Friendships in flux: On re-thinking relationships

I’m maybe 14-years-old, sitting in the passenger seat of my dad’s silver Honda Accord. Maybe one of my brothers was quietly sitting in the back of the car, maybe it was just my dad and me, I can’t quite remember. 

I’m telling him how I can feel my oldest friend and I drifting apart. I can feel it happening slowly and steadily. She’s slipping away and because I don’t know why, I don’t know how to stop her. I don’t want to lose her. I’ve known her since I’ve known myself; I knew her before I knew myself. 

My dad’s gently explaining to me that sometimes you can’t stop a friendship from drifting. The love and the care is still there but what you represent to them in that moment, because of what they’re navigating in their own life, means they may push you away. 

I’m looking out the window now, at the Meadows, watching the sun set over university students lounging on the grass. 

“Tom-Tom, we don’t have much family here, your friends are your family,” he tells me. I’m still looking out of the window, but I feel him. There’s that mixture of his own hurt and sorrow that as each year passes it becomes harder to go back, left with no choice but to make the most of what we have and to hold it, tightly.

But families are complicated. Nobody asks to be born, and we don’t choose where, or to whom. We’re bonded by genetics, told to love rather than taught. It is a love that isn’t created and nourished through mutual feelings between us but forced upon us because of who we are in relation to each other. It is a love further cemented by the images telling us, shouting at us about how our multiple roles should be played – eldest daughter, big sister, little sister, eldest niece, my list goes on. 

As a teenager and into my early 20s, I struggled with my identity, and so I held on to my friends. We may not have shared genetics; in fact, ours couldn’t be further away from each other. But it’s not just genetics families share: it’s time too. That’s what I clung to. Time became a badge of honour, linked to my identity, the greatest display of my loyalty and empathy; we’ve been friends for – insert number – years. So, we’re family. 

And then, after 25 years, I moved myself out of my comfort zone, to a new city with a different time zone and two different languages. I had to make new friends. In family relationships you create your boundaries during the relationship, but they should be part of the foundation. It can be difficult to establish these boundaries and leave room for growth in already established relationships. So, when you have an opportunity to begin afresh, it’s kind of exciting. 

What kind of friend am I and what kind of friend do I want to be? What am I willing to give and not to give? What do I need, what does this person need, and can I provide that? 

In the last 18 months I’ve made new friends, who I thought would become family, who are no longer friends. Maybe they didn’t respect my boundaries; perhaps our values were in opposition; maybe we realised that we move through the world too differently and that the friendship simply couldn’t continue. Whatever the reason, it’s OK. I know my boundaries, they’re an extension of me. Some of them change as I do, some of them do not. But I won’t allow them to be disrespected.  

It's led me to reflect on the friendships that I’ve held on to because of time. They aren’t perfect. They don’t align with all my values, my thoughts, or ways of life – but should they? Nothing is perfect but am I lying to myself that these relationships work simply because of the time we’ve shared? And yet my dad’s words still echo in my head whenever I try to slip away. 

That friend, the one who I felt was slipping away from me at 14 – she did slip. We both drifted from each other. Then we came back together again, on our own terms, like no time had passed between us even though we were older and different, we found our flow. She feels like home, she is my family. I’m lucky to be able to call her my oldest friend, so maybe time does count for something...