Shecoria | Essays on Becoming

About six years ago, I was romantically interested in a guy for two months or so. During those two months, we spent an absurd amount of time just talking. Both of us love to talk and, even more importantly, love to be silly. After about nine weeks of feeling out the vibes, we came to the mutual understanding that we absolutely were not going to date each other. Ever.

Fortunately, our mutual silliness survived.

We stayed very close friends. We hung out all the time, and even without a romantic spark, he quickly became one of my favorite people. His defining characteristic was that he was fun. I also liked how chaotic he was. He would randomly show up at my house because he was bored and wanted to watch TV. Then I wouldn’t hear from him for months, only for him to reappear with an entire day’s worth of plans like we had spoken yesterday. This kind of inconsistency would probably send me into cardiac arrest if it came from a potential partner, but because the stakes were so low, it was the perfect amount of inconsequential drama for a twenty-something-year-old girl.

The niche nature of our relationship also made me feel obligated to be completely unfiltered around him. I was probably sillier, louder, and more impulsive than normal when we were together. There was nothing to impress him with anymore. He had already decided he didn’t want to date me, and I had decided the same, so we were free. Because of that, I would argue that he has a more accurate idea of who I am than most of my family members.

Which is why I was genuinely shocked when, during a phone conversation one day, he casually referred to us as acquaintances.

Acquaintances?

You have witnessed entirely too much of my personality to demote me to acquaintance.

It really took me aback. Yes, at this point we may only see each other twice a year. Sometimes I take a week to reply to a text. We have both built entirely separate lives that no longer naturally include each other. But does that trump years of history? At what point does someone who knows you deeply become someone you used to know?

His comment made me start thinking about how all of my friends categorize me. I would say I have about fifteen friends and an indeterminable number of acquaintances. But apparently the census may look different depending on who you ask.

Obviously, friendships expire at some point. I wouldn’t consider my elementary school best friend a current friend despite how close we were on the playground. Similarly, I wouldn’t consider the boy I “married” in third grade an ex. Time has clearly removed those people from their former positions in my life. Ten years makes that pretty easy to accept.

Two or three years feels murkier.

After two years of barely talking, I could probably text an old friend and have a completely normal lunch. We could laugh, catch up, and fall back into the same dynamic within twenty minutes. But I also probably shouldn’t invite them on my birthday trip. So what does that make us? Surely there has to be something between close friend and “this girl I used to hang out with.”

I think this has become harder for me to understand after college. Post-grad life scattered my friends across the country, and as a fellow state hopper, I built entirely new circles too. There are people I used to see multiple times a week who I now talk to every few months. I don’t know what they did last Saturday. I might not know the name of their newest coworker or what restaurant they’re currently obsessed with. But I know their family. I know their old heartbreaks. I know what they were insecure about at 20. I know stories about them that would require an hour of context to explain to anyone else.

Surely that counts for something.

The strange thing about adult friendship is that closeness and frequency stop meaning the same thing. Someone I met six months ago might know everything happening in my life right now, while someone I haven’t seen in two years knows versions of me that my current friends have never met. One knows what I had for lunch yesterday. The other knows why I cried in a parking lot in 2021. I’m not sure which one is supposed to count as closer.

I try to keep up. I send the quarterly check-in voice memo. I reply to Instagram stories. I remember birthdays with varying levels of success. Every once in a while, someone and I will have a two-hour phone call that temporarily convinces me nothing has changed. But unless I actually get on a plane, I sometimes feel myself slowly fading from the outskirts of people’s social circles into the oblivion.

Maybe that’s just adulthood.

There is probably a reason people don’t have twenty bridesmaids and girls trips that look like sorority reunions. There are only so many weekends in a year. People get jobs, partners, children, hobbies, new friends and increasingly complicated Google Calendars. At some point, maintaining every friendship at the level it existed when we were 20 becomes mathematically impossible.

Maybe growing up doesn’t necessarily mean loving fewer people. Maybe it just means having the capacity to actively participate in fewer lives.

I can understand that intellectually. Emotionally, I am still a little offended.

Because I don’t think distance immediately turns love into history. I don’t think someone becomes an acquaintance just because I no longer know what they’re doing every Friday night. There are people I haven’t seen in years who I would still show up for tomorrow. There are friendships that aren’t particularly active anymore but don’t feel dead either. They’re just sitting somewhere in between, waiting for one of us to send a voice memo, book a flight, or randomly decide that after eight months of silence we should spend an entire Saturday together.

Maybe eventually some of those friendships will become completely historical. Maybe one day I’ll hear someone’s name and realize I haven’t spoken to them in ten years, and it won’t feel strange anymore. They’ll just be someone I loved during a particular version of my life.

I know I’m getting to the age where the number of people I regularly hang out with might eventually fit on one hand. I know I shouldn’t be offended by that. I know people move, priorities change, and sometimes nobody does anything wrong. You just stop being part of each other’s everyday lives.

I think I just thought I had a few more years before I became a stranger.