When people ask to be my friend, I want to warn them. “I’m not as fun as you think.” “I’m going to disappoint you by not being the Megan you’ve made up in your head.” “Really I enjoy being alone and find it easier to not stay in touch.” Typically I just find myself hit with the block-unblock on social media, so it’s never a dramatic ending, but it upsets me to have wasted my resources on the friendship.
Recently a nice girl DM’ed me and asked to be my friend. I wanted to warn her. But I didn’t. And truly, she seems great. But I’m waiting for the day where my talks about gentrification, education, liberation, the day those make her quietly “cancel” me.
Social networking is a huge part of this. It’s a necessity for my career, because I’m a freelance journalist and I have to sell myself as much as my work. I have to make readers choose me. Do you think they’ll pick a stranger’s work or that of someone with whom they feel connected?
Oddly enough, some of the most loyal friends I’ve made in my adult life have been fellow freelance journalists that I met on social media. And quite a few of the adult friendships I’ve had, ended because the other person neither understood nor respected my career. The necessity of social media is real in many other fields too, for anyone who works for themselves.
So I post on social media, like anyone else, but people often see my pages and think they know everything about me. In general that’s cool, I know many of us have “friends in our heads.” But when I, like any other human, share a view they didn’t know I had? When I, like any other human, express an emotion they’ve never seen from me? That’s often when the friendships end.
And look, I don’t care if I lose “friends.” My family died when I was 17, if I lost them and made it, I ain’t pressed behind no one I barely even know. I’d just rather not waste my time. Same with men who be goo goo gah gah all in my face, all in my DM, but end up falling on their own swords.
To be clear, I’ve made some great friends as an adult. Many I’ve never even met in real life, but who’ve supported me immensely and to whom I’ve shown love as well. There’s no way I’d be where I am without them and I literally thank God for them and pray for them daily.
But when I get that “Hey we really gotta hang out some time, you seem hella cool” DM, or when someone approaches me in the street, I freeze. I know I should get out and meet new people, but the looming threat of abruptly ending friendships taunts me.
Let’s not forget about the people who moved to New Orleans and wanted to “pick [my] brain over coffee” and find out “the real deal” about my native and ancestral land, then dumped me when they ran away crying with their tails between their legs to the next city whose natives they’ll exploit.
What do I do then? Ignore all requests for friendship, keep turning down requests to hang out? The COVID-19 pandemic really has me embracing this reclusive writer life, but I know that’s not healthy.
The safest thing for me, I’ve found, is to set firm boundaries in the early stages of friendship. Any voluntary human relationship, really. It sounds like Steve Harvey dating advice, but something as simple as politely declining the first few invitations to hang out, always putting myself first in the beginning and never jumping to be friendly, that’s protecting me. Maybe if after three months there’s still a mutual desire for friendship, I’ll take that leap.
