.05 Performing Friendship

As I aged I had no clue how to perform friendship, and learned—from books and magazines and far too many mistakes—how to be and how not to be a friend.

I presumed once I was all grown-up, I’d understand the nuances I’d often misinterpreted.

I’d settle into the deep, protected, and protective friendships I saw others enjoy.

I settled instead onto the peripheries of friendship, and whether this was because it was where I belonged, or because I put myself there, it wasn’t where I wanted to be.

The truth of that edge-dwelling? The veracity of hope, that wishes come to be?

It’s not true belief makes a thing so.

At the same time, it is sometimes true that belief makes a thing so.

My best friend in elementary school was a gift, and I think I knew it at the time.

I’m sure we became friends from happenstance—she lived a block away—but she saved me, over and over.

She spoke out when kids picked on different.

She coached me every day to stand up for myself; told me one day things would change.

She was blonde and beautiful and her mother kissed her good-bye every single morning and I wanted everything she had and to be like everything she was.

My best friend in elementary school was proof but I didn’t know it at the time.

Proof I’d not been lost, as I straddled being in the World, as defined by the 2x2s, with the cult’s unspoken edicts to not be of it.

Proof I had value, even as the parts of me that had once been valued turned into the parts I needed to shun.

Proof the seeds of doubt in me were not of Satan, and were worth tending.

The Workers raged endlessly about the World and the slippery slopes designed to slide us into Satan’s clutches. Cautions about obvious temptations, like TV and attire, were frequent, but the challenge of having us walk among the sinful required a lot of attention.

It’s clearly well understood by most high-control groups that it’s far easier to control people if you purchase a few acres and design a community.

But since 2x2s participated in the world—had jobs, went to school—enforcing the rules (that were never, ever called rules) necessitated a constant, slow drip of cautions against the dangers we willingly subjected ourselves to.

My elementary school peers became gateways, to TVs and immodest clothing, certainly.

But far worse than those very bad things was Satan’s understanding of how easily I might question The Truth if I had Worldly friends, and his willingness to use this against me.

Does short hair actually dishonour God?

Is TV really that bad?

Would missing the odd Meeting to play baseball truly function like a fast train to Hell?

I’d have found my people. I know it.

When you start kindergarten at four, you might struggle to find friends, especially when you throw up on the story-time carpet and poop your pants in the locker room and lie about it when Robbie accuses you of doing so.

You might only be a touch less mature than an immature crowd, but kids decipher difference in an instant. And generally, they don’t appreciate it.

But none of that would have much mattered.

We ran in packs with loose affiliations based on where we lived because back then, we all walked to and from school, and back and forth for lunch.

It might have taken me a bit longer to find that good friend, but looking back?

Even immature, I’d been well on my way.

But the stark line, the sharply drawn demarcation between us and The World meant not only should I not have Worldly friends, I should not want them.

Regardless, around grade five somehow, around the same time I was sinking deeper into the 2x2s, steeping myself in its rules and diktats, I got the good friend I wanted.

My friend’s family was loud and fun. Her mum yelled things like, Is anybody naked? Kristen’s here! when I showed up, an alarming concept given no one was ever naked in my house, except privately in the bath.

I like to think I knew I needed her; in fact, I’m certain I understood that I did.

Because I battled for her.

Ignored Dad’s constant admonitions to not spend time with her (or most anyone else, frankly), this child choosing Satan over God.

Especially her, with her naturally platinum hair, shaped short and spikey, with her ear cuff long before most girls had even their lobes pierced.

Why she took me on, in my weird dresses and with my scraggly long hair, I’ll never fully understand.

She had so many choices. (And later, she made them.)

Maybe she chose me because she had freedom to choose and she used it. She walked her own path, undeterred by what everyone else was doing. She did and dressed and spoke with her own mind; not that of the crowd.

It’s only now, so many years later, I wonder if she identified some strange congruence, between her determination (and freedom) to walk her own path, and my suffering as others decided mine for me, as I walked starkly different, every minute of every day.

Is there a symmetry between her innate and easy confidence, and my reluctant defense of choices I embodied, but were not mine to make?

When she made other choices later, when she selected other friendships and deselected ours, it wasn’t because she’d changed; rather, it was because I had, and I’d done so not in a good way.

I’d allowed myself to sink. I’d decided. If this was hell?

To hell in a handbasket I’d go.

My story isn’t the only story of childhood unhappiness.

I’ve struggled to balance the hurt I felt with what I imagine I reasonably should have felt.

(Still feel.)

And then struggled with the knowledge mine is only one tale of many. We all drag around those invisible baskets of hurt.

I imagine a chart; unhappiness plotted. Mine beside yours, beside hers, beside his.

But while none of mine matters more than another’s, it matters to me, the way yours matters to you.

Or better, it matters as an indication. Of how it was for a long time, and now how it is, but most importantly, of how things can be.

That beautiful blonde girl whose mother kissed her good bye every morning—I wanted to be like everything she was and to have everything she had.

She told me how to stand up for myself when standing up for myself was a sin.

Told me one of the people I stood up to would be, in fact, sorry. (I’m not sure it was sorry he expressed, exactly, years later, but it was some version thereof).

She let me pour out my hurt and watch Days of Our Lives at her house at lunch and taught me to love Snooker, and not pool. She took the lead choir parts and I sang the harmonies and the sound and the feeling of my voice behind hers, well.

I was safe with her. Safe. And that’s something.

I’ve continued to reach for that feeling my whole life and whatever happens, it’s her and others like her who ground me. What the 2x2s taught me about friendship was wrong—all of it.

They had no idea what friendship is or does, but I do.

I do.

If you’re a former 2x2 and navigating friendship feels hard?
It gets better, I promise. It might take a while, but it does.

If you’re a current 2x2 and on the fence?
I can’t tell you it’s easy to leave. It isn’t.

But I can tell you. It’s worth it.