Often I hear things like, “Oh, I know so-and-so. She’s a great friend of mine.” Oh really? But you’ve only known her three weeks! Are you really friends? Do you really love her? Why don’t you try hanging out for at least a few months before you decide, because by then it’s highly likely she’s going to do something to freak you out or upset you. Social acquaintance is not the same as friend; we need to use phrases like, “I love you,” “You’re amazing,” “I’ll do anything for you,” and “You’re my new best friend,” appropriately. We shouldn’t just throw them out at the hostess stand when we’re trying to get a good table.
Most of us are too quick to call people friends, too quick to say “I love you,” and too quick to write people off forever. Instead, we need to accept that whoever we decide to truly love and call a friend will inevitably let us down in our lifetime. This is why we should be very exacting in our selection of who we will place in our No Matter What Club. The people you love most will hurt or destroy you on some level, whether it’s in the immediate future or years down the road. So will your mother (if she hasn’t already), your fiancé, your husband, and your child. It doesn’t make them horrible, worthless, or unredeemable. It just makes them human beings.
Besides, I can promise you you’ll do it right back to them. Especially when you’re young and trying to figure out how to manifest and embrace your own power, a lot of mistakes are going to be made. There are so many distractions in the world that can take you down: vanity, greed, lust, envy, and yes, drugs and alcohol . . . you get it. Sometimes when we’re in the middle of fucking these things, it makes it hard to be good friends. Drugs and alcohol, especially, turn us into marionette puppets; they pull our strings and make us do stupid, regrettable things. I don’t know anyone who drinks, myself included, who hasn’t at some point had to call a friend, play fill-in-the-blanks, and offer apologies for the night before.
When we see people in pain, whether it’s from depression, heartbreak, or drugs and alcohol, we tend to back off, reverting to responses like, “I can’t deal with her,” or “She is so awful when she drinks. I’m done with that.” But if your friend is struggling with depression, alcoholism, an eating disorder, a big breakup, loss of a loved one, paranoia, OCD, ADD—or any of those other three-letter diseases we’ve come to know so well—and you bail on her, then it doesn’t matter what you tell yourself: You are not a real friend.
If a friend were having a heart attack, we wouldn’t walk out of the room saying, “Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re writhing on the floor like a total idiot. This is just not acceptable. You’d better stop that or I’ll never speak to you again.” But when people are suffering spiritual or emotional illness, we tend to kick them to the curb instead of loving them back to life.
I have two good friends whose twenty-seven-year-old son has been struggling for several years with a heroin addiction. He’s been lucky that some of his friends, rather than saying, “It is unacceptable that you came to my house and stole my money,” have rallied to his side, checking him into the hospital and doing their best to get him the help he needs. Obviously, these people subscribe to the No Matter What theory of friendship. But I’m sure that 85 percent of his so-called friends don’t bother talking to him anymore, because he’s a big time-waster.
Well, guess what, everyone we know may at some point end up in the hospital for physical or emotional illness; they’ll have heartbreaks and moments of extreme selfishness and even offensiveness. One thing I can promise you is that life will show you its glory, beauty, and ugliness—it will raise all its heads at some point.
When you think about it, friends who are lost or overextended are really just crying out for help, and they need our friendship and love more than ever. When we see people we know acting in a mean or inappropriate way, we need to move closer to these people. In fact, I believe we should psychically throw them a lifesaver to grab as we pull them back to wellness, family, and heart. We need to treat them as a mother would treat her child.
I don’t know about you, but to me it is such a relief when I do something completely out of whack and absolutely terrifying and my friend says, “That was completely out of whack and absolutely terrifying, but it’s okay. I still love you, and we’re going to get through this.” In fact, for me this is the feeling of “relief.” If you’re a conscious human being you’re probably already feeling ashamed enough as it is!
I know that over the last year, when I’ve really been stressed out with work, motherhood, a recession, two TV shows, the death of my father, and promoting a book, I’ve had some moments of not so nice behavior. A couple of my friends have said, “Are you okay? I am worried about you!” while others have been coy and judgmental, saying things like, “Are you okay? You’re acting kind of weird and agitated. That’s not cool.” To which I want to say, Duh, of course I’m not okay! I have four jobs! Go fuck yourself, I think I’m handling everything just beautifully!
One recent evening, I got a text from my friend Jack. Handsome and wealthy, he said he felt unhappy
