Just Not My Style

You know how at least once a year you're supposed to go through your closet and get rid of any clothing you haven't worn in awhile. I have a hard time doing this. I see that shrunken, hot pink, v-neck shirt that has been hanging in my closet for over a year and I think I can wear that somewhere. I don't know where since I don't wear shirts that don't fit over my belly and can't remember the last time I wore anything hot pink but I don't want to throw it away. Eventually though, I do throw it away along with the teal sweater with the fabric softener stains. I realize that I don't miss what I so desperately wanted to hang on to. Now is it fair to do the same with friendships? If you haven't talked to the person in over a year, should you rethink how that friendship fits into your life? Although one may argue that comparing an inanimate object with a human is degrading and unfair, it's still valid. Just like that hot pink shirt that once matched your life and no longer does, the same can be said for friends.

I value my friendships. I don't make a list of friends to purge out of my life every year as I do with my wardrobe, but I have figured out that you don't have to be BFF with someone just because you're friends with their friend's, ex-boyfriend's, brother's roommate. I don't feel like we have to act like friends if I haven't talked to you in four years. I say this because I'm not the person who will say, "Great to see you!", when really I'm thinking, "Fuck, it's you." I'm just not.

About a year ago a friend of mine and I had an argument about why I wasn't friends with someone who once was a mutual friend of ours. I'm just not, I said. He wanted to know if we had a falling out and we hadn't. We just moved in different ways, that's it, no big explanation, no heated dramatic blow up. I just realized the kind of person she was was not the kind of person I wanted to be around. I wanted to believe the friend that I once knew was the same person he still saw, but it wasn't. In college, all your friends seem like the most fun, the most understanding people you've ever met and usually they are. The main reason being you are all going through the same thing, on the same path trying to survive college until graduation. The partying makes you friends, the studying late at night for finals, the quest for graduation makes you all immediately have something in common, but there has to be something more. There has to be respect, trust, something that either you see in someone or don't. I don't ask people to meet for lunch if I know that meeting will never happen. I do the obligatory 'How are you?' when someone I haven't seen in awhile asks how I am, but other than that I understand that if I have absolutely no idea what's going on in a person's life who I once called a friend, it's usually for a reason. We don't have to make promises we won't keep. It's not Girl Scout camp.

The thing is this, for a long time I used to think it was me being too quick to cut someone out, but I am loyal, like a dog, until I sniff you out and find out that you are a liar or two-faced or anything else that I don't find appealing in a friend. I have been that friend that has had someone lie to my face, talk about me behind my back and deny it and it's just not worth it. It's not worth it when I have fantastic friends, friends who I don't have to question or worry about. It's like your favorite sweater that you pull out every winter and it goes with everything you own, you'd wear it every day if you could. You know that if you can't wear it because the weather is too warm, it'll still be there for as long as you need it. And, that's something you don't give away or replace. That's something you hold on to forever. Because things like that never go out of style.