The Defunction

How, and when do friendships extinguish? Defunct and decayed, I look at the remnants of friendships past and wonder how something that was only supposed to be wonderful, could have become something else entirely. How can it be that I never realize what's happening until it has already happened? When the tie is severed and the lines are blocked, that is when I've realized the irreparable damage that has caused the complete desecration of a friend. When the the promise of reprieve in the termination outweighs the benefits of carrying on, then, is it then that a friendship ends? Is it ever really a decision at all? Flames licking the walls, water filling the hull, an ending friendship is a burning house, and a sinking ship all at once. Hopelessness and futility saturate what was once joy-soaked. Frustration binds it all together into a horrible bundle and even then the uncertainty and doubt are overwhelming. Thus is the dilemma in the end: the plaguing wonder.

We met four years ago this fall. I remember distinct details of my first impressions. Each encounter glimmers turned end over end in my memory: a pony tail, a pair of sunglasses glinting in the sun, a halo of hair, a pair of eye glasses peering from around the door, a cowboy hat and two blond braids. I was critical and a tough sell. I was reluctant for reasons that I turn over in my head, all of them tumbling around without resolution. I was resistant to people who only wanted to be my friends. The more I examine the remains, the further the truth slips from me. The memories morph and distorted as they are, they are easy to dismiss. The regrets, not the girls. But I try not to let them allude me. It is at first glance something of a mystery. But then there it is, the pudding: despite my reluctance, and resistance, and what in my memory has become an ornery and ugly demeanor, they resisted and our friendship prevailed.

We were a group of six. If memory serves, the times that weren't tumultuous were brief, and infrequent. Two on one, three on two, two on four, five on one, somebody was always frustrated. It was me a lot. Life in a house crowded with girls never suited me. We were still in discovery, even once we had signed our second lease. It was painful, demoralizing at times, frustrating.

There isn't anything I can say about when Jaymie died. All the details of me in those days are false and trivial. What I did, what I ate, how I slept. And now, with years between now and then, there is still nothing to say about it, what it feels like to lose a friend. I still mistake strangers and hope to find her tucked into some place I've forgotten about, like a piece of sea glass I found at the beach, lost in a pocket for safe keeping.

And now I've lost three. Jaymie departed. A second to decay, another to dysfunction. What do you say to the person to whom you've already said it all? We are different than all other friends, I think. Our pack is an anomaly, an aggrandized group, touched, plagued, tortured by death and immortal because of it. I'm also certain that we are none of these things. In the history of the world, the odds and pure reason tell me that we are just a group of girls, issues just as petty as the next. Yet here we are.

I have the deepest longing for the accompaniment of one of these friends. Any of them, but mostly all of them. I've never said that before because I have never realized I felt it. I've been screening some new friends lately with a meal and a bit of conversation. But that which is lacking is the most integral of details: ease, comfort, history, a common repertoire of references to the past. It's what all the substitutes lack.

In the beginning, we must choose friends for a reason. In our beginning, I believe that my friends chose me for some reason that I don't anticipate ever understanding.

A Life In Review

I wouldn't formally call what I've recently been suffering from writers block. I have been writing. I've been expressing myself, which means that I don't have the most important qualifying symptom of writers block. Sure, my newest method is unconventional but it is, as I am so fond of saying, the 21st century.

I haven't been posting, nor scribbling with any sort of frequency, but I have been reviewing up a storm. This is all in conjunction with my new favorite pass-time: online commerce! Sure, at first glance you may dismiss my newest of hobbies as nothing more than a new method of shopping, a variation of the over consumption I already engage in, a lazy woman's wardrobe expansion. But, then I realized that I could incorporate my new form of expression into my bi-weekly trips to Anthropologie. (Markdowns on Tuesdays, newly merchandised sale floor on Thursdays.)

I have been reviewing any and everything that I can and have consumed for the past six months now. Sweaters, restaurants, shoe repairs, YouTube videos, teachers, nurses, nail salons, face washes, coffee beans, iPhone apps, barbecue, my Pharmacist. The convenience of buying online is that Nordstroms, or Zappos will automatically e-mail to remind you that you made a purchase, and that you can review it! A poncho, a bar of soap, a pair of Frye's, no matter the purchase, a few words, and a discretionary number of stars tells a story. With no good friends to be had, perhaps I have been having a relationship with my purchases, which is of course the most disgusting thing I have ever thought about myself, and thus will immediately dismiss.

I, of course, read the reviews that other women post, mostly concerned when it is all a question of fit, how a size runs, the quality of material. There is nothing I hate more than a brief, completely nondescript description of a product. Let me give you an example. Let's say the review in question is for a jersey dress. Any old jersey dress will do. Now, let's say I am looking to buy this dress, but can't decide if I am one size or another. (Do you like how I conveniently avoided saying which two sizes we are supposing I am between? It's really none of your business.) Well, I would of course consult a minimum five reviews but of course it depends on how many reviews there are. I have been know to read all reviews posted, and it seems to me that I am not the only woman expressing herself via E-Commerce review.

When a woman describes herself as "curvy" or "athletic" or "petite" I feel crazed. What on earth does all that mean? Women are tricky, and with this, I read: "fat," "mannish," and "anywhere under five-foot-six-inches: reluctant to give other details."

Then there are the women who give you all the details, right down to their cup size and the cellulite on the back of their thighs, and how well this particular jersey dress hides it all. These are the women I appreciate. Not the women who give you all the gory details about their midget proportions, their tiny little curve-less bodies. The nail in the review coffin? The MySpace-esque photos of them all in my jersey dress. The only thing less-helpful than a description of a midget in my prospective dress, is a photo of it. I love photos of product, don't get me wrong, but how am I expected to visualize myself in my dress if I'm looking at a picture of a five-foot, chest-less brunette in it?

No matter how many of these I have to sort through, I can usually arrive at some sort of decision. If not, I subscribe to the Buy-Two-And-Return-The-Wrong-One theology. And ultimately, if I am undecided about which color to order, and, after hours of debate, a good nights sleep, and a call to a friend or two, cannot arrive at a decision as to whether or not to order the blue or the red, I am the founding member of the church of Buy-Both-Colors.