Recognizing
that I have Friendship Halitosis has been a difficult but necessary
part of my early thirties. From 4th grade onward, I found I was markedly
deficient in friendship skills. My chronic Foot in Mouth Disease,
coupled with a relentless honesty that came across as tactlessness was
bad enough. What made it worse was a prodigious vocabulary,
eccentricity, and way too much reading. These combined together to give
me the Stench of Social Outcast; which ultimately led to what I like to
call Friendship Halitosis.
What is Friendship Halitosis? It is desperation, coupled with a
demanding spirit. Even now, years after those bleak years in primary
education, the fear of finding myself lonely again will push me to
heroic feats of friendship. I truly love to be involved in my friends'
lives, but on a subconscious level I feel I must perform to be
acceptable to them - remembering birthdays, invitations to see movies or
watch TV, helping them move, attending Pampered Chef parties, baked
goods, backrubs, awesome Christmas and wedding presents - but there is
an aura, a smell of fear that I give off even when I am being the best
friend in the world, and it turns me into Pepe Le Peu. Friends can't get
away from me fast enough.
The unfairness of it all - how very hard I've worked to keep up "my
side" of the friendship! - frustrates me, and so I call, or email, or
suggest an outing, or an invitation to lunch or dinner. And they refuse,
or do not respond at all. Which makes me angrier, and more frustrated,
so I try even harder - I silently demand that they reciprocate my
friendship in like manner. The halitosis is great enough at this point
to floor a superhero, so of course everyone in my vicinity heads for the
hills. It is a self-perpetuating stench, which only recedes when I
collapse from exhaustion and give up.
Having finally understood the pervasive nature of this disease, I make
the best effort I can to back away when I start to see the metaphysical
wincing of my nearest and dearest. It takes an enormous effort of will
to not give in to self-pitying flights of fancy and childish daydreams
of "how sorry they'd be if I were dead." To indulge those thoughts is to
feed the disease. No, it takes a firm brushing with reality and a
concerted effort to find solitary entertainments, like endless stacks of
videos from the library or a reeeeealllly good cross-stitch project. I
feed my Inner Geek for a while, and eventually may venture out again,
bearing firmly in mind to make no demands lest halitosis begin to
pervade my life again.
This is not to say that my friends haven't been unfair or disappointing
- it's not always my fault - but how I choose to respond has been like
that of an adolescent. I may have been reading James Mitchener when I
was in 5th grade, but I traded that in to behave like a 5th grader in my
twenties and thirties. I may have the best intentions in the world, and
truly enjoy my friends, but self-consciousness and self-interest still
play way too big a part of my interactions with people.
"There is luxury in self-reproach ... When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us." -- Oscar Wilde
