First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Illustration by Drew Shannon
A few years ago I messaged a long-time friend to say I hadn’t heard from her in a while and that we should have a phone chat sometime. She wrote back that she no longer wanted to be friends: “Like the others you’ve fallen out with over the years,” she wrote, “I guess I’ve been licking my wounds so to speak. Why you have to be this way with people all the time is a mystery to me ... but it’s not for me I’m afraid.”
This was devastating. She and I had been friends for more than 40 years. We called each other, if not regularly, then definitely on our birthdays. She was someone I felt I could always be myself with. Horrified, I wrote her back immediately and apologized unreservedly, although I was still unsure what I had done or said to cause the rift.
I do think the pandemic lockdowns put an end to many friendships, and it also made it easier to drop someone. I’m not sure, though, that this is what happened in the case of my long-term friend. She didn’t ghost me; she told me right out that she didn’t want to be a friend any more.
I’ve always found friendship complicated. I wish I could say I was one of those people who’ve never lost a friend but I can’t. I’ve lost more than a few.
Making friends, and keeping them, is a learned skill. It comes more naturally to some than to others. I remember as a child I was often the outsider, standing apart from the group of kids hanging from the monkey bars, storming across the playground, huddled in cliques sharing secrets. Clusters of children always intimidated me; it would never occur to me to approach them. I waited to be invited and usually wasn’t. This sense of apartness has followed me into adulthood. I’m still, for the most part, waiting to be asked.
There was a moment years ago, when my son was 7 and we had just relocated to the U.K. It was late summer; school hadn’t started, we hadn’t met any of our neighbours and my son had yet to connect with any of the local youngsters. We stood together on the outskirts of the field and watched a group of boys kicking a ball around. They were a little older than my son, maybe 10 or 11, but he was a good player and he wanted to join them.
“Do you think you should?” I said. “You don’t know these boys.”
“I’ll just ask,” he said.
“What if they say no?”
“It’s okay, Mom. I’ll just ask.”
And while I stood there and watched, my son approached the group, and, I assume, made his case. It must have worked because after a minute he turned and waved at me and took his place in goal. I knew two things at that point: he would be all right in this new country, and that I would never have dared to do the same.
Over the years, I have made friends – quite a few, actually. I have the letters to prove it, stored in a couple of boxes I keep at the back of the closet. The letters, and the friendships, go back decades (as do I), but what hits me is how many of those bonds of friendship have disappeared. Some were lost over time as a kind of natural attrition – we just drifted apart and reached a point where we had little or nothing in common any more. Others were more dramatic, the result of differences of opinion that couldn’t be resolved, hurt feelings over time that were never healed or misunderstandings and perceived insults that festered until something triggered an outburst where things were said that could not be unsaid.
My friend and I “made up” after our initial texts, and had lunch together a few weeks later. All seemed to be back to normal although I felt I had to step carefully when I was with her. That was three years ago and the last time we spoke was in July of 2023 when I called her on her birthday. Since then, I’ve heard nothing. And I haven’t called or reached out, apart from sending a Christmas card, which wasn’t acknowledged.
I miss her humour, her dry Scottish wit, her great taste in decorating. I miss having her in my life. She was a good friend and I always felt supported by her. I’m sorry that she didn’t feel that way about me.
I’m at a point in my life when it’s not easy to make good friends, and impossible to make one that will be a “long-time” friend. But I’ll keep trying. Friendship, like many things these days, is complicated.
Margie Taylor lives in Port Moody, B.C.