Are You Your Friend?

“Would you be your own friend?” I have actually thought about this question as it relates to me personally. I mean, on the plus side, I am always quick to buy the round and happy to share my cigarettes. I am a surprisingly good listener who asks the right questions and usually won’t offer much in the way of advice unless it seems wanted. I do better than average with the commiseration. I can tell a pretty good joke. I will gossip with you about mutual acquaintances in a way that leaves neither of us feeling guilty the next day. I have not thrown up on anyone since high school.

On the other hand, I drink a lot, so I am likely to interrupt you at inopportune moments while I run to the bar for another one. If I’ve had a few too many and something comes on the jukebox that I like I will whistle along. My sarcasm occasionally has too sharp an edge to it, which can be unintentionally hurtful. I have a grating certitude that I understand more about things than is actually the case. I have been known to mansplain. As much as I will listen to you, and I will listen to you as long as you like, I will offer you very little, if any, about my own emotional infrastructure, which I have always thought was an exceedingly polite way to behave but which experience has taught me tends to cause people to feel like they have made themselves bare before me with no gesture of reciprocity. I will keep you out way later than is sensible. So it’s kind of mixed bag.

In the end, I probably would not be friends with me, because, really, what would we have to talk about? But that’s just me. I’m sure you’re a lovely person.

Photo by dabjola, via Shutterstock