People With Whom You’re Done*
Yesterday at the Moolah I had to do the “people you used to know” dodge, when I saw an old acquaintance of mine leaving the showing immediately prior to the one I was attending. This was someone with whom I had shared some mutual friends, hung out, chatted, had over to my home - but not someone who I would think to call if I was sleepless and crying in the middle of the night. (my personal Official Friendship demarcator) Anyway, after a while the friend/acquaintanceship waned, as they are wont to do, and then it gets to the part where it’s all awkward. Like… how do you tell someone you’re through being friends with them, when they’re not through being friends with you? And even worse, when you run into them there’s a social expectation that you’ll act very surprised and happy to see them, as if your failing to return their phone calls & emails for the last two years has been The Merest Accident and Something You Were Planning to Get to One of These Days. And then you have to pretend to care what they’re up to, and pretend to want to tell them what YOU’RE up to, and then you have to pretend you’re terribly late for Some Important Something and you MUST DASH but will CALL SOON and have lunch or coffee or some-such. Because your ignoring them was just an oversight. Really. Rilly.
Whatever. That’s all WAY too much pretending for me. I know it’s awkward when you don’t want to be friends with someone anymore, but I think after a certain amount of time you should be legally allowed to not acknowledge that person if you see them out and about. Can’t you revert back to being strangers after some socially-proscribed period?
Interestingly enough, this phenomenon never happens to MyTodd™ who is (or at least seems) always pleased as punch to run into anyone he’s ever known ever, and perfectly happy and comfortable catching up on the last 27 years of history with them as if it’s not all a boring waste of time because if you have your way you won’t ever speak to this person voluntarily again. This is one of the primary ways in which Todd is a better type of person than me, and also why he can keep up a vast, global social circle, the maintenance of which would drive me stark raving batshit. Todd is also my closest friend because he’s the kind of guy who sends me a text message to warn me if someone he knows I don’t want to see is at a place he knows I am going. See, I am nothing like him, socially, but he makes allowances for my eccentricities. Zees ees whai we loooove him zo!
Although… he does sometimes torture me with threats that he’s going to call a bunch of people he knows I don’t want to run into, and have them all “accidentally” meet us somewhere. And I’ve got tiers of people like that in my life, so it would be torturous. People I haven’t voluntarily spoken to in 9 years… 4 years… 2 years… 6 months… given my propensity for adding and dropping casual acquaintances it’s got potential to be a seven-layer dip of delicious awkwardness. We have also debated starting a support group/blog “superBadGirlRefusesToSpeakToMe.com” where they could spend time comparing notes and strategizing my downfall and leave off calling/emailing me.
Look I never said I was nice, or even 100% human. I know I have my (severe) interpersonal interaction limitations. But honestly, I would rather ignore you in good faith than fake wanting to interact with you. And of course I am not talking about YOU anyway. YOU I could never, ever do without and will have in my life always. Really. Rilly. Call me!
*Whenever I want to end a title of my blog with a preposition I always think of the joke that ends “Where y’all from, bitch?” I know that the way I have it written reads convolutedly, but I can’t just leave that “with” dangling at the end of the sentence.
Filed under: anti-socialism, introversion |2 Responses to “People With Whom You’re Done*”
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Your first paragraph made me laugh at myself though - last year I must have gone about 6 months without phoning or emailing my best friend, genuinely because I was just too busy or lazy to do so. Luckily he’s exactly the same, so neither of us takes it personally when we make our once or twice a year attempt to meet up.
I also met up with a friend two weeks ago that I’ve not seen since his wedding 18 months ago…and he only lived 10 minutes walk from me *blush*
But I am truly wretched (but trying to improve!) at keeping up with people. And when you’re only sort of friends with a person and it’s been 6 months since you acknowledged them, that’s sometimes the tipping point from “Oh! Good to see you!” to “Shit, I will just duck down this alley.”