Friendship of Convenience

Are there really any bad friends? If they aren’t good, are they really friends to begin with? This question was posed to me by my 4th grade Sunday school teacher’s husband last night. And it got me thinking. There are attributes that make someone a friend as opposed to a best friend. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines friend as “one attached to another by affection or esteem, acquaintance; one that is not hostile, one that is of the same nation, party, or group; one that favors or promotes something (as a charity); a favored companion.” So what makes someone a friend? Is it common interests, time, circumstance, hardship or lack thereof?

In my life, I’ve had numerous friends over the years. Some enter my life for a short period and then exit as gracefully as they entered. These are people that I went to school with. We had classes or recess together. Through elementary school, you make a lot of friends, but most of them don’t last your whole life. I have one friend, John, who I have known since first grade. He came to my first boygirl birthday party and gave me a blue flower necklace with matching ring. Easily, he is one of my oldest friends. But he is not my closest friend. He didn’t know about my various crushes through high school or my issues with my parents. I rarely see him anymore, since he is in the Navy. Yet when he comes home, we get together with some other friends and know how to have a good time together. But we really only see or talk to each other when it is convenient. We are “friends of convenience.”

I have another friend, Megan, who I have known since 7th grade. She and I sat next to one another in English class and had some of the same friends. We have very little in common, coming from very different families and upbringings. Her parents had a lot of problems with alcohol and drugs, while mine were upstanding citizens. Even so, we got along well and had a lot of good times together, as most children and pre-teens will. When we were in 10th grade, she dropped out of high school and eventually moved to Arizona. I was afraid I had lost a great friend. It has been almost 6 years since she moved and we still talk just about every week. She knows more about me and my life than anyone else I know and the reverse is true, too. She was someone who counted on me and I counted on her. When her alcoholic father started throwing knives at her and her younger brother, she called me. At 2 in the morning, I woke my mother and we drove to pick her up. She stayed with me for three weeks until her father agreed to sober up. I’ve called her at 2 in the morning to cry about a break-up and she has done the same to me. Amidst all the drama and pain, we’ve also had fun. She was the one person my mother would allow to sleepover even on a school night. We would stay up all night, talking. We usually made brownies around 2am, and that soon became a staple of our sleepovers. We would wash the dishes and have huge soap fights that ended with my living room, dining room and kitchen covered in bubbles. She and I used to clean my mother’s house for extra spending money. Now, she is the mother of 9-month-old twin girls and lives with her boyfriend. I’m trying to get back into college and start a career in music. Our lives are in such different places, socially and geographically. It is not convenient for us to be friends. It takes effort and money to find time for us to be able to talk and catch up. She and I are not “friends of convenience.”

I have another friend, Manny, who I have known since junior high school. We had a few classes together, but not until high school did we become friends, actually boyfriend and girlfriend. We dated my junior year for a short time until I broke up with him. It just didn’t feel right to me. Since then we have gotten back together and broken up more times than I care to remember. Our fights, for we do fight, are nasty and horrific. They dig at old scars and unforgotten pain. Yet each time, we make up and patch up each other’s wounds. Ours is what I call a “volatile relationship.” When we are good, when we are on, there is nothing that can get in our way. He can usually tell what kind of mood I am in by the way I say hello when I answer the phone. He has learned when to give me space and when to stay close for me. He can read my emotions and knows what I’m going to say before I even say it. The reverse is close to true as well. This is also not a convenient friendship. It would be so much easier to say screw him and walk away from that relationship. But he has caused me to grow and change in ways I never could have done on my own. He has loved me when I was being unlovable. I have cared for him when no one else was around. He was there for me through a lot of hard times and he didn’t run screaming when I turned into a raging hormonal wench. I wouldn’t call ours a stable relationship, but he does provide a level of comfort and familiarity I don’t have with any one else. Ours is not a friendship of convenience.

I have another friend, Krystal, who I met about a little over year ago. She and I were both going to Dutchess and hanging out in the lounge between classes. She and I hit it off pretty well at first. I had a car and we both wanted someone to just hangout with. Soon she was wrapped up in her boyfriend, whom I didn’t approve of. He had a girlfriend back home and was fooling around with Krystal while he was here. She finally got her license and her own car, and I rarely saw her. I would go out of my way to spend time with her and she would blow me off for this guy. Well, he finally went back home and she and I reconciled our differences. If nothing else, she and I knew how to have a good time. My parents were on vacation most of the summer and my house was often the perfect place to late wild parties. There were a lot of drunken nights and late runs to the supermarket for more beer or snacks. Her parents restricted her car use since she wasn’t paying her own insurance. She and I would go everywhere together. I spent more time with her than I did anyone else. This January, she started paying her own insurance again and stopped calling me to hang out. On my 21st birthday, which the two of us had been waiting months for, she ditched me for her other friends. Now that she has her own car, she doesn’t need me. Ours has always been a friendship of convenience. When she needs something from me, or no one else better is around, she will call me up. Ours is a friendship of convenience.

I have had different types of friends. Our relationships are based on different things because they are all different people. I think the common thread with my closest friends is time, hardship and lack of convenience. My closest friends are usually people I have known for a long time. They know about me and my life because they were there through it all. They have been there for the hard times, even been part of the hard times. The other ingredient is lack of convenience. It’s easy to be friends when the circumstances allow, when you are in school together or you live close by. When there is distance or different life styles, you have to put effort into the relationship. And those are the friendships that are really worth something.