Friendship - A Bond of Love and Hate

Friendship - A Bond of Love and Hate

Sarah and I had a fight about two weeks ago. We hadn’t fought in a while so we were due for a battle. Sarah complained that a girl at my party was “talking about her,” and, obviously, if I was a real friend, I should have kicked her out. Funny thing is I wouldn’t have kicked the girl out even if I had known that she was talking about Sarah. This, in turn, caused Sarah to tell that she hated me and never wanted to speak to me again. And, before you know it, we were the stars of our own episode of (insert title of melodramatic television show here). I started running around my house, idiotic and drunk, proclaiming that Sarah was the stupidest bitch I’ve ever met--well, I said a whole slew of bad words much worse than that but I’m trying to keep this clean--and that she needs to be run over by a bus, while Sarah ran up my street chasing her boyfriend (a subplot I won’t dare mention here) and text messaging me to let me know that I was a lying piece of garbage. And, folks, this was just the beginning.

I often relate my friendship to Sarah to the short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville. Simply summed up, the story is about an unique friendship between two men that has a profound impact on each of their lives—a classic story of the one that gave too much and the one who could not help but to give too little. In my experience with Sarah, this role taking tends to rotate back and forth, which makes our friendship exciting, bewildering and, ultimately, both challenging and rewarding.

To say that Sarah’s friendship has had an impact on my life would be like saying the Grand Canyon is a large gash in a rock that happens to be pretty. She has helped shape who I am and taught me r...

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...d from his memory but during the expunging process realizes how much his memories, both positive and negative, of her are extremely valuable and worthwhile. Sarah and I, though our relationship is anything but romantic, agreed we would probably try to erase each other from our memories only to realize how much we care for one another after it is too late. Clearly, we are drawn to each other because of our similar immature, theatrical and, intermittently, pretentious personalities and through this bond of love and hate, up and down, back and forth, we learn from each other and grow as people in our relationship with not only one another but with others as well. She has been one of my greatest teachers, most annoying nemesis and unsurpassed melodramatic role-playing partner.

More importantly, our ungodly fights have given me some of the best stories I’ve ever told.