Friends

I blame Friends.
For everything.
I want to live in that world, I think I'd like to be Monica. Rachel has to end up with Ross, which is a fate worse than cheese, and Phoebe's too ditzy.

Anyway, having loved Friends obsessively for 8 years or so (took a while to catch on), life has been a crashing disappointment that it didn't turn out like that. See, they were older than me, and they were on when I was a student and had that sort of life, I even had a friend like Rachel, a friend like Monica and a friend like Phoebe (and people who were nothing like any of them, I think I was probably Janice), and we hung out for coffee and shared every waking thought together. Marvellous.

In Friends however, they were past being students. They were adults. They still lived in each others pockets and were there for each other. Sex and the City is the same thing I believe. Girls together having endless fun and being there for each other.

But in real life, people have children, jobs, commitments and time constraints, and no matter what the best intention is or how much you love someone to bits, there simply isn't space to have interwoven lives like you had when you were younger. You seem to float through and you have the same circle of friends that you always have, feeling mutually neglected, meeting up and promising not to leave it so long, and returning to email and facebook again.

Not all bad, I can post "Morag wants a hug" on facebook and almost instanteously have 15 lovely virtual hugs from friends all over the world, or as I did the other week in a less needy manner, put "Morag is turning vegetarian" and get debates and comments on the pros and cons of marinated tofu - just like that. But it's not the same really. It's all about the nice stuff, and beyond demanding hugs, you don't "talk".

"How are you?" automatically produces the response "fine", or "same as ever" even if the trueanswer is "I have spent the last week in tears, I think I'm having a nervous breakdown". Because everyone else is being shiny and happy and only presenting the happy stuff, you don't like to upset the apple cart by being miserable. Especially if the reason you're miserable is something pathetic and sounds really silly if you put it in words. So you keep it to yourself and go bonkers. Then somewhere down the line you drink way too much wine and confess that actually you're not all that fine, discover that your best friend has also been crying herself to sleep, that you are both appalled that you didn't know, that you couldn't help, that you really really really REALLY love each other and in future you will pick up the phone immediately as soon as there's something wrong. And you don't feel miserable any more because you talked about it and laughed about how silly you were being. Except you sober up, decide not to bother people and when they ask how you're doing, you say "fine"...

New friends come along, mostly when you're lonely in the same place at the same time; some of them become lifelong friends, most of them drift off again when the circumstances change, or when you lump all your annoyances at your other friends onto the new friend and they run away. I remember my hippy thought that it's nice to appreciate being even an insignificant part of someone's life for a while instead of bemoaning all the things they don't turn out to be. I forget that too often.

People are stupid. I do love all my friends and I'm pretty sure very few of them know that as I stagnate and mentally chastise them for ignoring me back. We all sit about feeling lonely, with the undialled phone by our side.

I just did a quiz in Psychologies magazine as to what I need from friendship. Apparently I need reassurance, which was hardly revelatory. Apparently it's not cool to ask for it though. Bugger.