On interpersonal relations

I received a thank-you letter in the mail yesterday:

Sheryl, my friend from college, is getting married in June in Washington DC. All of my closest friends from Rice will be there; it will be a chance to re-connect, a chance to remember all of those late nights we spent in each others' dorm rooms laughing at Skinemax (the soft-core porn Cinemax plays after 10 pm), bitching about classes, and learning who we were. It is unfortunate we can't go back to college, but thankfully we have the friends who shared it with us.

Sheryl and Steve met at Rice, so their wedding will be a sort of culmination of something we saw begin and develop; it makes me smile to think about it.

Here I must confess something, though. I have been a terrible correspondent. After college, Sheryl joined the Peace Corps and went to Turkmenistan for two years, and I sent her not one letter. And maybe one email. I don't know what my problem is. I have one meek defense: in the past three years, I can count the number of pen-and-paper letters I have written and sent on one hand. Somehow, writing them takes me an inordinately long time--perhaps it's my fanatical attention to both grammar and penmanship; in any case, a single two-page letter takes about a week to write (incidentally, the time scale of writing these website entries is comparable, which is why I post them so infrequently). I fear the pen's permanence, and even more I fear the disordered and inconsistent look of white-out, so each sentence must be mentally wrought and re-worked before it is written. What emerges is a slow and tiring process that reminds me too well of my anal-retentive undercurrents, so I rarely repeat it.

Here is meek defense number two: when you are living in such different places, when you are, yourself, undergoing so many experiences that leave you changed, how do you distill your life into a few paragraphs without squeezing everything substantive from it? I just don't see the point in sending trite correspondence, in having trite conversation, where all I manage to communicate is that I am alive, that I am surviving graduate school, that I like Chicago. The other details in life are so fluid that capturing them in text feels like an inaccurate representation--they may change as I seal the envelope, or as my letter is making its way across the world via plane or electronic circuitry. No--I can't help but feel that the only satisfying way for me to connect is in person, or at least over the phone, where the communication itself is as transient as the subject matter. But then, of course, the activation energy is very large, if not insurmountable. With Sheryl, phoning her or seeing her in Turkmenistan were not even possibilities, and unfortunately, as I have explained, I am a total wacko when it comes to letter-writing. Yet these excuses only go so far, and beyond that I can only say that I was lazy and I am sorry.

That being said, I was excited to have the chance to see her again, catch up, celebrate the occasion, and, of course, re-connect with the other Rice friends subject to my terrible lack of correspondence. Then, I received a call from Ilana (one of a few college friends I *have* managed to stay in touch with) about a month ago.

"Nate...have you bought your plane ticket to DC yet?'

"...No...why?"

"Well...because...you're not invited to the wedding."

"What?!"

Ilana, who had recently spoken with Sheryl, explained to me that due to the high cost of some fairly lavish arrangements, Sheryl had not been able to invite everyone she had wanted to include. Some of Steve's cousins were also not invited, and attendees were not allowed to bring unmarried significant others. And because I had not been very good at keeping in touch with her since college, she had reluctantly omitted me from the guest list. She understood that I would have appreciated seeing her and all of my other Rice friends, but ultimately her wedding was about sharing her special day with those individuals most meaningful to her; its function as a reunion was secondary.

In the following hours, I was rational and understanding of her logic, but then I began to feel upset. The whole situation just felt so shitty. She is completely right. Her wedding is for her, not for us, and especially not for me. That I never wrote her is my fault and my fault only (I should note that she actually sent me an email on my birthday last year! And of course I and my missing chromosome failed to respond. I am a BAD PERSON.) But despite my understanding, I felt robbed of the chance to see her, and to see all of these people, together, in the same place at the same time, for the first--and possibly the last--time in years. My friends and I have been talking about this for months, and I was totally going to make use of this rare opportunity to make up for lost time and unsent emails!

Ah, the clarity of hindsight.

A week or so later, at the suggestion of ex-roommate, pseudo-brother, and co-worker Matt, I decided to send Sheryl a wedding gift anyway. This wasn't meant to be a backhanded guilt trip so much as a way of putting the situation back into her hands, to say that I did understand, that I wished her well, and that I hoped our friendship wasn't ruined forever. So I logged in to Sheryl's gift registry and sent her some lowball glasses and dipping dishes (the dishes were on backorder, so she hasn't received those yet). The note that accompanied them: "Sheryl and Steve -- A wholehearted congratulations. Take good care. -Nate C."

Now that I've received her thank-you note, I don't quite know what I was expecting--certainly not something that so clearly side-stepped the circumstances in which the glasses were sent. I think I hoped the gift would be a catalyst for discussion, that she would express her regret at having to exclude me, but maybe there was none. Or, maybe she interpreted the gesture as the backhanded guilt trip I did not intend it to be, and her standard response was the only thing that would contain her disdain. As I tore open the envelope yesterday, I had envisioned closure nestled in with "thank you," but found none; and now, I don't know what to do.

Here is the consolation prize: I took the hint. In the intervening month since this small fiasco began, I've written more emails and placed more phone calls to friends I've neglected than I have in a while. I think perhaps in the back of my mind, I've always had the fear that the first communication will expose an alienness to our relationship, that I will find I no longer know the person, that talking to them will be supremely awkward; but I think I'm finding out that with close friends things are usually okay. It's just good to hear their voice or read their words, and embrace their familiarity. Of course things will have changed, but I suppose that same change is what makes life exciting, however unfamiliar it may make the things we once knew. In old friends, we can find the familiar in the unfamiliar; I just hope I've learned to retain and appreciate them as such.

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