“Defriending isn’t just unrecognized by some social oversight; it’s protected by its own protocol, a code of silence. Demanding an explanation wouldn’t just be undignified; it would violate the whole tacit contract on which friendship is founded. The same thing that makes friendship so valuable is what makes it so tenuous: it is purely voluntary. You enter into it freely, without the imperatives of biology or the agenda of desire. Officially, you owe each other nothing.”
“The Anti-Kreider Club” by Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing
Silly misunderstandings tend to ensue on Tumblr, a website riddled with coding flaws and a UI seemingly designed by the same genius who invented the comedy of errors. A simple slip of the finger could sever the tenuous ones and zeroes linking me to my soulmates as far as across the Pacific (or, occasionally, as near as a few hours’ ride on the state freeways). This has happened a few times with my friend X, but in those cases, he’d immediately unblock and re-follow with a quick “ignore that lol” text.
But I couldn’t ignore it as I usually do when last week I went over to check on him, only to be kicked unceremoniously back to the main page. My follower count diminished by one, the absence of his inveterate icon in my notifications like an empty chair at the dinner table, or a gap where a wisdom tooth should’ve been.
Did he deactivate? This was not as common, but still likely; last year, the incompetent hucksters running the website had suspended his account for mysteriously unexplained reasons. Meanwhile, I’d been the one fielding questions from other mutual friends worried about his sudden disappearance. But I knew his whereabouts—I had his Instagram, a more familiar bond than mere mutualship. We were close friends, privy to confidential details that we would never share on the other website. I know his face, his legal name, his alma mater, his hobbies, his activities outside of school, his internship, his problems, his fears. I knew him. Until just last week I could have sworn any oath that I knew him.
So when I checked and he was still there, my fears were alleviated. There he was, posting as if nothing was wrong. Everything was still fine. And I thought: it’ll be really funny when X notices this later.
—
I made my first Tumblr account in the antediluvian August of 2014. Appalled by the mundane depravities of mid-2010s internet meme culture on 9gag, I’d decided that my delicate sensibilities and I deserved better. I packed up my little hankie-and-stick and hedged my bets on a more forgiving frontier, an Arcadian paradise where sensitive old souls and creative minds huddled for warmth against a world that—as was becoming evident—just don’t Get It, man. (Also, my favorite screenshotted jokes were from there anyway, so I just cut the middleman.)
Well, huddle we did—and tangled in knots like rat kings. It was lawless in a way that can only come from scooping up all the emos and dweebs and hipsters and all other specialized rejects of high school, dropping us all in one greasy blue bucket, and drilling the lid shut. And the UI was even more inexplicable than it is now—but these details are incidental. Window dressing. Nostalgia for something that could not be appreciated until one day we woke up and it was gone.
But I didn’t know that back then, so in the meantime I made some friends. I followed the ley lines of my interests; I was deep in the trenches of a middle-grade historical fiction series about a teen girl’s cross-dressing maritime exploits. Here she’s a spy, there she’s Goya’s muse, then surviving Trafalgar, now leading a squadron against Napoleon’s Grande Armée. Meeting the Duke of Wellington himself! I wanted to be her, you see, but in the absence of cool man-of-wars and sexy brigantines in my area (so much is the pity!), I simply had to make do with the next-best thing: immersing myself in the history of it.
This is how I came to know X; he, too, was a fan. Not of something so juvenile as Bloody Jack, no—he was serious, more deeply interested in the real, historical context of the French Revolution. He acted with a confidence that is still difficult to find in most adults, let alone someone of our age at the time.
Especially not from me, with my tendency towards the cavalier. It was an overcompensation for being a solemn—and therefore unlikable—child. Intensity was isolating, so I tried not to care instead, distancing myself from what I had diagnosed as the cause of my loneliness. But X did not seem to feel that self-consciousness, the stray hand tugging down his sleeve. He was, and still is, unflinchingly intelligent.
