In the pits of your own sadness, a friend will become necessary.
In that moment, whoever is most available will turn into the person who is most appropriate.
This person will become the immediate recipient of your textual and vocal complaints, the one to whom you lament at the occurrence of every bit of misfortune.
Your friend’s necessity will rest upon your loneliness, despair and grief, your selfish need, and your own desire to be heard in a world that seems averse to listening.
But at some point, the situation causing you torment will end. Then, what do you do with your friend?
Your friend, now no longer merely a page in your diary that can speak back through sympathetic emoji, will suddenly become a realer human being to you, with its own emotions, preferences and opinions.
You will find that your friend too has things to say in response to what you have said, and things entirely apart from anything you could have said; a unique, fascinating personality that you had been too self-centered to appreciate for so long.
You will find that you like your friend, a lot more than most human beings.
Now that your life has changed, this person is the first with whom you share good news.
You will discover, in surprised delight, that your friend is no longer simply the person who helps carry your sorrow when it gets too heavy for just you, but is now the person without whom if joy is not shared, it does not feel complete.
And during relapses, when you’re not sure why you do life, or if you even want to anymore, you won’t stop living, because your friend will become your “because.”
Author’s note: I experienced an overwhelming desire to go and look for this thing that I wrote in my journal at the beginning of 2015 (I can’t believe that wastwo years ago!), due to sentiments I experienced today that reminded me of the sentiments I had while I wrote it. In fact, the subject of this entry is the very same as the recipient of my spoken word letter “Ephemeron“. I haven’t edited it. All the saltiness of that time deserves to be displayed in it. Also, I feel like you can tell that my 2015 voice is different from my 2016 voice – but maybe that’s just me. For some reason, I think I’ll be psychologically freer if I share it. So I quickly typed it up a few minutes ago, and here it is.
When Your Male Best Friend Becomes Someone Else’s Boyfriend
When your male best friend becomes someone else’s boyfriend, you should know beforehand that a lot of things are going to end between you. I’m sorry. Not even your “best-friendship” can save it. It’s gone. A lot of things that weren’t important are going to suddenly become big deals that blow up in your face. A lot of things that merited the utmost importance are suddenly going to fall into the category of “trivial” – at least for him.
And half the time, it’s not even his fault.
But he had the power to save the friendship, and he didn’t.
Actually, it’s always his fault.
No. It isn’t.
But don’t get mad at her. Of course it’s all her fault, but also, it isn’t. It’s the fault of the desire to possess, to seek the merit of priority, to own everything. Power. Relevance. Megalomania. It’s not her fault. She’s new in the system. She had no idea what she destroyed. She can’t feel it. It wasn’t even her intention to destroy anything in the first place, you know. It just happened – and it’s not a recognizable problem in her world, because she’s happy.
When your male best friend becomes someone else’s boyfriend, a lot of things are going to end. Like your gradual refusal to keep employing the title “best”. Like the amount of time you even spend being friends. Because you are female, every hug between you is infidelity. Every look longer than five seconds is infidelity. Every shared inside joke, every tickle, every poke, every phone call longer than five minutes is infidelity.
When your male best friend becomes someone else’s boyfriend, a lot of things are going to end. He won’t continue to tell you everything because he doesn’t owe you all of his honesty anymore. You won’t tell him everything anymore, because why give out everything when you can’t get anything back? When he becomes her boyfriend, he’ll look for you less. You will wonder if it’s because he’s suddenly left the social circle and then you’ll see him with her.
You will get tired of being neglected and you will confront him. He will acknowledge that he is at fault. He will acknowledge that there is a problem. Then he will begin to say “hi” to you two more times in the week than he usually does – and nothing else will get done.
Eventually, you will give up because you can see that he is happy. You will feel like a selfish jerk for resenting being abandoned for his own happiness. You will also resent others for telling you that his girlfriend is more important than you are. You will get tired of being told that when you find your own significant other, you will understand. You will get your own significant other. You will still not understand.
When your male best friend becomes someone else’s boyfriend, you will wonder when the precise moment in history it was that the strength of ordinary friendship lost its value.
-Akotowaa
P.S. I found the genesis of the actual poem Ephemeron, only a few pages before the one this post itself was on. I was looking for numerous ways to express myself. I didn’t actually finish Ephemeron the poem until more than a year after I began it.
It’s so interesting to see Ephemeron’s genesis. LOL
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