The Besz Dispenser - Why can't we be Friends?

For the week of November 12th, 1999

Why can't we be friends

This week has been a very trying week, a week full of stress, one minor breakdown, and mostly confusion and guilt. Mainly, however, I guess it was a good week, because I learnt something important: I learnt that one way or another, I'm going to lose most of my friends.

OK, so right now you know that this isn't going to be an uplifting column. But I'm not really in an uplifting mood. Well, that's not right. I do feel good right now and most of the people I want to talk about I've at least called. So, chalk one up for me. Yet for some reason, life just doesn't allow for common goals between friends. No, that's not right either. What I mean is that most people, no matter how common their goals, sooner or later find different ways to get those goals, and 99% of the time drift apart finding them.

Maybe I should backtrack here. How did I even come to this discovery? Well, let's go back to when I restarted my life. When you have nothing, you basically start rebuilding a foundation, something to work towards. You achieve that, you move to the next goal, then the next, and the next. Pretty soon, you've stockpiled goals, and are working towards many at once. You start learning what you really want in life (at least within the new "you" that you've become). And this new me found that he wanted a lot of shit. Shit like traveling, and a new car, and a new computer, and rent, and a novel to be published and for Yahoo! to finally recognize this web site and allow me to get traffic from there.

These are time-consuming things, and nothing comes easy in life. I knew that already. What I didn't know is that over the course of this search for personal happiness through achieving your goals comes with the price of friends. Sure, you meet new ones along the way, granted. But I want the old and the new. Is that asking too much?

Yeah, it is. I feel so guilty, I don't even call anyone anymore, not my friends and not my parents (well, they call and make me call them). I've lost track of many, and some I don't even know where they are. Friends are sometimes the most important things in my life. I know they have their own lives, and don't start with the "true friends will be there forever" crap. I know that, but I don't want to lose any of them. Unfair and selfish as this may sound, but I want them all. I don't want to lose track, and meet at reunion parties and the odd visit to my hometown. I don't want to read a friend's obituary in a paper. I want to see them all the time.

The upside to this discovery is that I learnt that I've got a friend who knows when I'm down, or need to talk. He's got the uncanny ability to know those moments, and he calls at those moments exactly. He's accurate to within the day, it's eerie. Yet he's a lifelong friend, and he's proven that time and time again. I've also got many friends right now that I consider lifelong. Will that assumption prove true, I don't know and won't know until the end of my life. But as long as I've got one that will stick around and deal with my bitter, cynical ass, that's more than I can expect from anyone.

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