42. Surface level friendships
Surface-level friendship: a "friendly" interaction that doesn't go beyond a no-commitment connection
I am often tired of making small talk and am constantly wanting to bring up more personal topics and build more meaningful conversations with my surface level friendships.
The bulk of my surface-level friendships are mostly from work honestly. I always have a difficult time on how to deal with people at work. It's really crazy how we spend literally the entire day with these people, yet we keep them at an arm's length distance at all times (Ok at least I do. I had past work experiences as a tutor and a barista and I also worked in retail for a little bit and I never got close with my coworkers until I left the job). Every job I had, I would try to be polite and be a lending ear to my colleague's frustrations and venting when we were on break or something, but would never really share a lot of my vulnerabilities. It's not that I didn't want to be close to people or anything, it's just business. People can be really evil in my experience. I didn't want to have people talking about my back, I guess. But I realize, no matter what, they'll still talk about you behind your back haha.
I had a difficult time trying to handle coworker "friendships" when I was in grad school. There was one ridiculous thing that happened that drove everyone away and caused a rift with each other and I just backed out of that and stuck to the background. I didn't want to fight with anyone, nor mediate. I didn't want to deal with my colleagues at all. That's when I realize that I shouldn't be friends with my coworkers. My defenses were always up full shield. I wasn't even sure I was worthy of friendship and if I were, I wasn't at all well equipped to handle them in all their various forms.
I don't know man. We can never expect any one person to meet all of our needs, and for this reason, we have multiple different kinds of relationships at varying depths and intensities to meet our different needs.
Surface level friendships exist to have fun and keep things easy and lighthearted in low stakes ways. But when every single one of your friendships is a surface-level one, then I think there's a problem.
After the pandemic and after a series of social trauma (I don't know how to properly label these experiences? like... I just had so many friendship break ups and rifts and it affected me a lot?), I just felt like I wasn't able to be a good friend, so I would often distance myself. I latched on to "surface-level" friendships because they don't have to know my vulnerabilities and I don't have to know theirs.
I detached myself from a lot of things and I didn't want to be a "functioning member of society" a lot of the time. It's kinda sad to think about. For a couple months, I felt so alone and I truly wanted to be alone at that time. I wanted to let go of a lot friendships and connections and not be a bother to anyone at all.
It was such an unhealthy way to deal with things. I realize that now.
~ a friend,
<3 K