Mile High Friendship

For the past couple of years, it seemed like I was going to Florida quite often. I have a close friend that lives near Miami and another close friend who got married there last year. And although I have a scar from melanoma, I still find that the beach relaxes me; but nowadays, I’m slathered in SPF and wearing a swim shirt and a hat and sitting under a palm tree in the shade when I’m chilling on the beach.

But the last year or so, I’ve been finding myself visiting Denver multiple times. A woman that I was “best friends” with in my senior year of high school moved here a decade or so ago with her long-time boyfriend (ugh, I hate calling him a boyfriend because he’s like 50 years old, a man not a boy, and they’ve been together for over 20 years; but husband is not accurate so we need to invent a new term for people in this situation because long-term life partner is way too freaking cumbersome to type out all the time). We have that uniquely introverted friendship where we can literally not see, talk, or text each other for five or six years and then pick right up like there never was a break in communication. After they moved to Colorado and we moved to Texas, we visited each other once or twice, but then there was a long stretch that we didn’t even keep in close contact.

But sometime in spring of last year, she reached out to me to see if I wanted to fly out for an 80s hair metal festival going on near Denver. Because my love for Skid Row transcends even the departure of Sebastian Bach (blasphemy, I know), I readily agreed. And then when my dad started rapidly going downhill and my mom called me weeping the day after the concert telling me that suddenly time was running out, I actually was still in Denver with my friend. She had lost her dad a few years ago and knew exactly what I was going through. And more importantly for someone like me, she is also very reserved. There are no histrionics on her part, no wailing and gnashing of teeth. And that’s super important for someone of my temperament because when someone reacts like that, I feel the need to calm that person down – rather than, you know, actually feeling what it is that I’m feeling. I find it very counterproductive for me to be around highly emotional people when I’m struggling with intense emotions myself.

So last June while I sat on the floor of her guest room sobbing and changing my plane ticket to get me to Ohio as quickly as possible, she was a very quiet and steady rock for me. I probably will never tell her this in person because holy crap I don’t get all demonstrative, but she literally was my life raft during that horrific time. I can never tell her how much I appreciate her friendship because I don’t think I would ever find the right words.

Anyway, we started keeping in more regular contact after that. This is my third time out in here in roughly 12 months. Denver is a cheap and easy flight from Austin. And I’m fortunate to have a job that I can pretty much do wherever there’s wifi; so here I am sitting at her dining room table hanging out while they’re both at their offices today. We spent a great weekend together, going to a few of the city summer street festivals, listening to bands, going to a baseball game, and attempting a hike that was aborted due to rainy conditions in the mountains. We’re hopping on a plane to head to Vegas to see one of the Def Leppard residency shows later this week. In short, we’re doing stuff together that we both enjoy. Although our friendship doesn’t look like the ones in movies, it’s one that suits us both quite well.

And maybe that’s the point of this post (because honestly, I feel like I’m kinda rambling), that friendship can come in all different forms. It doesn’t have to look like anything you see on TV or in the movies. And it doesn’t have to even feel the same from person to person. I struggled for years thinking that there must something wrong with me because I couldn’t easily make friends, especially with other women. But it turns out that I’m not alone in feeling that way. A study published in the American Sociological Review found that the average person in the United States reports only having one close friend. And 75% of people in the State of Friendship report stated they’re unsatisfied with the friendships they do have. These results are not just limited to the United States. Reports in the U.K. and other western nations came to similar findings.

And that’s not good because feeling lonely can have the same negative effects on life expectancy as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. In fact, loneliness is as risky to your health as excessive drinking and obesity. And sadly, feeling alone can hasten the onset of diseases like Alzheimer’s, heart disease, depression, and suicide.

So what’s driving this feeling of aloneness? Researchers have theories but in my highly unscientific view, I feel like we’ve been bombarded with unrealistic images of what friendship is supposed to look like. Honestly, when I am done with work, I’m not always up for putting on stilettos and going for drinks with the girls. I’m not always up for hour long marathon phone calls. You look at the carefully curated social media presences of people you know and think to yourself, “I don’t have that amazing life like that person.” And that makes you feel more alone.

So I decided to stop obsessing over my friendships and decided to just concentrate on enjoying the people I did have in my life. I want to forget worrying whether my relationships fit the ideal mold and see if they make me happy without the expectations. And it has made a huge difference to me in connecting (or reconnecting) with people that are important to me.