As I said coming out the gate, I wouldn’t normally go for these types of things, but since my best friend traded me in for her boyfriend (there’s much, much more to it) and my closest cousin said, “I do,” to a guy that I don’t even know, I’ve been feeling some type of way about black women and our friendships. I can’t wrap my head around betrayal from a woman. I expect that sort of two-timing from a real skeezer – a man.
Let’s look at it this way. You’re an 18-year-old country girl from a small town who’s never caught a bus or a train in her life. You move to a bustling, inner-city college dorm, and sit next to a particularly quiet girl in four of your five classes. She seems sweet enough, so you offer to take her to lunch one day after the most boring lecture in the most arbitrary class ever, Intro the the University 1010, and it’s there – in a small, corner sandwich cafe – that you notice how cool she is. It doesn’t matter that she’s a native from this strange, new place; her eyes and aura transcend the distance between predominantly white classrooms and Underground street shops. She’s you.
The best part about seeing yourself in your sister is really learning how to love. Sometimes you’d do things for her that you don’t even take the time to do for yourself. You become strong in the face of adversity, you cry her tears and you fight her battles because every morning she wakes up and faces the world, that’s your representation on the cover of magazines and billboards, in TVs and boardrooms. She’s your reflection. And you find beauty in her flawed smile and big eyes, wide, round nose and multicolored braid extensions. You love her.
When she doesn’t call you for four months, practically disappearing from the face of the earth, only to resurface and end the convo with, “Let’s not go this long without talking again,” you damn near slap her through the phone. Her pitiful excuse for failing to tell you that she’s seven months pregnant – never mind that she said “she’s about four or five months”, but delivered a healthy, full-term baby two months later – nearly sends you over the edge. “I didn’t think you’d understand,” sounds more like, “I was stupid enough to believe that I’m the only pregnant woman in the world who has second thoughts about my relationship with the father. I figured keeping it from you then asking you for your help and your blessing would just work itself out.” That’s some personal fable, David Elkind shit for your ass.
See, here’s the thing: I thrive in intimate spaces. I excel at one-on-one conversations and late nights that leave you tired not from the alcohol, but the ethanol-induced tears drawn from the depths of your emotional well. I’m good with meticulous things, like remembering birthdays, anniversaries, tidbits from the first time we talked and the look on your face when you thought I’d never talk to you again, only to be embraced by small hands and warm shoulders.
I can’t fathom betrayal from my sister.
I’m of this small class of people, where women are apparently the minority, who think that omissions are betrayals. That if you only call me to celebrate the good things, but totally exclude me from the sad things or the bad things, that you’re dictating to me how good of a friend I can be. That you’re limiting me. That you’re incapable of complex, mature emotions like consideration and reciprocity. You’re the enemy.
I look at those 14 reasons why women end friendships that men never would, and I can identify with at least 10 of those things because they pertain to my bad breakup with you. Hell, I blocked your Facebook profile with the same swiftness I used to reach in my pocket and hand you the last $5 to my name. I want to be able to stash you away in a compartment that says “Forgotten/Dead,” but even as I’m writing this I know you’ll always be my friend.
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Courtney Akinosho
Blog // Twitter // Youtube // FAWF posts by Courtney Akinoso
February 25, 2014
Yessss! I’m with you on this one!
February 26, 2014
This was sooooo good and sooo real!
February 26, 2014
Thank you for this piece. I meet my “old best-friend” in a boring political science class. Though we no longer talk she has effected my life to the core.