The Changing Face of Friendship

Al pictured with our mutual friend Mark (seemed appropriate)

It is with pleasure that I introduce you to a new and fabulous Guest Writer – Al Turner.

I asked Al to write a story about how friendships change through the years.

After reading her post I was unsure how to introduce her.

We are Facebook friends these days but we met in Sydney through a mutual friend, got on the tiles a couple of times together, had good conversation and great laughs – maybe three times?

Not sure where that places us on the Friend scale, but I like her – and I have a feeling you are going to aswell… here is her take on friendship…

The Changing Face of Friendship

By Al Turner

I “de-friended” someone on Facebook today. Turns out he was a closet Liberal voter. Seeing as I’m a rampaging leftie, this just wouldn’t do.

We weren’t really friends – we just happened to be in the same year at high school, which is hardly grounds for a life-long friendship. In fact, probably three quarters of my Facebook friends aren’t really even friends at all – just people I used to know, or who used to know someone I used to know, or who I met at a party once and then they found me on Facebook and I was too polite to ignore them. (Damn my proper upbringing.)

Anyway, you get the picture – the concept of friendship has changed in this era of social networking, blah blah blah. Yes, we know all that. But this whole de-friending thing made me stop and take a look at me and my friends, and I realised – not without a little shock and, yes, fear – how much my friend situation has changed since I was a little tacker, playing Whippy 1-2-3 on the street with the neighbourhood kids.

When you’re little, anyone can be your friend. If you’re the same age and in the same vicinity, that’s about all you need. And when you’re a spotty, gangly, incredibly insecure teenager (yeah, I had kind of an awkward adolescence), your friends are the kids who are willing to hang out with you at school.

But by the time you get to late high school, you’ve pretty much established your identity, and this is usually when your first serious friendships are formed. Actually, two of my very best friends today are from my school days. This is apparently quite unusual, if I go by the many comments people have made. “Really?” they’ll say, looking at me like I’ve just circumnavigated the globe on a razor scooter or have a gigantic hairy mole on my nose or something. “I never talk to anyone from school anymore…”

I think that’s really sad, as the friends you make when you’re that young and free from any kind of responsibility are the ones who you share so many rites of passage with – your first kiss, your first sneaky ciggie in the girls’ dunnies, your first swig of Passion Pop. Aah, sweet memories… It’s these mates who you take your first faltering steps into young adulthood with, and that’s gotta count for some kind of a bond, surely? Or maybe I’m just being sentimental.

After high school finishes, there’s the shuffling phase. People slot into different categories – the ones who get jobs; the ones who go to uni; the ones who bugger off overseas; the ones who get married and have babies… During this time, more experiences are shared and bonds form, and more friends are made. But years pass. Suddenly you’re in your thirties, and friends stop being the people you spend all your time with, and start being people you have to make time for.

Being a completely single woman for more than half a decade, I had no trouble keeping up with mates – it was just natural to call each other and do stuff together after work and on weekends. I guess you just start taking that ease of automatic togetherness for granted. But then something happened. Something always happens eventually, whether you like it or not.

First, I found my soul mate. Just when I thought I would probably be spending the rest of my life alone – eventually reaching my ultimate goal of becoming the Crazy Old Cat Lady of Camperdown – I met the man of my dreams. Awww.

Then, when I thought my life was perfect (I also had a fantastic job and a great place to live and no credit card bills or unsightly facial hair) my father died.

Whoah. The grief you feel when you lose a key person in your life hits you in the face like that proverbial ton of bricks people talk about. But it wasn’t just the initial desperate pain and mind-bending sadness – six months down the track I was still dealing with stuff, and this “stuff” had taken up all my time. I didn’t go out any more. I didn’t want to. I was a ball of sadness and fear and doubt and questions and confusion. I dropped out – not in the cool 1960s way that involves lots of drugs and flowing skirts and outdoor music festivals – but in the tragic way that sees you retreat into yourself and lose touch with everything.

This tough period has taught me a lesson – hard times show you who your real friends are. The fear I mentioned earlier is that I’ve found out my “real” friends are far fewer than I had expected.

At first I was hurt and sad and angry. My name was Ms Resentment. But after Sharni asked me to write about friendship, I started to think a bit deeper, and it made me remember something my mum told me (yes, clichéd I know, but hey, this is my blog post). My mother has more friends than anyone I know – good friends, true friends, life-long friends. And I remember asking her, when I was a teenager, how she managed to have so many great mates. What she told me surprised me: she said that if it wasn’t for her continued efforts of calling and writing letters and making plans and visiting, most of these friends wouldn’t still be around. “Friends take a lot of work,” she said. If you want to have someone as your friend, you have to put aside any resentment you feel at them neglecting you, and keep working at it. And working at it.

So I guess I’m going to start over – I’m going to think about who I really want as my friends, and I’m going to work at it. Because while your lover and your family are everything, your friends are the glue that holds all those bits of everything together.