apparently lost their phone, email, and letter writing ability, and some of my closest friends who just disappear without a trace. They’ve moved to the Island of Lost Best Friends, a large island filled with people who only know three words, “It’s not personal.”

I first started to notice my friends leaving for The Island when I met the man who would later become my husband. When you’ve been single for a long time, your friends are used to having you all to themselves, they’re not used to sharing. The truth is, when you’re in a relationship, some friends see you as moving on to greener pastures, so they put your friendship out to pasture. And let’s face it, married people spend Saturday nights going out to dinner with other couples. That’s what it comes down to, foursomes who overpay. We don’t have the crazy “funny story nights” with double plans, random hook-ups, and embarrassing drunken moments. But after a while, when you’ve had ten or twenty years of “funny story nights”, they start to feel less funny and more stagnant. It feels like you’ve been doing the same thing year after year because you have. So while every Saturday night may not be raging, no Saturday night is lonely, so I’ll gladly take it.

Then along comes a baby and, after the initial interest in the viewing of the baby, as if a rare painting at the Met, certain friends become rare. With time, away go the insincere offers to help and you begin to notice a lot more people promising to hang but never making an effort. Sure, some assume you are so busy with a baby that you never eat, shower, leave the house, or leave the baby. That’s not me. I shower a lot. I even leave my house. And that’s the easy way out, assuming a friend is busy so you never have to make any effort. Honestly, my free time is far more fractured than in my previous life where my hours weren’t spoken for, but I still have 24 hours in my day, just like you, and can hang them however I’d like. We’ve all got 24 hours in our day. It’s just how we choose to spend them.

From the President to a mother of four, we’ve all got the same amount of time, the same amount of days in a week. We are choosing how to spend every moment, and how NOT to spend every moment. Of course, a single mother of four with a job and no support system has a lot less free time than a 30 year old with a trust fund, but chances are there’s some free time in there, there’s some choices on how to spend time, and with whom to spend it. So if we’re choosing who to spend our time with, then by default we’re choosing who NOT to spend our time with. Our choices are personal.

My husband suggests I finally ask my friend why I’m not important to her, but I already know the answer. I’m not important to her. I don’t need to call her to ask her why she’s not calling me to know that she’s not calling me. Just like a guy who doesn’t call a girl back after a date, a friend is making you unimportant by not making you important. In friendship, everything is personal. Our lives aren’t at the same stage; I’m a reminder of what she doesn’t have, doesn’t want, or isn’t interested in. I’m not her Saturday night friend.

I haven’t lost all my old friends. The ones who weren’t difficult still aren’t. There are still those old shoe friends who’ve known me through break ups, make-ups, firings, hirings, marriage, and now a baby. They may not always call me on a Saturday night, but they call me on Sunday morning to tell me a funny story about their night. And I tell them about my Saturday night, which restaurant to go to, and how much they’ll overpay. We may hang a lot less, but we’re hanging in there. We’re friends. It’s personal. I’ll take it.