My friend doesn’t love me anymore
My own dying friendship, 2 books on friendlessness and 2 films
First she forgot my birthday, then she forgot my face. A birthday after 30 is never a topic worth fighting over. Her friend was visiting and her headspace was occupied with hosting duties. Acceptable reason. I moved on the way one must, by keeping quiet and holding a candle to the mirror, asking is this a sign?! to the pagan god of the week. One time I wore a fake nose ring when I met her, months after we last did. She didn’t notice it the whole evening. I understood why, a small thing, this nose ring, how should I expect her to see and make note? I shouldn’t be so vain, I told myself the same. Yesterday she posted pictures of a friend, said she loved her. Their arms were wrapped around each other, a beautiful image in desaturated colours that brought forth precious love that can only come from shared girlhood. That hint of pink in her photos, the editing, the outfits. Another picture, her hair is made funny, her friend is flipping her own. They are laughing. This is normal, this is healthy. This is good for her. I should not compare, I told myself the same.
Before we started to avoid meeting each other, she saw me at a cafe near my place. I noted that, allowed a surge of appreciation and sent texts acknowledging the same. I was guilty. I arrived with plans to leave. I had spent some time before seeing her making plans for the day. I figured that after meeting with her I could have a fun thing to do, like sitting at home eating leftovers. I even asked my partner for a possible exit plan in case it didn’t feel right. But we had a lovely afternoon. Conversation was flowing. It felt natural. Our server was joking with us. We had a picture taken. I texted my partner from under the table to cancel our later plans. This is going well, I resolved to stay long, an open ended timeline to the day that was ahead of us. It felt beautiful, as if something lost between us was now being discovered between plates of appetizers. The courses changed. As I had my gaze set on dessert options pondering what we could share, she asked for the check. Before I could register the turn of the evening, the bill appeared. She paid. I prodded if she wanted to stay on. She said she had to meet someone. It stung. Not only had I cancelled my own exit plan, but I got invested in our shared time. Loudly tapping on my phone as she gathered her things, I sent her my share of the bill. She was paid before she left the building. We said goodbye. I felt stupid.
*
I never know how to summarise such relationships because the loss of it resembles grief, yet it isn't like grief I have known to be in me. This grief is not incendiary, nor a powerful sentiment that lingers on my days. The grief I feel is small, like a shiver before a pleasant shower, a flicker of a bulb before warming up a room. This grief is a lightness, a kindness to the inadequate reading of my friendship with her. My grief is meek and wary, taking a small space and asking little of me. At its worst, it is like an aching muscle after a run. At its best, it is an irritation in my nose. My grief tells me how little I cared of my own love for her. I allowed it to wither and die, I supervised it. The calendar has more space now. I am saved from experiencing guilt watching a text exchange fizzle out. There is one less direction of interaction that drains my energy.
What it does raise in me is panic. I panic at my own abandonment of a friendship, at my loss of interest in nourishing it. I panic at how easily I slipped this friendship into a slow death. There were moments of frustration, of discussing with my sister the why’s and how’s of that dying friendship. But all introspection led to no action. The whole act of killing a friendship, even slow passionless death, is meaningless. I learnt nothing, I gained nothing, and I can change nothing. I can only look from a distance and know the signs in time.
In the last few months, I captured some themes and my reflections on this topic explored in books and films. One of them was a rewatch for me, and shone in a different light the second time around.
2 books with friends and loneliness – Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami , translated by Allison Markin Powell and Tin Man by Sarah Winman
2 films on a turn in a friendship – The Banshees of Inisherin by Martin McDonagh and Wicked Little Letters by Thea Sharrock
There are elements of isolation and lack of friendships in the book I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, more about that here.
Novels
I experience a mild discomfort explaining the book Strange Weather in Tokyo. I read it with no warning, picked it up because the cover was quite enchanting. Like the cover, I wanted to feel like I was floating, with the book and with Japanese food. The book delivered on magnificent descriptions of Japanese food. I have bookmarks on only what my future self shall be eating. The rest, I was unprepared for. The main storyline of this book hit me like a truck. The characters, Tsukiko and Sensei, are individuals who are connected by a shared time earlier in their lives, and who find company in each other drinking sake and eating dinner with an undisturbed companionship. Evening often find them spending time speculating on life and ruminating together. And this experience leads to a love that is special to them, entering their lives as they grew lonelier with a certain comfort that did not encourage them to work towards finding companionship or friendship. They found each other purely by happenstance, and grew love and friendship from the shared silence between there.
It is a clean book with clean lines. The author Hiromi Kawakami closely examines modern day's loneliness, both in terms of a quiet bliss found in discovering a new friend and in sharing a loneliness. The friendship is witnessed from the first chapter. We see it blossom and evolve as we learn more, even some shocking details, about the characters. It is a very tender book that brings me to question my own reading of two people, are they friends out of necessity or real connection? I have wondered since how I could try and explain the connection they felt with each other. A question comes over repeatedly, why is it hard to replicate such friendliness in another person. The day Tsukiko runs into her former teacher is the day she finds another occupant in the room of her created loneliness, a teacher whom she still only refers to as Sensei. The book is episodic, across years of time, and leaves one guessing and learning as they evolve together.
I like how this user described the book on Goodreads:
My heart broke into 20 pieces when I read Tin Man. I read it cover to cover within a day, its melodic words plastered on my mind and I was drunk on the harmony of the story. Everything fit well with each other, there was no eye sore or an odd standing feature of the book. Its heavily philosophical nature began to give me worry in the early chapters, but the way it weaved character moments into contemplation was captivating. I was glued from start to finish, isolating myself to commit to this book. The centre of the story is the ache from the loss of a friendship. An outstanding rarity is the tender exploration of the love and friendship between two men, built on acceptance, exploration and kindness. Even as their relationship evolves, a foundation of friendship remains. It keeps them whole. And its loss takes a toll.
