"I am an idealistic, naive, passionate, truth-seeking, spiritually motivated artist, unschooled in the science of law and finance." --Wesley Snipes

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Manifesto

I want to write a manifesto on ending a friendship. I want to not put the pieces back together but to let them scatter. Four winds? Ha! Seven.

I want to talk about wedding crashers and folks who stand you up in the Missouri winter. I want to talk about Sara M., who I abandoned because my own sense of loyalty was too strong in all the wrong ways. I want to talk about recovery, how the once lost can find themselves back. I want to discuss prodigality and legality.

I want people to know that I really try but am also, deep down, a flake. I don't try hard enough. I want the woman who emailed me last month with the terse "I can't be your friend anymore" to know that by losing her, I've lost many others. Friendship by association is an odd thing.

You break up with a woman or a man and suddenly loyalties dictate further severances. I was just thinking, on a rainy Sunday not long ago, that I know a lot of people in jail. How did that happen?

Friendships sometimes dissolve due to willful neglect. I'm an introvert who is literally worn out by people. Last fall, I let a burgeoning friendship lapse because this person demanded too much energy from me, stopping by at all hours, calling at all hours. And I took the path of least resistance. I simply stopped answering my phone.

Sending a message by not sending a message is cowardly. But it's not messy.

"Over and over and over again, I say that we're just friends."

Someone, last week, asked me the old question about women and men and friendship. Most of my close friends are women. So why haven't I slept with most of them? I dunno. Because if I did, they'd probably abandon me, or I them. That's the short answer.

Sometimes friendships are so intense that brevity is the only option. They cannot survive because the energy is finite. See "Making out in the alley behind 7-11." See "Shower." See "Cross-country distrust." See "New bed."

There are Russians outside my window. They are talking in harsh tones. I wonder if they're friends.

2 comments:

Reen said...

All Russians are friends. They also loathe each other intensely. But they loathe other people even more.

Ne prav?

Julie said...

Is this the manifesto, or just the statement of intent to write a manifesto?