Letting myself have friends again
There was once an artist who felt so lonely she decided to draw a manga series about friends she never had. Her wishful thinking went on to become the global phenomenon “Sailor Moon.”
That wishful thinking swelled within me while watching a motley trio of super-powered women become lifelong friends in “The Marvels.” For years, Carol Danvers had isolated herself after committing an atrocious crime against Kree-manity, triggering genocidal colonialism as revenge. She doesn’t believe herself worthy of friendship or even affection and spends her days in her spaceship reliving memories of her mistakes (literally, through Kree technology that replays memories).
When her long-lost (non-biological) niece, Monica Rambeau, and an enthusiastic fan girl, Kamala Khan, end up on her ship, she finds herself unmoored. Here she was sharing her home with human beings, for the first time in so long. They have to learn how to work together, which means building trust where there is no familiarity. In the process, they become comrades who would sacrifice themselves for each other. They become friends.
I couldn’t help but feel a dull ache in my chest. These were the friends I never had.
My wedding was a time for razing friendships. Entire tables were removed from the floor plan.
The wedding was a smashing success. My wife and I had a wonderful time, and our family were all there. I had one thought towards the end: Thank God those other people didn’t show up, because I wouldn’t be able to have so much fun.
Still, after returning to life as usual, I found myself thinking about these people I had thought were no-brain-yes’s. People who were among the first I wrote down when brainstorming who to invite. Friendships I had invested in and nurtured for over a decade.
Of course, that was the problem. When someone couldn’t offer a simple congratulations or even a thank you before bragging about the awesome camping trip she was going on the weekend of my wedding, I realized how one-sided our affections had been. When someone tried to use her kids as an excuse for not being to attend, even though I had planned out enough seats for her entire family ever since booking the venue three years ago, I let it be her final signal to me that she would always have an excuse. When friends I had been checking in with for months and months never RSVP’d because they never got around to “checking their schedule,” I realized how little I had ever been a part of their itinerary.
When Carol, Monica, and Kamala first collide, they don’t have much time to talk. They have to fight off aliens — in three different locations, because every time the girls use their powers, they end up switching places. They actually don’t collide, literally speaking. It’s only afterwards when they find each other to figure out what the hell’s going on that they see each other face-to-face. There’s no time to talk, though. They’re whisked away to yet another fight for their lives when one of them is taken hostage.
One of the building blocks of Kamala and Carol’s friendship happens during their first proper conversation, about a third into the movie. Carol apologizes for being sharp with Kamala, and Kamala apologizes for not giving Carol enough space to be a human being.
Writing letters and heart-to-hearts tend to not work for me. I only recently realized this was because I’d lived my life in such a way that I’d surrounded myself with people who didn’t care about my point of view. For various reasons I was used to it, this sneering, this teasing I mistook for affection when really it was condescension.
Thankfully a couple of extremely hurtful events woke me up to how I’d lived my life in such a toxic way.
As the wedding loomed months away, I felt nervous. I was mourning the loss of a friendship (one that would foreshadow the loss of more friendships), and worried about how family from various countries could reach us with the shifting grid of COVID-19 restrictions.
I told myself to be grateful for what I did have. I mustered up the courage to invite the people who made me nervous and remind them repeatedly of the wedding date.
In hindsight, I can see my nervousness was intuition I had learned to suppress.
Before my wedding, a cluster of friends pulled a Regina George move on me that was so shockingly juvenile it wounded my ego. The Plastics invited me to visit NYC for a weekend, asked me for my plans, and wouldn’t tell me any of theirs. I had a sneaking suspicion they had plans. I’d traveled with one of them before and remembered how we’d made a Google Spreadsheet to jointly plan an itinerary. But we’d grown since then, and everyone was busy, and anyway I had other friends I could meet.
I texted them. “It’s fine if you already have plans. Just let me know so I can make my own.” They made no response except to “Like” my message. I emphasized, “But my main priority is you guys.”
