On friendships

My commute to work is exactly 1 hour and 15 minutes-- 71 miles of mostly open roads with very few traffic disruptions.  (That may sound crazy, but my siblings live in the DC Metro area and their commutes to work can be just as long for half the distance-- I'd rather be moving the whole time than sitting in stop and go traffic!)  To be clear, I only have to go into my office 2-3 days a week, so it averages out weekly to not be as crazy as it sounds, but this long commute affords me a lot of free time to think and listen to podcasts.  

My very favorite thing to do in the car is listen to Harry Potter books on tape and then listen to a companion podcast called Binge Mode:  Harry Potter that is a "deep dive into the Harry Potter Universe and the wider Potter canon".  It's very nerdy, and I don't care.  It is my absolute happy place.  But, since I finally convinced Meg to read the books, and she's almost finished with book 4, I decided to take a break so we can be better paced together for the last 3 books since things get super crazy in the series and I wanted to be there for her during that time.  So, that left me with two and a half hours in a car with nothing to do.  So I went back to some old standbys and discovered that Invisibilia was doing an entire season on friendship.  As someone who was crowned "Friendliest" during my senior year of high school, I thought, "This is right up my alley!"

The first episode of the season is called "A Friendly Ghost Story" and I almost didn't listen because I really loathe scary things.  But, the premise is actually all about ghosting, which is "abruptly ending communication with someone without explanation" according to PsychologyToday.com.  This one struck a chord with me... because I am a ghoster.  The episode talks about people who just sort of vanish, whose lives change direction or trajectory and no longer fit in with the path they were walking with friends.  I think this is sort of what happened with me when I went away to school. 

So my path was being voted Friendliest of my senior class in 2000 to not speaking to anyone from high school in 2022.  Then, in college I had a number of friends I hung out with on the reg and was involved in sports and organizations and activities, and now I speak to exactly 4 people on a non-regular basis.  What gives?  What the heck happened?  What made me ghost so many people?

I always knew that I did not want to go to college in Florida. I applied to a large local university as my safety school, but was never going to set foot on that campus.  As much as I identify with being a person from Florida, I wanted out.  And, honestly, a lot of my friends stayed within 4 hours of our high school-- some even went to college a few miles from our high school.  So they were able to stay connected simply by proximity while I went 1,000 miles away from home and met a new group of friends.  This was also in the early 2000s and not very many college kids had cell phones back then-- I remember my roommate getting one our sophomore year and it was a Big Deal.  Sure, I came back during holidays and summer breaks, but I was different.  Being so far away, meeting new people, having new experiences, navigating the social world without someone to hold my hand-- all of those things made me grow and become different.  My self-confidence increased, and although I was still friendly to everyone from high school, we weren't really friends anymore because we didn't really fit together.  Ghosted.

In college, again, I made a robust group of friends-- soccer team friends, swim team friends, choir and chamber singer friends, work study friends, dorm friends-- often most of these friend groups were separate entities and I ended up choosing to move closer to a group of my athlete friends, which caused some of my other groups to take a step back.  Our interests changed, and we sort of ghosted each other... while still living on the same super small campus.  Then, again, I chose to go 1,000 miles away to graduate school (2 words:  in-state tuition) and while I maintained some friendships from college especially because I was still living a college life, it wasn't the same as being there.  Many of those friendships fizzled out with more ghosting.  I moved in with one of my high school friends and her 2 roommates, and we had a really great time together for that year I was in school and they were all finishing their 5th years.  But during that time, I was also navigating a new piece of my life-- meeting Meg and creating a relationship with her. In the beginning, I was totally uncomfortable with anyone knowing-- as anyone who has ever navigated life as an LGBT person can attest, it is not easy being seen as one way for (in my case) 22 years, and then "all of a sudden you're gay?"  This experience caused me to move away emotionally from many of my friends whom I didn't think would understand who I was.  On the flip, I was able to reconnect with some high school friends who were experiencing similar things in life as me, and that was really nice to have supportive people in my corner... but for everyone else, more ghosting.  

In listening to this podcast, I realized that I'm really good at ghosting.  And it's not a part of my life that I'm super proud of.  I like to think of myself as a strong and loyal friend-- someone who will be there when you need it... but the above history which accounts for only about 10 years of my life shows a very different story.  My parents are not like this.  Both of them have utilized Facebook to it's fullest potential-- my dad still talks to people he went to high school with, and he graduated in 1960.  My mom is the same way.  For their 50th anniversary, my siblings and I created a memory book for them and I reached out to all their Facebook contacts-- I got messages and pictures from people I'd never heard of from their lives before any of us existed.  If I'm lucky enough to celebrate a 50th anniversary, will we have messages from our past?  My sister and brother are also not like me.  My brother takes trips often to our OG hometown and hangs out with his high school friends there.  His best friend from high school is his realtor!  And he actually travels to go see people from high school and college-- and stays in their homes and knows their families like (what I'm coming to understand is) a normal person.  

More self-realization is this: I form deep friendships with people.  I am authentic and truly feel comfortable having real conversations with people about who they are and why they're like that.  I make extremely strong bonds with people-- sometimes it takes years, but sometimes it takes minutes.  I care deeply for people and their experiences.  But, I am also terrified of being replaced.  And I think that's what's behind my habit of ghosting.  It's easier on me to end a friendship by quietly receding into the woodwork-- not answering calls or texts-- than it is for me to be cut off by the other person.  That way, it's my choice.  But it's awful, because it causes harm to other people, and that's the last thing I want to do.

So where do I go from here?  I'm grateful for this listen because it gave me an opportunity to process something about myself that I'm truly not happy with.  It shows me an area of my life where I can improve, especially in a time where "connection" with other people is so very easy.  Social media, cell phones-- I don't really have an excuse.  But the biggest hurdle I have to take is, what if it's too late?  What if my ghosting doesn't matter anymore and people have moved on?  What if my spot has been replaced?  Really, that's something I'll have to live with because I caused it in the first place.  And, I have to be ok with it.