My ex-friend A

Once upon a time, I used to be an avid reader of Cosmopolitan ... Not the locally-produced "tame" ones, but the straight-from-the-States, all sex-n-goss ones ... But in between the sex and goss, one could find articles that really hit a spot ... And one such article is this one by Caroline Knapp on how friendship between women ends ... Not too sure whether it's archived somewhere on-line, but to tell my story, I'll quote snippets from the article ...

"We did a lot of growing up together," says Carol. "She knows everything about me. And now there is nothing there, just a memory of a friendship, ..."

A and I met in college almost 16 years ago ... I was having difficulty adjusting to dorm life, I think, and on top of that, I had trouble getting along with my room mate, most probably to do with the fact that I was having difficulty adjusting to my new life ... It so happened that my soon-to-be-ex-room mate was very chummy with A's room mate, with whom A hadn't never gotten along as well .... And it so happened that we were all on the same floor ... I seem to recall that both A and I would meet in the hallway, and then we'd be talking about each other's room mate ... And in the process, we found out that we had a lot in common ... A was born two days before me, so that was like, ohmigod, kinda girl moment ... Before you know it, we'd switched room mates, and it worked out very well, I think, considering the fact that both my ex-room mate and A's became bosom buddies, and so did both A and I ...

A was the pretty one, I'll be frank ... Convivial, and got along with a lot of people ... I was the socially-maladjusted, quiet, pseudo-intellectual, keeping pretty much to myself ... Then I met two other quiet intellectuals, AY and T ... and all four of us formed a study group, in which we called ourselves The Confused Grammarians ... I seem to recall that during our study sessions, I'd be the first one to fall asleep (lazy bum), then after a while, A would follow suit, leaving AY and T discussing til the dead of the night ... Aah, those were the days ...

A, of course, was more active than I was ... She'd be involved in some end-of-the-year activity for the batch, while I would take part in co-curricular activities just to get the stupid points and certs ... We were in the swimming club together, and I think it was in the pool that I realized how A would try to be better than I was at everything ...

I was the shadow, A was the light that shone the room ... I think I kinda like the arrangement ... We could talk about how we like the same music, the same movies, the same silly crushes on movie stars ... I think I really didn't mind the attention going A's way, and she just lapped it all up .... Then this guy J came into our lives, and I think that was the start of the undoing of our friendship ...

Or you become romantic rivals - a sure-fire way to complicate a friendship.

I had this crush for J, and I told A about it ... The thing is, J had the hots for A, and told me about how he felt for her ... Of course, he didn't know how I felt for him at the time, I never told him, until much later, I think ... I think what I did was that I told A about how J felt for her, so they got on together, and I went further in the shadows ... I think I was really bitter, but I was bitter without knowing how to deal with it ... I just gave A the silent treatment for a while ...

Of course, a lot of things happened in the two years that we were living in the dorm ... Really good things, if I put my mind to it to remember what they were ... I do remember staying over at A's family's place for a few days ... and they made me feel like I was part of the family ... They even bought me stuff, like this pair of Levi's I still have until today ...

I remember having A, AY and T over my place, then we watched my brother's dirty movies ... That was a riot *smiles* .... AY and T were disgusted, but continued watching ... I just made fun of them, cracking dirty jokes all the way, I think .... Aah yes, those were the days ...

But it was that time during our first year in our Bachelor's programme, when we took our qualifying exams, and I failed a paper, that was the lowpoint of my life ... One night, like a few days after we got the results, A, AY and T just showed up at my door, and tried their best to cheer me up ... I think it was that night that I secretly vowed I would remain loyal to these people the rest of my life ... Whatever that would happen, I would try to be there for them ...

Maybe that vow was made in complete naivete ... I should have known that all of us would grow up, move away and move on ...

Over the years, most of her close friends have moved away, married, started
families. And her own family, to whom she was never particularly close, live
far away.

