The Word Means Something Damn It!

Last weekend I cried in my car like a girl.

Last weekend I realized that the problem was me.

Last weekend I defined what the word friend means when I use it to describe my relationship with someone else.

Today I’m still reeling.

I avoided Facebook for the longest time because of the way they used the word friend. While it’s nice to catch up with the fellow elementary school outcasts [1] and fun to see where the non-Tony winners of my high school graduating class have landed [2]; those people aren’t my friends. They are people I knew. They are people I worked with on a project or six. They are people I sat in front of or behind while learning how to diagram a sentence [3]. Yes, I consider some of the people I’m linked to on Facebook to be my friend; but, for the most part, they’re just people I know.

I’ve heard people speak of best friends, casual friends, and more variations that I never remember. For me, however, there are not shades of friend [4]. If I’m going to call you friend, I have to like you, I have to be willing to call you when I’m in need and I have to know that I’m someone you think of wanting to do stuff with even when I’m not in the room.

The last bit’s the kicker. Realizing that the last bit didn’t apply for some people I really wanted to consider friends broke my heart last weekend.

I struggle to know that I belong. I fight everyday to believe that I’m lovable. For the last ten days, I’ve been learning to accept that these people are going to be pals and not friends. More importantly I keep reminding myself that ‘status’ is a function of where all of us are holistically, not a commentary on my failures as a human being.

I considered asking the internets if I was wrong to want the word friend to mean something. Then I said screw it. To me the word means something extremely specific. What you say it means doesn’t really matter in the universe that revolves around me.

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[1] The bonus was realizing we turned out pretty damn well.
[2] Well, the eighty or so of them I could actually identify.
[3] Which, I have long since forgotten.
[4] Oddly enough, once a friend it’s hard to become unfriended. Even when you move back to Germany and I don’t see you for twenty years.

Comments

[Melissa]

This "friend" business haunts me all the time.

I think being midwestern also has something to do with it.

Also- you are my friend and I am yours. I'm just re-iterating the OBVIOUS.

xx

[JPB]

Words are a problem. Our language is full of them, we use them all the time, they have definitions, but the definitions never really capture everything they mean to us. Ironically, words are not very good at defining other words.

So you say "friend" and it means something to you, but it means something else to someone else. This isn't so bad when you say "cup" and I'm thinking of a coffee mug while you're thinking of a small glass. We can generalize and figure each other out. But when you say "friend" and we don't mean the same thing, it's deeper than that. You are using the word to describe an emotional relationship.

Like any word describing an internal state ("love," "sadness," "content"), words just aren't enough.

[Lucy]

You are not alone in this. There are still those of us out there for whom friend evokes powerful images of loyalty and companionship and love. We may not give our friendship easily or freely, but when we do, we are friends forever.

And I think that's a good thing.

[E:)]

Yeah. "Friendship" and the definition shades inherently surrounding it are a bitch. That is all.