I like how Hannah Beckerman captured Sarah Whinman's writing in Tin Man,
Tin Man is a story about alternative lives that might have been lived had circumstances been different – socio-economically, culturally or familiarly.
As for the author's wonderful writing, she summarises it well,
With her skilful command of language and deep emotional insight, Winman has produced in the exquisitely crafted Tin Man her best novel to date.
Not much happens in the book. To me it is akin to a soft jazz song playing in a bar as I well up and eventually cry my eyes out.
Film
The Banshees of Inisherin is on a list of one of my favourite films, but the list is only of films meant for thundering weather and a weeping heart. It is not a film that soothes me. The movie has the simplest plot - two long time friends are severed when one of them decides to not speak to the other. He doesn’t like him any more. This is not an exaggeration. Pádraic says “He just... doesn't want to be friends with me any more.” That is all there is to it, the plot. And how it evolves is best enjoyed uninterrupted by doom scrolling and other people. The plot serves as the emotional core of the film, and takes us through a deeper exploration of isolation, mortality, talent, legacy, and the purpose and meaning of human connection. The slight absurdist nature is apt for folding in many concepts. I am often morbid when I watch this film, even if I come upon a scene on Youtube. It makes me look helplessly at my friend(s), who am I to them, what do I mean to them, and how long will this last?
On my first watch I felt closer to being a person like Pádraic, the one who gets removed. But on second watch, with life lived between the two, I contemplated if I was the one to abandon, the one to make a choice and say "you are not my friend anymore." To minimally explore, we all certainly know there are good values that make good people. And for the most part we believe that we are reasonably good people. To me that belief shifted between two movies. I am not thinking as simply as describing myself as good person, or a bad one. What I learnt was that the majority of my life was spent receiving any and every kind friendship. Only recently did I start to wonder if someone fits my life, if I could do without their offered friendship. It is an ill-tasting idea. My lack of long term friendships has never allowed me the confidence to ask whether I want a person in my life a day after tomorrow. For a majority of my life, I have simply taken what I got wrapped in “friendship”. I was Pádraic. But am I that today? I am already timid about what I am, and mildly proud of my growing self esteem.
There is a donkey in the movie, Jenny. Such an exemplary donkey I have seldom seen.
Additionally, the movie is based in a fictional place but the locations are all Irish.
A delightful little surprise was the movie Wicked Little Letters. A simple story about women in a small town in post world war England, where one woman starts to receive despicable letters in foul language and funny ideas.
I was in awe. Tantalising, the idea that someone would sit on their desk, whip out a pen and write absolute vile garbage about another person. I felt tickled with the possibility of an exciting letter writing session where I applied literary prestige to handwritten insults.
Then I remembered that Twitter has been around. These ladies would have thrived on Twitter today.
The most joyful part of the movie was watching the two actors above interact with each other. The premise starts with a new friendship between the two, and devolves into trouble for Jessie Buckley’s character when Olivia Coleman’s character starts to receive the vile letters. A new friendship is crushed, and something emerges from it; something truthful, liberating, openly odious. A tangy detail in the film is how most of the male characters are buffoons. It helped build a utopia like narrative where the absurdity of misogyny is clear as day, where the women have matters to handle which they very much do.
I can watch Olivia Coleman in anything. I can watch Olivia Coleman in a dish wash commercial. I can watch Olivia Coleman reading out a telephone book. I can watch Olivia Coleman grating a carrot. I can watch Olivia Coleman talk to a mirror image of Olivia Coleman about what it is like to watch Olivia Coleman.
The real story is wild1, I have heard podcasts on it and read articles. I absolutely love this page of archives, where you can see a lot of the original documents.
I do know that if I had to send someone the words “old steaming bag of wet leaking shit!” it would be by a letter in the post. I would lick the stamp myself.
Back to my reflections…
There came a September where we, my friend and I, didn’t text for a month, followed by the time she visited my neighbourhood and did not tell me. Her sister crossed my path and chose to ignore me. I sound pitiful. I feel pitiful. But I make no effort to improve us. With great comfort to myself, I have accepted things the way they are. There are no rituals to such a death. I have no reference to a film or a book where they light a bonfire and scream into the flames for a release. People move, have families, separate ideologically, and most of all they stop trying. The mundanity of the death of friendship is precisely what gets to me the most, why I find a better sense of resolution or action in books or films I recommend here. Internally, my monologue shows confusion and pain but my actions are dull and detached. We will continue to ignore each other, until a day comes where it makes sense to speak again. Even if I don't have room for her, I have room for more love.
Other items of note
For no reason that makes sense to me, I have the image below and have been starting at it from time to time. No insight has fallen upon me so far. It is from the 1500s and that I learnt only when I explored it further. Art from today confuses me in being dateless.
Joris Hoefnagel and Georg Bocskay are the artists behind this piece.
I watched Marvel’s Thunderbolts. A surge of media has come in my direction. Is Marvel back? Does it still suck? I can compare myself to watching Avengers: Endgame and Thunderbolts, and witness the shift in me. I don’t care anymore2.
It is time I share this playlist on Spotify and credit Suits with a good collection of songs in their tracklist. It is a little over an hour. I like lean playlists.
Littlehampton libels: Between 1920 and 1923, a series of letters sent to numerous residents of Littlehampton, in southern England. These letters were obscene and contained many false allegations. Most importantly, these were sent by a “good” Christian woman, whose stature alone made the judge presiding over her case refuse to believe the provided evidence.
