…one is silver and the others gold. As the Girl Scouts song goes.
For a shoddy memory, mine never ceases to amaze when it comes to the most random of details. A snippet of a song from more than twenty years ago I recall, yet what I had for breakfast yesterday eludes me…or if breakfast was even consumed. Ugh.
While I’ve fallen prey to a few dastards in the first 2.5 decades of life, I have successfully avoided and rid my circle of toxic people. Yet, one remains. ‘We’ is that friend for which an explanation is always necessary prior to introduction. As in, “She’s abrasive and snooty and pretentious when first meet her, but she’s a dear once you get to know her.”
(‘We’ is actually the nickname we use for her because she sheds her personal identity when in a relationship.)
Of course her snoot and pretension surface from deeply rooted insecurities, but I have always been able to see past her ‘less flattering’ side for her better qualities.
That was until my wedding. One month before the wedding, we were having lunch and I told her that TB would no longer be drawing a salary from his start-up company beginning about the time we were married. I told her how the idea of being financially tethered to someone who would now be financially dependent on me was scary. I was looking for a friend in that moment to tell me that everything was going to be fine.
Instead, she said to me: “Matt and I don’t lend people money.”
I was befuddled and humiliated. I wasn’t asking for money, I was asking for support. Our friendship had started to unravel long before that comment, but it fast-forwarded it for me.
The idea of shedding a friendship that’s longevity is approaching two decades is kind of unimaginable. While I retained zero friends from high school, I also had no idea who I was at 18-years-old. Today, while continual evolution is guaranteed, I have a pretty good idea who I am. I know who to keep and who to drop.
Huh. Come to think of it…I met We when I was 18. Perhaps that song should actually be, ‘Make new friends, but keep only the gold.’
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