The backlash of renewal

It’s been a good year, really. I should not be this old. Maybe the long list of reasons will turn up here, but for now, I should not be this old, should not be alive, still walk the Earth thanks to many talented medical people and no shortage of happenstance.

Late late year I decided that since I was turning 65 in April 2023, I should throw myself a birthday party, something no one had ever done or would ever do for me. There have always been little birthday dinners or whatever, but I wanted a lot of friends in one place.

One of the continuing disappointments in my life is that, by and large, my friends have been only my friends, have not made friends with each other even when I thought that could happen. (The biggest reason no one could ever throw me a party, after all, was that none of my friends liked me enough to become friends with my friends.) I thought a party might help solve that, but I also thought it was time to find out if anyone would at least come to a major milestone birthday party. Sixty-frickin-five, I dubbed it. The impossible party was going to happen.

Somewhat separately, I also decided that I would renew acquaintance with many of the friends I’ve ghosted over the years. Some of them date back to high school. Others were relatively recent. The span was about 8 years to more than 50. This was a separate effort, but I did invite one or two of these people to the party.

One of my difficulties is that I have imposter syndrome. I believe I don’t deserve the good things in my life, especially when it comes to people, to friendships. And the way my friends haven’t become friends with each other plays into that very strongly. I’ve been faking it, and they know.

But the party worked out. I rented a bar, hired a musician from Austin who had become a friend, and he did a great set, and he and his wife mixed and mingled along with about 25 others. Friends came, and they brought friends! That was nice. Friends flew in from outside Providence, from outside Minneapolis, from outside Boston. People flew in!

Some of those I’d been reconnecting with in email turned out to be folks I wouldn’t invite. A high school friend — who was my first date — was amused by the whole concept of reconnecting, and while we’re still enjoying an email conversation, I read the room and didn’t invite her. Another, in Minneapolis, I reconnected with too soon before the party to invite, but she had no funds for travel anyway.

Still. For a night, imposter syndrome went away! I had filled a room with more than two dozen friends, some of whom were people I hadn’t seen in decades, and everyone was talking and having a good time. Every time I looked around the room, there were groups of people talking and laughing, and I knew it was a good party when I realized I wished I could be a part of every one of those conversations.

A few people made a point of talking to everyone they could, meeting as many as they could, but as far as I know, no one became friends outside the context of friending each other on Facebook, where few of them post regularly anyway.

At work a couple of days later, people whom I hadn’t invited told me they’d heard the party was “off the hook.” Well then.

The warmth got me through a few months. Since the friend in Minneapolis couldn’t afford to visit me, I could visit her, and did in July for six days. Our friendship was cemented wonderfully. We had the best time. I’m going back next week as I write this, mid-October. We are forever only friends; I will never date, never look for romance, again, but although I also have strong bonds with other friends, it isn’t a competition. Bonds take time, and it’s very true that as we resumed a friendship I’d drifted off from three decades earlier, we had, and have, some navigation to do. We have talked honestly and securely and kept the foundation of the friendship in place.

And finally all of this joy took its backlash: Imposter syndrome flared up to teach me a lesson, to remind me: I didn’t deserve any of this. I’m just a week from another trip to Minneapolis, for a full week this time, and there is a story there for another post, but in brief I am strongly considering relocating to Minneapolis when I retire. And here I was, frozen in mope and emotional miasma, letting the self-loathing control me.

You can’t really do anything about it. It isn’t exactly cyclical. But when too much good comes into my life, I will know in my core, in my heart, that I don’t deserve it. Imposter syndrome was my first cancer, filling every cell of my body when I was in grade school, never killing me but never leaving. I am never physically self-destructive, but when it flares up, I test my friendships too much as I ramble on about what a worthless slug I think I am.

And here I was, faced over the last few months with many people who had been good friends once and who were becoming good friends again. I started to trust colleagues, and they started to trust me, and we became friends beyond that office banter level. My email friend in Minneapolis invited me up enthusiastically in the summer and our visit was filled with joy, and I return next week. I flew back to my home town for 36 hours, relived bits of the old life I’d loved so much, but in particular, had brunch with three of my closest high school friends. We were in the restaurant’s patio for three hours, and we hadn’t all been in the same place at the same time since high school graduation. We were so reluctant for it to end that we spent another two hours chatting in a nearby park. I flew out to Rhode Island just a few weeks later, spending six days with a close friend and her husband, going to a music festival and hanging out, catching up, spending time at the animal shelter she volunteers at, sitting on her deck watching hummingbirds.

That isn’t even everything, but it’s a long description of some of the highlights, and finally it caught up with me. I don’t deserve this.

One or two of those bonds do show signs of weakening. I think I can start an honest conversation with each of them to discuss what’s going on, but I will need cooperation from them to try to navigate that. Maybe it was just a moment; there’s nothing wrong with that, until my previous thought that it could be ongoing collides with my imposter syndrome and I decide maybe there wasn’t much friendship there after all because they asked themselves if I was worth being a friend and they decided I wasn’t. That’s to be managed over the next few weeks and months.

Still, 10 days later, I’m reemerging. I’m getting excited about the trip, fortunately, and other friends are making time for me here and there too. It’s a manageable rate. That’s key. I can let the good times roll, but I can’t let them surge, and I can’t try to sustain them for a long time; I just need to back down some.