There is some degree of selfishness required in exiting dynamics that feel negative or one-sided or even just tedious. There is sadness and guilt. And yet: it’s a liberating move.
Clarity is there on the flipside, too. More than ever, I value my true friends because I know who they are: the ones I’ve been able to grow with, even when our lives have moved in different directions—when geographic proximity is no longer, when the abundance of keg-fueled nights has waned and memories aren’t easily replenished. These lasting friendships are fed by reciprocal effort, by tolerance, by radical honesty.
I now better understand why that nerve was hit. It wasn’t that I was threatened by my friends having lunch without me, although I do feel protective of the friendships I’ve worked to prioritize. But ultimately, my reaction was tangled up in my role as a mother, as a person who continues to grapple with the ebbing of her autonomy, the loss of that fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants independence I once took for granted.
In my early twenties, I packed up and moved to San Francisco on a whim, without ever having visited California. Now, I can’t even run to the post office without checking in with my husband—will the family be okay without me for fifteen minutes? Outside of our weekly 28 hours of childcare, I need permission to take a shower. I know, rationally, that it won’t always be this way—my children are very little. It is a precious, fleeting, sacred collection of minutes and hours I will never get back. But even with this perspective, even as I know I wouldn’t have been able to make it to Queens for a last-minute lunch, there is still a stubborn, irrational part of me that wants to pretend otherwise. That wants to act like spontaneity stands a chance.
A week or so after the US Open snafu, Rose reached out to say she was having a very last-minute, belated birthday dinner in the city the following evening. I knew she hadn’t wanted to do anything for her birthday. I knew this dinner, at a Korean barbeque spot she loved, would be very casual. I knew she was being extra mindful to include me in city plans after the other day, and I also knew—with a stab of hypocrisy—that I didn’t want to go. It was mid-week, my daughter had been sleeping like shit, and I was feeling particularly run-down and slammed with work.