A was the the first to get married, I think, then soon after that it was AY, who right after our graduation, migrated with her husband to another country ... T got married some time after graduation ... I lost contact with AY almost immediately, and T pretty soon after that ...

Nevertheless, A and I kept in touch ... We taught in the same state, at least ... and at one point, I lived in her area for a couple of years, so even though we didn't meet every week, we made arrangements to meet each other, we'd go shopping, things like that ... Then I went overseas to further my studies ...

After I came back, we picked up where we left .... I think it was during this time that it became clear to me how our friendship had evolved up to that point ...

On an emotional level, you slowly sense old bonds are weakening. You, and
your friends, have changed ... The forces that cemented the relationships have shifted, and newer forces, like envy, competitiveness, resentment, have now emerged.

A confided to me her marital problems ... I won't divulge details, it's just that without her saying it in plain words, I could tell she was unhappy ... She was lonely and unhappy, and I just listened and not too sure what to tell except just to listen ...

Then, she met this Mat Saleh from the Netherlands ... She was telling me how she was thinking of me while talking to that man, but deep down in my bitter heart, I had this feeling that she was just thinking of herself ... Then the man asked her to meet him in the Netherlands ... She was afraid of doing so, and uncertain of what to do ... I think this is where I made the stupid mistake of telling her to go and just meet the man ... I was thinking, "What the heck, she looks really unhappy, why not just tell her to go and meet the guy" ... She asked me to go with her, which I did so very reluctantly ...

Months passed by, and they planned to meet up more often ... One day, she called up, and said she wanted to borrow my winter coat, and that's where I lost it ... I just didn't talk to her on the phone, I gave her the silent treatment again ...

Then Karen started going out with this guy. She became less available at
weekends, then on week nights. They still talked regularly but, Sue says, "I
started to feel like Karen didn't have much use for me."

A and I met like, once, after that ... Then we met no more ... I did send her horrible text messages, along the lines of "So how is it with you and that Mat Saleh boyfriend of yours?", to which, like after a long while, she replied with a text along the lines of "I'm involved with this regatta thing, where there'll be loads of Mat Saleh guys there" ...

I was thinking to myself, "How can I be jealous of a woman who's having an affair??" ... "How can I be an idiot over this matter? If A really cared for our friendship, she would meet up to try mend broken fences", after I sent her a couple of text messages asking whether we could talk about it ...

Both Kathleen and I have a profound aversion to confrontation and great
difficulty expressing anger. Accordingly, we chose to lose the friendship rather than fight for it, to let our anger or hostility or jealousy grow and simmer beneath the surface until it became intolerable, and then to back off, hauling out a set of cliches to explain why the friendship wasn't working: "We've grown apart", "She's more fucked up than I thought she was when we first met." And there you go: take two complex, emotional women, add a particularly female distaste for confrontation, and - voila! - a recipe for passive endings.

In truth, I think, A and I stayed friends for so long because we shared a lot of experiences together ... We were room mates for two years, we went to the same college in England, we lived in the same area during the first few years of our teaching career ... I wouldn't say that I never cared for her, it's just that I thought she could really be self-absorbed ...

The point is, deep friendships need time and care, two increasingly limited commodities in our busy lives. The irony is, the less time and care we have, the more we need good friends.

Recently, AY and I were reunited via the magic of Facebook ... As I would think, she is extremely busy with her two kids, and now she's busy doing her graduate studies ... But now and then she would send me a message on FB, and I'm just happy with that ... and through FB, I managed to get T's number, and now know that she's still teaching, in fact she's been teaching in the same district where I taught, except when we had finally managed to get in touch with each other, and had even planned to do our Masters at the same local uni, I was offered to do mine in Japan ... Anywayz, she's also busy with two kids ... and I completely understand this, but begged her to join FB ...

I saw A's profile on FB like more than a month ago, and sent her a message along the lines of, "You're still looking pretty. Okay, kind of lame there." ... Needless to say, I never got a response ... I think I just didn't know what to say ...