Read Online Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume by Jennifer OConnell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jennifer OConnell
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started.â
âYou told Amber that Max liked me.â
âOh, rightâ¦I never did get what was so bad about that.â
âIt was just the last straw,â Rachel said. âI was so mad at you by then.â
âFor what?â
âBecause you didnât like me anymore.â
âNo,â I said, âyou were the one who didnât like me!â
âI didnât like you because you didnât like me!â Rachel said. âYou were best friends with Alison and everyone knew it.â
âBut you had Stacey Green,â I told her. âYou didnât want to be my best friend anymore.â
âThatâs because you didnât want to be mine ! â Rachel shifted her books from one arm to the other. âI felt it was some kind of competitionâ¦me against Alisonâ¦and I was always losing.â
Judy Blume, Just As Long As Weâre Together (Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1987), pp. 292â293.
What strikes me when I reread this book, the one I first read long ago when I was navigating best friendships with girls I only dimly remember now, is how very much like romantic relationships these female best friendships are. They require so much care. So much interest in anotherâs details, thoughts, and emotions. So much effort and attention. The lasting forms of these friendships ease into something like family. The other ones flare and then disappear.
These days, I donât have a best friend. I have close friends but no all-encompassing best friend. I suspect that now, having found The One, thereâs no longer a space for that kind of relationship. I only have so much emotional energy, after all, and if I were to expend so much of it on the maintenance of a friendship like those breathtaking ones of old, what would be left for my partner? My work? Me?
But I donât mean to suggest that you canât have both a Significant Other and best friends. I just donât think you can have a Significant Other and A Very Best Best Friend, with whom you are far too close, in a toxic sort of way.
As you grow older, I think the emotional dependency of that kind of Best Friendship has to ebb away or there would never be any space to form the sort of emotional attachment you need to have with your life partner. Or the sort of relationship that now, in my thirties, I am pleased to have with myself. (Note to teenage self: Itâs true, you can like yourself. Really.)
But knowing that this ebbing is probably inevitable makes me wonder if some of the tensions in those vibrant, heedless, wondrous best friendships come from the fact that they arenât The Real Thing. Seventeen hours of discussing mundane details on the telephone wonât take the place of a lover or a spouse, though perhaps they help fill a space. No wonder these relationships contain as much darkness as they do lightâtheyâre saddled with an unbearable weight. No wonder itâs so rare that we maintain them in the same form forever.
The best sorts of friendships are the ones that adapt. The ones that flex to fit you both as you need them. That seems like common sense, but itâs very hard to find, because not everyone changes at the same time or in the same way. Sometimes friendships are meant to end the moment circumstances change.
Maybe this is what T. discovered as she met and fell in love with her husband (whose name I donât even know). This was always her unapologetic goal, no matter her success: to locate her husband and make her own family. Maybe she discovered, years before I would, that things have to change when that happens. That these partings are inevitable and perhaps even necessary, and because I could not have understood why this was so at the time, she neglected to tell me. And then just disappeared.
But all of this supposes that T. was the one to make all the decisions, as if I had no part in what happened. When, in fact, I knew I was letting go of her.
âYou told Amber that Max liked me.â
âOh, rightâ¦I never did get what was so bad about that.â
âIt was just the last straw,â Rachel said. âI was so mad at you by then.â
âFor what?â
âBecause you didnât like me anymore.â
âNo,â I said, âyou were the one who didnât like me!â
âI didnât like you because you didnât like me!â Rachel said. âYou were best friends with Alison and everyone knew it.â
âBut you had Stacey Green,â I told her. âYou didnât want to be my best friend anymore.â
âThatâs because you didnât want to be mine ! â Rachel shifted her books from one arm to the other. âI felt it was some kind of competitionâ¦me against Alisonâ¦and I was always losing.â
Judy Blume, Just As Long As Weâre Together (Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1987), pp. 292â293.
What strikes me when I reread this book, the one I first read long ago when I was navigating best friendships with girls I only dimly remember now, is how very much like romantic relationships these female best friendships are. They require so much care. So much interest in anotherâs details, thoughts, and emotions. So much effort and attention. The lasting forms of these friendships ease into something like family. The other ones flare and then disappear.
These days, I donât have a best friend. I have close friends but no all-encompassing best friend. I suspect that now, having found The One, thereâs no longer a space for that kind of relationship. I only have so much emotional energy, after all, and if I were to expend so much of it on the maintenance of a friendship like those breathtaking ones of old, what would be left for my partner? My work? Me?
But I donât mean to suggest that you canât have both a Significant Other and best friends. I just donât think you can have a Significant Other and A Very Best Best Friend, with whom you are far too close, in a toxic sort of way.
As you grow older, I think the emotional dependency of that kind of Best Friendship has to ebb away or there would never be any space to form the sort of emotional attachment you need to have with your life partner. Or the sort of relationship that now, in my thirties, I am pleased to have with myself. (Note to teenage self: Itâs true, you can like yourself. Really.)
But knowing that this ebbing is probably inevitable makes me wonder if some of the tensions in those vibrant, heedless, wondrous best friendships come from the fact that they arenât The Real Thing. Seventeen hours of discussing mundane details on the telephone wonât take the place of a lover or a spouse, though perhaps they help fill a space. No wonder these relationships contain as much darkness as they do lightâtheyâre saddled with an unbearable weight. No wonder itâs so rare that we maintain them in the same form forever.
The best sorts of friendships are the ones that adapt. The ones that flex to fit you both as you need them. That seems like common sense, but itâs very hard to find, because not everyone changes at the same time or in the same way. Sometimes friendships are meant to end the moment circumstances change.
Maybe this is what T. discovered as she met and fell in love with her husband (whose name I donât even know). This was always her unapologetic goal, no matter her success: to locate her husband and make her own family. Maybe she discovered, years before I would, that things have to change when that happens. That these partings are inevitable and perhaps even necessary, and because I could not have understood why this was so at the time, she neglected to tell me. And then just disappeared.
But all of this supposes that T. was the one to make all the decisions, as if I had no part in what happened. When, in fact, I knew I was letting go of her.
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