My Resolution to Read More Is Helping Me Rekindle Old Friendships
“Don’t get scared, Buddy. Be vulnerable with me, dammit!”
The text message pings my phone at the exact moment I am traversing through a mole-hole-ridden field on the outskirts of my city. Lucy, the dog, is desperately trying to shake my death-like grip on her leash because she sees a rabbit in the distance.
It’s one of those enormous jackrabbits I kept mistaking for miniature kangaroos when I first moved here. Even though “here” is in the prairie lands of Canada, I was still convinced I was seeing Kanga and Roo hopping all around the joint.
My city is thick with giant jackrabbits masquerading as kangaroos.
I’ve been texting with Janelle for the past hour while I walk. I’m that insufferable kind of human being who thinks she can wrangle a poorly trained German shepherd, carry on a text conversation, and watch where she’s going while walking through a holey field.
I think I can do it all.
I actually can’t. Each time the robotic voice chimes through my earbuds, saying, “Message,” I stop walking and wrap the leash around my forearm — assuring the dog won’t bolt as soon as I start ignoring her.
Then I spend a solid two minutes trying to think up a witty response to the much wittier message I just received from Janelle. The thought occurs to me that I could wait until I get home and just call her, but we’ve got a good thing going right now, and I don’t want to lose our groove.
Janelle and I have been steadily losing touch over the past few years. Between our odd work hours and our different aged children and all the other adult-y bullshit that works hard to split a friendship up, I can count on one hand the number of good conversations we’ve had with one another.
We may send a meme and some happy wishes on each other’s birthdays, but usually, the recipient is working or dealing with kids or at some other pre-dictated event and only responds with a forced, “Thanks, friend!”
It’s a strange and unnerving swap from when we were 15, and I’d sit on the toilet pooping while Janelle showered. We’d pass cigarettes back and forth between the curtain, attempting to hide the smell of smoke from the parental units in the house, who were probably wondering why the fuck we were constantly showering together.
I wish I had a quintessential Janelle story to tell. As I reach back into my spacious sack of memories, too many come to mind. Maybe that’s because she was always there right by my side. Whatever stupid, messed-up misadventure I was about to tumble headlong into, there was Janelle, telling me I was being an idiot but also buckling up for the ride.
Like when I was about to lose my virginity in the dingy bathroom of an unfinished basement, and she literally stood on the other side of the door, frantically trying to bust it down while crying, telling me to stop because I was going to regret it happening like that.
She was right.
I did regret it happening like that. And not just because Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me” became my inadvertent theme song due to the line, “Banging on the bathroom floor.”
I’m just realizing I have a lot of bathroom memories with my best friend.
Needless to say, Janelle never gave up on me. Janelle doesn’t give up on anyone. She is the messiah of friendships.
I, on the other hand, drop ’em like they’re hot.
That’s the sociopath coming out in me. I have this uncanny ability to turn off the caring part of my brain. I can take you or leave you, but chances are, eventually, I will leave you. It’s probably some kind of weird defence mechanism. I’ll ditch you before you can ditch me so I don’t have to feel the debilitating sting of rejection and abandonment.
You know, standard stuff.
Except now, in these past few years, I’ve gotten all emotionally intelligent and shit and looky here, I want to rekindle all the friendships I’ve sabotaged over the years because I’m lonely and starved for friendship.
Oh Jesus, am I ever lonely.
I’m not sure if it was me subconsciously concocting the demise of my and Janelle’s relationship or, as previously mentioned, just the fact that life got in the way. What I do know is that I will do anything to feel the deep love of her friendship again.
There are few things as special as a lifelong pal.
Which brings me back to walking in a field while texting with my long-lost friend. She tells me about her kids, her work, and how her mom is doing. I tell her the same. Janelle is the first to mention how difficult she finds making friends these days. I hesitantly admit I know how she feels.
“I’m so lonely for friends,” I text her. And then I quickly follow up with, “Yikes, shit just got real.” I need to make everything into a joke; thus, I have plausible deniability for my feelings and junk.
“Don’t get scared, Buddy. Be vulnerable with me, dammit!” Janelle replies within seconds.
Although I’ve grown emotionally over these past few years, it occurs to me now that my friend has always been ahead of the curve in this department. She is always ready to get real.
As we continue to text away on this unseasonably warm November morning, our conversation turns to reading. Both Janelle and I used to be big readers in our twenties, but just like friendships, our reading habits seemed to ebb and flow depending on what was happening in our lives. Janelle laments that with the kids still being young, she finds it difficult to get into any good books.
On the other hand, I committed to reading more last January and have managed to keep that resolution all year long. But I have teenage kids, so they don’t take up too much of my time, what with wanting nothing to do with me.
Here Enters the J & L Book Club Variety Hour!
Okay, I haven’t gone over the name of our book club with Janelle yet. It’s a working title. And I don’t know if we can really classify it as a “club” per se because its only two members are its founders — Janelle and Lindsay.
But none of those details matter!
What matters is that every Tuesday and Thursday, we will carve out an hour to call each other and chat about memories, life and chapters.
Our first book is My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult which I’ve been wanting to read and happened to be a book that we both had in our houses at the time of this beautiful, brainstormed idea.
So far, I’m two chapters in. I don’t know if I can wait until next Tuesday to discuss this book!
See, I told you I’m starved for adult friendship.
Building relationships as an adult is hard work. It takes time, patience and, yes, vulnerability — all things we’ve been trained to hoard in adulthood.
There was a time when it seemed safer to build walls and fortresses around myself. Back then, I didn’t realize what I might be missing in my later life. I don’t want to be the kind of person who casually forgets about friendships. I don’t want to be sharp-edged and closed off. I don’t want to live a life talking to nobody about all the books I’ve loved.
I think about the laugh attacks, the terrible impromptu dance parties, the unabashed crying jags, the heaviness of life lifted for even a moment when you’re talking with your best friend on the phone about nothing.
And I realize that, yeah, I wanna get a little vulnerable to have all that back in my life again, Buddy.