Think about summer camp. Even if you’ve never been, you understand the concept. Leave your family, friends and dog behind for a month or just a couple weeks for the wilderness and strangers. You might make a lot of friends or none at all, but the mostly likely outcome is a single friend or two who you do everything with. Like, get up early for some stupid, mandatory nature hike after a late night of talking with just flashlights and hidden junk food. You also do stuff you usually wouldn’t do to appease a friend (canoeing instead of swimming, for example) and find that even if you hate it, you would never hate them. For that summer, during the heat and the bugs, your comrades were all you had.
Then the month ends and you pack up to move hundreds of miles away from each other. Yeah, sure, you exchange phone numbers and mailing addresses. You write back and forth in loneliness and young nostalgia, but then school starts up again. Suddenly, it takes months to write back and you have very little left to say. At the time you may not realize it, but a decade later you may not remember their full name. Hell, even their first name.
The rest of your life is a series of summer camps. School, college and work are all different kinds. Friendships and bonds are made completely based on where you and your friends are, but the second you spin out of orbit, they can’t be the same. It’s really very sad, but there’s nothing you can do about it, save keeping them in metal cages in your basement. And then, are they REALLY your friends anymore?
Okay, so what about the internet? I have plenty of internet friends and even a few VERY close ones that live THOUSANDS of miles away from me. Well, a place doesn’t really have to be literal. Do I think for a second I could keep being friends with some of the people I adore if I accidentally cut off my hands and can’t play games anymore? Hell to the fuck no. It’s not their fault that the basis of our friendship ended. I’ve had this happen before with a very good friend of mine who frequented the same message board. When we both quit, it was difficult for us to talk past surface “Hey, did you hear about-” and laughing at idiots we remembered. My ex boyfriend of four years and I are no longer together because college ended. These things happen.
It’s a sort of ugly and almost unpreventable thing. Am I scared of it? Sure, it scares the hell out of me. But, I’ve also accepted it as a possibility for the few friendships I pursue. Maybe my lack of enthusiasm for seeking a wider circle of friends that work as a revolving door is my problem. It seems to me that kind of social life is exhausting and doesn’t actually add up to very much besides preventing loneliness, so I’m not interested. I’ll stick to my few, close friends even if it’s not going to last forever.
…I just tried to friend my BBF between kindergarten and fourth grade (when she moved) on Facebook. Jesus fuck, what is wrong with me?
