There are #firstworldproblems, #whitegirlproblems, apparently there are #hotgirlproblems and then there are just #problemsthatmakeyousoundlikeabitch. And mine is that I wish I wasn’t friends with some of the people I have to be friends with. Yes, I'm aware that I sound like a twat right now.
Everyone has friendships that are more of a burden than a pleasure but normally it’s just a phase, like Burdensome Friend is feeling needy for whatever reason but will revert to Tolerable Friend soon. For me, however, it’s not so much a burden as a complete non-understanding as to why we are friends at all.
Within this particular group of ‘friends’ - all from school - it doesn’t feel like anybody actually likes each other, yet for years I’ve been too much of a pussy to walk away. Well this year I’m doing it. I’m getting rid.
Don’t get me wrong - we had a right old time growing up. We were hedonistic and unafraid and spent all of our teens and all of our money in pursuit of the next adventure. But then we grew older and like many old friends we grew apart. Some went traveling, some went to uni, others went off the rails. None of us really saw each other for the best part of five years. So much changed, especially us - what we valued, what we found fun or funny and who we wanted to spend our time with.
I turned into a pseudo-hippy. The type that has lefty ideals and goes to forest parties but paints her nails and buys her clothes from Topshop. Call it boho chic. Jess is a money-hungry muscle-magnet with a buff public school boy on her arm. Everything is just 'soooooooo ridic!'. Carla is a sensible Simone. And Tara is an obnoxious drunk who shouts at people in the street and says stuff like 'baaaarrrrre jokes' in a rudegirl voice that she thinks is genuinely believable. Yes - before you ask, we went to private school.
Basically, everybody thinks everybody else is a bit of a douchebag. I certainly do. The thing I find most embarrassing is their insistence on bringing up the past in front of anyone they come into contact with (I won’t let my boyfriend meet them because I’m scared he will judge me on how lame they are). Most of their conversation is raucous reference to the in-jokes we used to make when we first got stoned back in Y2K. They are oblivious to that being the sole foundation of our ‘friendship’ - a bygone era, which I once enjoyed but which is over - and they often chide me for being flaky or aloof.
But they don’t like each other either. Whereas I never contact them, they’ll still invite me to their get-togethers and my heart feels heavy with dread when they do. One such lunch date happened just last weekend. I woke up hanging like a soggy dishcloth and whinged to my boyfriend for the whole morning about having to go and meet them. 'Why are you still friends with these people?'
When we see each other it’s always for lunch or dinner, which we’ve organised months in advance. It’s never an impromptu rendez-vous - the kind that happens between real friends. And the last time we met it was exactly as I had imagined - empty and pointless and a duty rather than a joy. Jess was playing her usual Queen Bee card, complaining about anything and everything she could. Carla was silent and nodding, while I was asking myself how this is STILL happening.
Then Jess told us a story that summed up our friendship better than I ever could. Just two days previously she had been in a shop on Carnaby Street with a real friend (she didn’t say the words 'real friend') when she saw Tara. She ran and hid in the changing rooms until there was no chance of Tara being in the shop any more - such was her reluctance to see her. She thought this story was normal. It isn’t. And in my mind that story was the nail in the coffin of a rotting friendship that passed its sell-by date a decade ago. And it has spurred me on to make the big step. The dump.
I do wonder whether I’ll regret my decision to let those friendships go. I definitely don’t expect to be let back in if I do. But I’d rather remember the time when we loved each other’s company than continue to mar it with this slow, bitter, guilt-ridden decline.
I know what it feels like to be dumped by a friend. I was dumped by my best childhood pal. And I really respect her for it.
Best Pal was so wise. She showed me how to shave my legs. We sat side-by-side on the edge of the bath and used her Dad’s Gillette Mach. Best Pal was a Fleetwood Mac fan aged seven. Although she was also a mega Hanson fan like me and it was with her that I went to my first gig. We sung 'Mmm Bop' at the top of our voices and bought matching posters of Taylor.
But then I found some (aforementioned) pals who were even funner because they drank Glen’s vodka on Friday nights in the park with the assholes from the local boys’ school. Best Pal fell into a group of misfits who were probably far cooler than any of us could ever have been. We were still friends but she didn’t rate my new ones. After leaving school our relationship consisted of a biannual meet-up with a check list of questions: family, studies, boys. We related on nothing and it really wasn’t very fun any more.
Some time went by, probably longer than I remember, until about two years ago when I started to think about her more and more. I found her on Facebook and posted her a song from our favourite film (Now and Then - watch it because it’ll change your life). She never responded. She was over it.
We must have watched that film over 50 times as kids. It was all about a group of young best girlfriends who shared years of mischief and #adolescentproblems. Then they went their separate ways, only to be reunited 30 years later. It’s about the enduring nature of true friendship. No wonder she never replied.
Photograph: Lukasz Wierzbowski
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.