On my way there on the Friday train, I ended up booking Sunday brunch with the Plastics because I got weirded out by the lack of updates. Then, I found out they not only had a Google Spreadsheet packed with plans they had made without me, but that they had no intention of attending the brunch I had booked — even though they told me they had time for it — because the restaurant wasn’t fancy enough to be on their list of restaurants.
They wanted to go to a ramen shop. It was out of the way, less convenient than the brunch spot I had booked right next to Penn Station, but I could make it before catching my train. Then they made it clear: if I couldn’t make it to the ramen shop, they would see me next time.
Seeing me for the first time in years was less important than checking out a ramen shop. Suddenly I felt like a fool for being willing to travel to see these girls. I fumed, and I cried.
Now, I’m so grateful the Plastics so callously broke my heart.
Right after watching “The Marvels” on Thursday of opening weekend, my wife and I texted my brother. “It was so good!” We not-so-subtly lobbied for him to watch it — maybe with us.
We booked the tickets. We buzzed with anticipation in the intervening weeks while chatting about flerkins and Brie Larson’s triceps and Kamala’s infectious enthusiasm and the fight sequences with coordinated teleportation-like-place-switches. Chemistry crackled between the leads: a brooding Captain Marvel, an ebullient Ms. Marvel, and the mature but wounded Monica Rambeau.
More than anything, the part of “The Marvels” that stuck with me was the tone. It was a dysfunctional family road trip, a heartfelt meditation on the importance of forgiving yourself, and, in one scene, an operatic musical.
It was wacky, it was wild, and it worked.
For months after the disastrous weekend in NYC, I collected my breath and assessed my life. Part of this wake-up call entailed distancing myself from the mutual friend who chastised me for getting mad at the Plastics.
These betrayals from people I’d considered close made me paranoid. If I’d opened my heart to these people because I was, for lack of a better word, a people pleaser, what if all the friends I’d made as a people pleaser had the same disdain for me?
I put a pause on making friends. I asked myself what it meant to be friends. It wasn’t admiration without self-respect. It wasn’t endless consideration of others. There was something more fundamental missing.
Despite gifts and text messages and likes on Instagram, I had long ago stopped feeling safe around these people. I tried hard to get their attention and approval. I second-guessed what I said, because I’d heard how they’d made fun of others, even me. I knew their standards, and through that silent (often not-so-silent) hen-pecking that sometimes happens between women, I knew I always had something to prove. I had bent myself into a convenient size just to stay in their presence, because I valued it more than my dignity.
I had to reassess what it meant to feel safe. What it meant to feel myself around people, knowing I wouldn’t be rejected for it. What it meant to not fear rejection.
I had a good start. The people who didn’t show up for my wedding had taught me the opposite.
Another group of people took me across the finish line.
I watched “The Marvels” a second time. This time, I settled in between my wife on one side and my brother on the other. As the lights went off, I realized — once again — that I did, in fact, have friends. It took me days after the NYC incident to realize it for the first time, but sometimes I still forgot.
Here they were — my closest friends, my wife and my brother. The three of us went hiking and drinking and shopping together. We’d helped each other move, dogsat for each other, and made dumplings together for Lunar New Year. We knew the details of each other’s personal and work lives, and we weren’t afraid to crack toilet jokes. We are wacky, we are wild, and we work.
We had fun watching “The Marvels,” then cooking a turkey together for Thanksgiving the day after. Thanks to my wife and my brother, working on myself proved fruitful. I know what it’s like to have friends, and I’ve become appreciative of the ones I do have: the others who showed up to my wedding, all smiles and sincere congratulations. I have a radar that goes off around Plastics, a radar I’ve already used to snip new relationships in the bud.
Most importantly, I have a better sense of self, which puts me in the clear to make better friends going forward. With my wife and brother, my Kamala and Monica, I can finally relax and let myself have friends again.
