Untitled S&R Chapter Twenty-Five
Untitled S we’ll be here for hours, and I need to get back to the office before my interns notice I’m missing.
My point is, this isn’t about picking a side and hoping you’re on the right one.
The minute you start asking people what they would do, you’re in big trouble.
Only you know whether you can have a baby. ”
I mean to stop there but can’t help but smile at how Lin that paragraph is, and I miss her all over again. I think about our brunch date and end up writing more.
Once R is back on the Eurostar the following morning, she thinks about L. Not only about what she said, but how much R has missed her.
Yet, there is a small, gnawing part of R that wonders if L, on her way back to Los Angeles, will even think of R once she boards her flight. R knows she was a good friend to L, but enough for L to feel her absence?
R hates feeling this way: needy. Emotionally clingy. Yet, truth be told, R is hurt. It hurts that L could fly thousands of miles to Paris, be significantly closer to R and not think to see her. Something that, if the geographical roles were reversed, R couldn’t conceive of doing herself.
Reciprocity.
R doesn’t know how she feels about the word.
On the surface, it’s all about fairness and mutual benefit, but she knows there’s also an underlayer of selfishness.
An element of, “If I can do this, you should be able to do it, too. If you’re not going to do this for me, why should I do that for you?
” R thinks about how this concept applies to friendship.
Is it even possible to give and take evenly?
Out of the four friends, R is putting in the most visible and tangible effort.
M is perhaps next, but she’s also a new mother, a wife, and has recently moved out of the city.
Can her efforts be fairly measured against R, who has the time, energy, and mental capacity to be there for her friends, to constantly check in, to book a train out of London with twelve hours’ notice?
If so, does that make M a worse friend than R?
How do we consider L’s demanding job or N’s grief over losing a loved one and her attempt to hold on to a relationship in the aftermath?
Is either a valid excuse to not match R’s energy?
And while we’re on the topic, shall we discuss R’s energy for a minute?
Her constant need to attach herself to her friends may be due to her inability to be alone, a problem she is foisting on her friends, when perhaps a therapist might be better suited.
Maybe being “a good friend” to someone should depend on that person’s definition of friendship.
If R’s definition is constant communication, all three women are failing.
But what if L’s definition is finding solutions to a friend’s problem?
If M’s is understanding individual needs, while N’s is unequivocally supporting a person’s decisions? Then who here is being a “good friend”?