I was intimidated. I wanted to be his friend.
That did happen eventually, though I’d be hard-pressed to remember the exact progression. It involved, alongside a portrait of the first Duke of Wellington, the typically bashful courtships between two new mutuals on Tumblr. What I do remember is the last bit of an exchange: I’d left a comment unanswered, believing that another reply would have been unnecessary. No one likes someone who’s too eager and pushy. But then, X sent me a message, prompting me to “idk, do something.” That, then, was the beginning.
—
He still hadn’t noticed the mistake, and the humor of the situation was dissipating by the day. But if so, then why not block me from everything else? He wasn’t the type to overlook important details. The ring of his Instagram icon still glowed green for me just a few days ago. What could it possibly mean? My doubts grew. Still, I couldn’t be pushy; he might take it as suspicious behavior and cut me off completely. And anyway, hysteria was clingy.
I tested the waters: “You blocked me on Tumblr !!” Ungrammatical space before two exclamation points denoting non-threatening humor. I wasn’t a serious person. I wasn’t mad. I wouldn’t hold this against him. I closed my phone and forgot about it for the rest of the day. He’d respond in his own time.
—
Our friendship flourished like kudzu. Seeing his interest in video games and other age-appropriate things, I quickly realized that he could be just as much of a child as me—even more, technically. He was younger by almost a full year even though we were in the same grade. I admired his intellect and bravery, though perhaps not without envy.
He always had the correct answer for whatever discourse of the week crossed our way, and he said them with such conviction that I could not help but be convinced. Call it intellectual laziness, but from where I stood, it was simply the smarter option to bet on the surer thing. I hated being wrong, after all, and I especially hated being wrong in his eyes. Being wrong was dangerous. I’d seen how precisely he could cut someone in an argument; I did not want that scalpel turned against me.
And sometimes it wasn’t just about discourse or having the most accurate information or politically or ethically correct stance. Those weren’t even the ones I remember the most. No, it was something entirely trivial: a teen romcom. I loved some innocuous movie and wouldn’t shut up about it. Within the week, he was posting about how asinine and childish it was, and everyone who loved it must be a drooling idiot. He didn’t tell me directly, but I got the message nonetheless.
Obviously, I know that people are entitled to a difference in opinion. I don’t make a habit of throwing a fit over someone criticizing something I like—I’m not that thin-skinned. It was just the way he said it with such disdain that made me feel so stupid for my excessive enthusiasm, for my lack of critical thinking.
When it happened, I’d been on the road with my parents—picking up birthday burgers for me—and I cried like a fucking baby, gaze averted toward the black and white tiles of the booth while waiting for our meal, my parents looking on with befuddled concern. I deleted all the posts about that movie as soon as I could. I watched the rest of the trilogy as it came out but never posted about it in public again.
I never told him about any of that.
In any case, I learned that it was easier to wait on his word, no matter what it was. If he hated something, so did I. If he thought the people were too short-sighted, then I agreed. If I didn’t know the context of something, or how to do something, or how to feel, I turned to him. He was right, he was always right; what would I even know?
I wonder what he must have thought of me. Now, I’m not so sure that the feeling was mutual.
Whatever it was, it must have been positive at one point, at least enough that he could tolerate being writing partners with me for a couple of years. Something that had started as a silly joke between us snowballed into an epic, irreverent sci-fi adventure starring those historical figures we bonded over, resurrected in what once counted as present-day back in 2017, and ourselves as a couple of plucky and indistinct side characters. We traded hands at the wheel, writing a chapter each for every one that the other would send, exclaiming at the next plot twist or innovation. I still keep an archive of material for that project on my blog—surreal posts about wizardry and strange occurrences that seemed plausible in our shared little universe.
We’d published them online, chapter by chapter under an account in his name. I can no longer find it. Somewhere down the line, he’d assumed full control of our pet project when I’d been unable to write anything for months and he graciously offered to take the burden off my hands. Maybe he still works on it, if that is the “personal writing project” he sometimes refers to.
