‘When will I find my best friend forever?’ My 12-year-old daughter looks up at me, her brown eyes wet with tears. ‘Why do they keep leaving me?’
Her question startles me because it feels out of the blue. I’m unsure how to respond. Her distress is palpable: the girl she thought would be her best friend forever has moved on. Spread her wings and found a new bestie.
My stomach clenches. I remember too well the feeling of being rejected, of not being enough. Walking home from another solitary day at school, trying to figure out why my friend had turned on me and devising a plan to make her like me again.
Thirty years on, and I relive those childhood wounds every weekday, only this time it’s not me going into school. It’s my children. I dread the school run. Not because of the chaos involved in getting three children up and out the door, but because I’ve got to stand in the playground and wait for the bell to ring.
Every morning, those feelings of rejection and being the outsider come flooding back and are as overwhelming as ever. I hide behind my iPhone and watch the other parents chat and laugh together. I try to look nonchalant, but I'm sure I’m scowling with insecurity.
They say your primary school years are the best years of your life: carefree and full of joy. That’s not how I remember them.
Playground breaks were a battlefield. Land mines everywhere. Mum gave me own-brand biscuits for a snack instead of branded ones. Boom! Too slow a runner to keep up with the others. Boom! Mum was chopping my hair too short in what she called a page-boy cut. Boom! I could never quite get it right and blend into the pack.
As soon as my children go through the school doors, I speedwalk to the exit, and when I pass through the gates, a weight lifts. My breathing regulates, and my heartbeat slows. I want to burst into tears, only this time it’s because I’m so angry with myself for still feeling this way. I’m a middle-aged woman, for goodness’ sake. No matter how much I remind myself that I’m not nine years old anymore, I’m stuck in the past.
Here and now, I’m crouched on the floor next to my daughter’s bed as she tearfully waits for me to have all the answers. I feel useless because I don’t have a cure-all. Back then, I felt like a bad friend. Now I feel like a bad mother.
Lifting myself up off the floor, I sit on her bed and think about what to say. I’m no prophet. I don’t have parables tucked away in my pocket for times just like these, and so I decide the best course of action is to be honest.
‘Not all friendships last forever,’ I tell her. ‘All you girls are growing and changing.’ It’s true. She and her friends have hit the tween years, and the move up to secondary school is imminent. Some of them are maturing more quickly than others.
There are girls who already love make-up, skin lotions, and hair products. Fashion, music, and gossip. Then there are those, like my daughter, who cling to their cuddly toys at night, happily do crafts, and love imaginary play.
‘You’ll lose touch with some friends and that’s okay because it makes room for new ones to come into your life.’ We agree that it takes courage for us to reach out to someone new and start a conversation. How shaky it makes us. We’re both introverts.
‘One thing I want you to know,’ I tell her, rummaging through my own life’s experiences, ‘is that you are not a victim here. You have the choice to hang on to a friendship that makes you sad, or let that friendship go and feel better about yourself.’ I want to empower her, let her know she has agency because I wish someone had told me that when I was her age. ‘I’m not saying it’s an easy choice,’ I admit, ‘but it is a choice.’
We hug, chat a little more, and then I give her a kiss. ‘Goodnight.’
‘Thank you,’ she says, sniffing back a lingering tear. ‘I needed that.’
As I close her bedroom door and head downstairs, I wonder if I felt the same way at her age, or if the belief in a BFF is a new phenomenon? I remember that when I was in my 20s and 30s, I obsessed over the TV shows Friends and Sex and the City, absorbing almost by osmosis how the characters did everything together; nights out, nights in. Holidays, career progression, and even romantic relationships. I wondered, would I ever have friends like that?
When I look back over the past 50 years, I see that friends have come and gone. We’ve grown close when we needed each other, then moved on. Perhaps jobs took us in different directions: new cities, foreign countries. Or relationships nudged us onto other roads. Raising children and making a marriage work takes up so much time and headspace, there’s little room for other things, including friendships.
Friendships take nurturing, and when there is no room to give those friends the attention they deserve, it’s easy for those relationships to wither. I know it’s a natural part of life, but I’m sad. I miss those old friendships. They remind me of good times.
In the living room, sitting next to my husband on the sofa. He puts his arm around my shoulders. I turn my head to look at him and realise he is my BFF. We've shared the good and bad, the ups and the downs, and have stayed the course. He still makes me laugh.
I decided not to resurrect those old friendships because they are part of my past. My future is here.
I remember what I told my daughter: I have a choice.