On Friendship

Personal & fragmentary reflections

“Happiness is only real when shared” - Christopher McCandless

“Happiness is other people.” - Ruth Whippman

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Life-changing events have a way of bifurcating the narrative of one’s life-that is, dividing it into ‘before’ and ‘after’ with each period recalling distinctly different qualities and associations. They can be tragic or triumphant; sudden, or the result of long and willful struggle. You will find that nearly all of them relate to either (1) dreams/goals (2) other people. Personal dreams fulfilled represent a manifestation of a personal vision, a bringing into being, in the physical world, of something that only previously existed as a shadowy trace in one’s neurons. Other people are the background scenery AND the costars AND (usually) the character motivations of this theater “stage” to which Shakespeare compared life:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely Players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts…

Sometimes, rarely, a life-changing event is, rather than a loss or a love or a victory, a reunion.

When I left New York City in early 2015 I was beset by the feeling that my life wasn’t working somehow. All of my plans had come to naught and the trajectories of jobs and hobbies and relationships had shortened and steepened… and all inclined downwards. Now I would recognize the signs and the sensations (in myself or another) as clear indicators of mental illness but-even in the shadow of defeat-I usually remained self-assured and scornful of those kinds of diagnoses, during that time and for years afterward. The truth is that even in my darkest periods I was gainfully employed, I continued to write, I often (perhaps half of the time, during my healthier stretches) continued to work out. I often dated and I had friends, although not close ones. Nevertheless, I felt disconnected, restless, irritable, discontented. These sensations had crept upon me so gradually and were so constant that I could not have identified them at the time. Indeed, their presence wasn’t palpable until they receded and I felt their absence.

Looking back upon those times I see now that the “normal” interactions (dates, trips to the gym or the pool, parties with my roommates and classmates at the house, visits to state parks) were held up triumphantly, by myself. They assumed outsized importance to my self-image and the image which I presented to others. I always made sure to mention them in conversations. They weren’t displayed to myself and others so prominently because I was proud of my socializing or my scattered connections-I’ve always been able to make friends fairly easily. In fact, I can say that since high school there has never been a person I’ve encountered who I felt drawn to who did not end up liking me. I was selective in my friendships and remained slightly more introverted but if I was interested in you you would end up my friend. My exaggerated display of these events and hobbies was rather to show everyone (and, most of all, myself) that I was leading a normal life and that the drugs (or when drugs weren’t around, weightlifting, or sleeplessness, or running-anything to escape the feeling of mundane reality) were just another element. I was trying to convince the world that I was healthy… really I was trying to convince myself.

In appraising hobbies or habits or outlook, etc. you’re either heading upwards in life or you’re heading downwards. The trendline can be very difficult to make out when you’re at that point on the line and addiction makes it much harder. Just as calculating the slope of a line requires two points (with different x values), getting your bearings regarding your life’s direction requires not only a reasonable estimation of where you are in the various areas of your life but where you were. Addiction constantly minimizes the negatives-the hurts, the risks, the losses-and magnifies the positives. Certain worrying trends or developments are forgotten entirely.

I gained some updraft beneath my wings by moving to the beautiful city Tucson, AZ to resume college, and again 2 years later when I had my first brief encounter with recovery in Pennsylvania, and again when I met Dina in Delaware. During this period I graduated from the University of Arizona and began attending law school, but looking back there was simply no win so big and no love so deep that they would have saved me from what was coming. My selfish attitude toward life was no different from the perspective of 100 million other Americans but, unlike most of them, my self-centeredness had been hijacked in the service of a cause and toward and end that would ruin me. I wouldn’t acknowledge it then (although I began to see my folly near the end) but my only hope lay in medical support, mental healthcare, and moral improvement. In recovery the emphasis is placed upon a connection with God, on making “a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of” Him but this is effectively just moral improvement. It’s the discipline of acceptance, of patience, of service, and of selflessness. Anything less than an orientation toward God tends to find the addict serving their own wishes and desires and operating according to their own outlook, while calling it spirituality. This is what I see in many spiritual teachers and thinkers today and it’s what I was doing for awhile at first, without really knowing it. Spirituality is the realm of ideas so complex that their comprehension and execution require serious wisdom and personal growth. They can be summarized in phrases and written on pages but, like the sensations of deep grief or deep love, intimate personal experience is required for understanding. I would argue that is the defining feature of true spirituality.

It has taken me years of healing to understand what the spiritual suggestions of recovery mean. I’ve only recently begun walking down that road. Despite the uncertain patches and the detours and the confusing landscape the farther I go the more I understand the nature of the path and (perhaps) where it leads. I’m certainly better at detecting foreign landscapes and signs of passage which indicate wrong turns than I was, even a year ago.

I came to Florida rather unwillingly. I was full of plans and justifications and desires. My first battle was to understand how little I understood and how badly broken my comprehension and decision faculties were. My second was to begin understanding what therapy and recovery could be and what they might offer. The third (one which derailed me, and derails most others) was trying to integrate the new way of living which I was slowly being shown with the normal imperatives and desires of young American adulthood-car, job, place, girl…wealth, status, image. By then I’d found role models who assured me how trivial (and indeed, for a person in early recovery, dangerous) those pursuits were but my stubbornness and self-assuredness remained and re-emerged after a shockingly brief period of sobriety.

Over the years I committed to living in Florida and began to build a life here. I had one major (protacted) setback but have progressed in knowledge and wisdom throughout. In the small hours of the night, though, when nerve pain or dreams or free floating restlessness kept sleep at bay, the friendships that I’d exited years before mingled with regrets and the hurt of others and my own shame, a winding and accusatory parade of error.

Friendship-true friendship-is of such a nature that its bonds are fairly timeless. They are rooted deep and they grow quickly. Most of the friends I’ve made throughout my life stood out to me from the first days of acquaintance. It’s difficult to point to the base and constant ingredients of friendship but I think they are: the sense of knowing and of being known (truly and deeply) by another, and the sense that the knowledge incurs closeness and liking and respect. It is truly a rare thing to make yourself known to another and one is never fully open, but to make your nature and character known and to receive support and appreciation… that is friendship. Dr. Jordan Peterson says that a friend is one who can hear of your misfortunes and offer pure and sincere sympathy, will even share your dismay (rather than pretending, or even secretly gloating). Conversely a friend is one who can her of your successes and share your gladness, without being afflicted by the indifference or envy which is so common among others.

I began this by writing generally about life-changing events and seeing my friends from years before again recently has been life-changing for me. The simple pleasure felt in their company and the memory of hundreds of easy and familiar days and nights of years past… and the setting down of my own personal regrets which related not only to them but to an entire period of my life-all of these were immediate and profound. Lastly, as the week proceeded I felt the happiness of future anticipation and the knowledge that, barring catastrophe, we would see each other again and soon. Friendships are the only relationships I can recall which are deep enough to withstand the total separation of years, even decades… and they are plain and easy enough to continue after such a long and complicated hiatus as if it had never happened.

Thanks for reading!

Three friends at Monticello