I still have some of the scenes I wrote, stored in some unlabeled folder. In one of them, I crashed a helicopter into a pirate-commandeered cruise ship and grew fifty-foot sea vines with magical fallout.
—
Seen five hours ago, but unanswered. I didn’t expect that lukewarm acknowledgment, but somehow it was as if I didn’t expect anything else either. On the other website, he did unblock me, but he didn’t re-follow. Maybe too late, I finally realized that something was wrong.
This, too, had happened before. Just not to me.
—
He had opened up more as I got to know him. It would make for a far more satisfying and cohesive essay to detail here the secrets he told me, and the things I’ve done in light of them, but I cannot do it. Despite everything, I cannot rescind the loyalty I had already given so freely. Maybe the mere apophasis is already a betrayal, the implication of some unnamable crime. There is none. You don’t need to know anything else, except this: I did the right thing.
After that, I felt like there could be no reason left that could drive us apart. Some blood price had been paid beneath the glow of a full moon (realistically, it was a Sunday spring afternoon), a sacrifice, a secret that bonded us together all the way to our graves.
We were so tightly bound that I even assumed—or was accidentally bestowed—the authority of being his defense attorney. Whenever someone had a problem with X, I’d find myself the mediator to answer questions about or on behalf of him.
One of these cases was when he blocked a friend we had in common. She was not from our original cadre of history fans, which had thinned out considerably over the years. This friend in common followed me first, then found X that way. She’d been following him for a while but found herself blocked without explanation.
“Do you know why?” she asked me. “I messaged him on his other blog but he blocked me there, too.”
Meanwhile, on that other blog, a dedicated resource for fans of a certain popular classic author, he’d made an apparently non-sequitur complaint. If he’d blocked you on his personal blog, it said, then don’t bother asking him for a reason on this one.
When I asked him myself what happened, he simply replied that our younger friend was acting suspiciously. There wasn’t much I could say to that, not when I knew his reasons well. I let the matter lie. I turned around to the other person and smoothed it over. It’s just the way he is. It isn’t your fault, but I’m sorry this happened.
This happened more than once, and each time I watched it happen, dispassionate. It happened to them, and I sympathized with them, and I remained friends with them. Still, I took his side. I never asked him to explain—as long as it didn’t happen to me.
—
Despite knowing that, I couldn’t help but try.
“Is something wrong? I don’t mean to sound pushy, and if there is then I suppose there’s nothing to explain, but I just wanted to address if I’d done or said something.”
This is the last message I sent X.
—
It’s been a couple of weeks and I can barely feel those lost eight years. Was it really that fast? For him to let me go, and for me to move on? I know I felt it so keenly just sixteen days ago—if I didn’t, would I have been moved to this desperate grasping for the final word, a definitive stance?
This is not the first time that a one-sided friendship of mine, where the other party never considered my feelings, has abruptly ended without closure. For the record, this is the third. Those other two merit letters of their own, if I could be bothered to think of them years after the fact. (If you’re out there, I hope one of you is doing better, and I hope the other falls off a sheer cliff. You know which is which.)
Point is, I’m an old hat at being left behind. The only difference between the first two and this one is that X was my friend for twice the time I knew the other two, put together. What are two years each compared to eight years total? I was closer to X than I’d ever been to most of my cousins. Once, I’d stayed up with him until three because he thought he had skin cancer, only to realize in the morning that we had the same suspicious dark line on our opposite thumbnails. In my mind, I’d already fashioned him as my other half, in a Platonic sense. My mirror image, my shadow. I’d never met him in person; he would’ve been invited to my wedding.
I wasn’t even surprised when he finally left. Some part of me must have known that it was only a matter of time since I’d spent so much of those final years walking on eggshells just to keep him around.
