Have you ever had a friend crush on someone?
I’m sure we’ve all had like that one person we would see in the halls, or was a friend of a friend, and for some reason, you just really wanted to hang out with them.
For me, this girl’s name was Athena, and she was literally everything I wanted to be. She was smart, and like well read, and she dressed like you’d find her on Pinterest. And I wanted to be friends with her so bad. She just seemed so cool.
So that was my freshman year, and it wasn’t until junior year that we ended up in the same friend group, but we weren’t ever like really close. But then one day, senior year, she invites me to go out to the movies with her.
And I was like really? Because I didn’t think we were close like that but I was also excited because I’d wanted to be friends with this girl for so long. So I go over to her house after school, and she drives me to the mall, we’re laughing and listening to music, and we just walk around and hang for an hour. And then it’s time for the movie, and we get in the theater, and it’s called “Monkey Man”, and I swear to god the movie hasn’t even gotten one minute in, when I get a text from my mom.
“I just fell, I’m in the hospital, I need you to go get your brother.”
Pause. What would you have done in that situation, if you were her? Rushed to drive me back to my car? Been a little annoyed but still understanding?
Well, she was pissed. As we left the theater and headed back towards the parking lot, I could literally feel the anger like emanating off of her in waves. The drive back to her house was one of the most awkward of my life. It was dead silent, and I was anxious that she hated me, and anxious about my mom. And as I rushed over to my car, she tossed over like a “I hope your mom’s ok”.
And as I drove to go get my brother so we could go to the hospital, I just kept thinking.
“I wouldn’t have done that”.
I never would’ve made my friend feel bad that their mom was in the hospital. I would’ve run out of that theater to make sure they could deal with it as best as possible. Why would she do that? And then I thought about it.
This girl was the same girl who would actively hate on girls she pretended to be friends with. Who would say something morally righteous and then turn around and hang out with the most morally dubious people I knew. Who would take jabs at me and my relationships that I would just have to brush off. Who, to my face, would tell me that I used to be insufferable an asshole before senior year, which true or not, I got the message the first 5 times.
Why didn’t I see this coming?
And the truth is, I made excuses for her.
I brushed off her vitriol towards others, and her constant critique of myself as a product of her moral superiority. Just because she actively supported people who would do bad things and then would turn around and hate on someone else for the same thing, that was just being a loyal friend.
I was quick to defend her in my mind because I was so convinced that she was perfect, when many of the things she would do, I would never ever be ok doing myself.
And that was a turning point for me, as I was driving to go get my brother. Because I realized I wasn’t being fair. I wasn’t being fair to myself, by letting her treat me the way she did, but more importantly, I wasn’t being fair to her.
She didn’t ask me to idolize her.
And the truth was I was always going to be let down, because we’re all just human. But I was still clinging to this idea that she was perfect, and that I had to be the one to make this relationship work because I was always in the wrong. But that’s not how friendship works.
Part of friendship is recognizing someone else’s flaws and either choosing to accept them regardless, or to accept that the relationship simply won’t work out, and that’s okay. And in really strong relationships, friends hold each other accountable, to the same moral standard that they would hold themselves to.
And later that night, my best friend called me, and she was like, yeah Athena made me come over, and she just complained for like an hour straight that you made her miss the movie. And then after that they went and saw the movie, so I’m glad she at least got to see “Monkey Man”.
Think about your own relationships.
Do you accept your friends for who they are, or do you make excuses for their behavior? Do they treat you the way you would treat your friends?
It’s so important to make sure you’re not idolizing, or making excuses for your friends. Because, if you can’t accept someone for who they really are, flaws and imperfections too, are you even friends? And most importantly, know when it might be time to let someone go.
You know, that summer, after the school year ended, I ran into her, and she said “Theresa, why do we never hang out anymore, I miss you.”
And that made me pause. And I thought about it. For three years, I had tried so hard to be friends with this girl, and now, I realized that it felt ok to say that we weren’t.