Yet I cannot resent him for any of it, either. Even now, I still give him the benefit of the doubt. He wasn’t abusive, or evil, or a monster. He was just a flawed person that I’d put on a pedestal. I know that he cares for other people; I know that he fights for his causes. I also know that he’s still one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known.
But none of those things ever stopped him from making me feel so awfully foolish. None of that ever stopped him from not caring about how I must have felt. And none of that excuses him from having been a horrible friend.
I suppose I can only be thankful now for the good things he did bring into my life: a creative outlet, an early introduction to my current political views, an enduring interest in certain literary figures, a more critical and cautious eye. A healthy dose of paranoia which has made me more aware of internet safety and opsec protocols.
I do miss him. I seem fine now, but I know that later I’ll wonder what I’d done so wrong that I could be abandoned, and what else I could have done to be the kind of friend he would have wanted to keep.
It doesn’t matter. Not all patience is rewarded. Not all love is returned. Not everything that begins, ends cleanly. I can’t find it in myself to dredge up my blog and delete every single time we’d interacted or spoken, to scrub his presence out of my life as if he never existed. I can’t even delete the contents of our shared tag, his art and our writing sandwiched in between posts about blood magic and astral planes and postmodern magical realism.
Maybe some part of my soul stays open, waiting for a response that never comes. Maybe I’m still looking over my shoulder, hoping he doesn’t see this—hoping he doesn’t get mad, hissing up and down his blog about how I’m stupid and wrong as usual. Maybe I disappeared from the consciousness of his mind the moment he’d blocked me out of it. Maybe this, that, and the other; it doesn’t matter. Here’s the best thing I ever learned from him, though: now I know how not to give a damn about what he thinks.
the second piece of yours that has made me cry. i love the way you write. reading this at work calmed me down a lot yesterday and this morning. something about the way you write is so familiar to me, and so beautiful to read. I find myself rereading some of your sentences because they are so true and poetic and straightforward. im very happy that youve taken the time to put something like this together, and i think your friend is very lucky to have ever had you in his life.
"My mirror image, my shadow. I’d never met him in person; he would’ve been invited to my wedding." I can't even look at this sentence for too long without tearing up. i know both of us are so far from weddings being a possibility but i also think about my friends and weddings and time and cry.
i'm sorry he made you cry on your birthday!! you didnt deserve that and im glad it wont happen again.
I also know what it is like to lose a one sided friendship abruptly and without closure. Both of the quotes you opened with are so beautiful and resonant and relevant. As someone who is vaguely estranged from her family, and has never had a romantic partner, I place so much stake and weight in my friendships. It really scares me that on paper we owe each other nothing.
One of my friends recently, their love is given so freely and abundantly and repeatedly that it scares me sometimes. I feel like I wont live up to their expectations or that I'll fail them in some way soon.
I have another friend who I have had to really stand up to for the first time in our years long friendship this year. I told them I felt judged and that they were being unfair to me. Its been months of awkward texts and a few painful long calls filled with attempts at communication. Obviously I'm grateful that they've been taking the time to work through this with me, but i'm frustrated that it is taking so long and so much feels uncertain.
I had a friendship breakup three years ago that was very painful and upsetting. It took me a long time to get past it, and then I ran in to her this summer at an event. We called once after. We went to a shibari class once after that. shes a different person now but also still the same. it was familiar and it was also disappointing and relieving and sad and fine.
There are other more relevant friendship stories to share, but those were the ones i typed out first.
"Maybe some part of my soul stays open, waiting for a response that never comes." I wonder if we will ever stop feeling this way. maybe its good or at least okay to keep a hopeful space in your heart for the people that occupied it for so long. even if they have disappointed you and you don't actually want to reconnect.
You are such a wonderful and lovely person! I love your humor and your writing and when you're being intense and when you're being cavalier. im glad you know not to give a damn what he thinks. Your kindness and acceptance is much more natural and valuable than his dismissiveness and judgement.
<3 hugging u