value of friendship

As I've gotten older, I am finding that true friendship is of value beyond measure. I'm not sure why; perhaps the reckless abandon of youth, friendships always came easy. There wasn't any sort of criteria or expectation involved in the birth of friendship which made them very easy to come by, but with life experience, we integrate a variety of subliminal checks and balances as a type of screening process that allow us to avoid poor choices that may have been made in the past. As a result, with fewer friendship options comes a greater value of the ones that remain. But, regardless of how careful we've become, occasionally friendships occur that result in heartache. My purpose for writing about one of these heartaches is multi-faceted. My primary purpose for writing about one of these heartaches is to better understand it all, another reason for writing about it is the hope that someone can read about my experience and avoid the kind of hurt I've felt and lastly, I hope these "friends" will finally learn; and take responsibility for, the hurt they have caused.

Having grown up in a family with 80's-era white-collar parents, we didn't live in the same place for more than 5 years at a time. As a result, my brother and I grew up among kids from a variety of social circles. On one end of the scale, we lived among some of the best examples of poor white trash and on the other end, we had friends who were from families with 6 and 7 digit incomes. Some kids criticized us for being spoiled rich kids while others saw us as lower class Indiana hillbillies. As a result, it was extremely rare for my brother and I to have friends from families like our own. I can't speak for my brother, but I spent most of my teens feeling like an outsider. I found it more difficult because I grew up without must self-esteem.

Because we moved around a lot, my brother and I went to several schools. The types of schools I attended offered less than desirable public education to private schools funded by some of Chicago's wealthiest and elite families. These education settings made the establishment of friendships even more difficult. I think all of these changes caused me to always feel like an outsider and an outcast which made me the target of a great deal of bullying.

By the time I reached high school, I lived in constant fear of being beaten up. I never had the opportunity to become involved in any extracurricular activities which made it even more difficult to identify with my classmates. I didn't play sports so I really didn't have any friends that were jocks. I didn't play an instrument so I didn't have much in common with any of the band kids and I was way too introverted to be involved in school government and all the bullying and moving around took it's toll on my grades so I didn't have much in common with the kids that excelled academically so the few friends I did have were usually social outcasts like myself. I just didn't fit in.

Before the start of my senior year, I remember going through my parents' yearbooks. What caught my attention were the kids that were seniors. Much like the yearbooks of today, next to the pictures of all the graduating seniors were the lists of accomplishments and the activities they'd been involved with. I guess you could say that I experienced an epiphany. I realized that if I didn't make some serious changes, I was going to be one of the kids that had nothing listed next to their picture. I became determined that I wasn't going to let that happen. So, I made up my mind, I was going to have to make some serious changes.

In addition to my new found determination, I think I was actually beginning to settle in to my own skin because once we settled in to our first grading period, I hit the ground running. One of the classes I took my senior year was called communications. In many ways, this class was my Dead Poet's Society. In addition to helping me feel more self-confident, it allowed me to nurture the talents that exist in each of us. This class broke open a floodgate creating only one regret: that I hadn't discovered this class sooner.

A short time after the class started, our teacher announced try-outs for speech team. One of the kids that I quickly became friends with, Nik, had been on the speech team the previous year and encouraged me to try it. My immediate feeling on the matter was terror. I had never been one terribly comfortable in front of people speaking, but I quickly remembered my experience with my parents' yearbooks. I saw this as an opportunity to have something by my name in my yearbook. During try-outs, Nik introduced me to the other members who had been on the speech team the year before and before I knew it, I found myself involved with like-minded kids for the first time.

During the very first speech meet, I had some serious doubts about being on this team. I remember before I went in to my very first round, I was so terrified that I went into the bathroom and vomited. Would I remember my lines? Would I make a fool out of myself??? I didn't know for sure, but I decided to throw caution to the wind and participated anyway. Typically, a speech meet lasts all day on each Saturday they are scheduled. During the meet, which ever categories you are involved in, meets three different times and depending on how well you score, you can qualify for a fourth and final round. After all of the final rounds are complete, all the students from all the schools meet in an auditorium and those that have attended a final round then learn how they have scored overall. That first Saturday, I didn't make it to a final round. And even though I was disappointed to have not placed, I experienced a personal victory for having accomplished something that I had previously been too terrified to do. That was reward enough.

There were around 20 kids or so on the speech team that year. The thing that meant the most to me about this group of 20 or so kids was that we were tight. Although there were occasional differences that occurred among them, we never lost focus of what we were doing and the personal relationships rarely got in the way of what we were there to do. I think this bond that we shared was the result of just one very important element. We drew close to each other because each one of us were outcasts. We were all castaways from the established social circles common in every high school. What was about to happen took everyone by surprise and once it occurred, none of us ever looked back.

In order to fully appreciate what happened, it's important to know a little bit about each of the kids that made us this unique force. It's important because up to that point, each member of this speech team were examples of kids that most often were the targets of some of the cruelest forms of bullying imaginable. I'm not going to mention these kids by name here, instead, I will give a description of them that will still clearly illustrate the malady. One of us didn't particularly like to bathe, a couple members struggled with their sexual identity, a few came from families where some of the darkest forms of abuse continued to occur, one fully resented one parent and played the role of parent to the other parent, a couple were unrealized geniuses and the rest were a culmination of backward, maladjusted introverts very fond of Dungeons and Dragons while the remaining few were academically brilliant while being socially retarded. But one commonality that we all shared was that we outcasts of mainstream high school culture.

The year progressed and as we became better at our craft, the closer we all became as friends. In addition to the time we invested in speech team, we all began socializing outside of school functions. And because many of them/us were uncharacteristically brilliant, the things we involved ourselves in away from school, were nothing like the things that I'd remembered my parents talking about doing when they were our age. Although we were these "outcasts", we didn't do most of the things that you might expect outcasts to do. We didn't do drugs (although some did privately) and for the most part, alcohol never really came up on our social radar. Where did we spend a lot of our time together? Hanging out with a larger group of outcasts. What does that mean......? Well, here's what we did.

During the 80's, punk and alternative music were still widely unknown. Although this genre of music had it's start in the mid to late 70's, it's popularity remained limited to large cities on either coast. The "large group of outcasts", I mentioned above was a small punk/alternative club housed in a small, run-down motel bar in Fort Wayne, IN called "Seventh Level". During the week, the bar sold drinks to cheap, weary travelers, but on Sunday nights, the fabulous freaks converged into an ever-growing collection of social outcasts such as ourselves. It was at Seventh Level where 2 foot tall purple mohawks, liberty spikes and gallons of black nail polish and eyeliner became an established norm. And like our speech team had been for us, "The Level", as it was known, was yet another place where you were accepted just as you are.

Most of the time, Nik and I were the ones that went to the Level almost every Sunday night however, it was not terribly uncommon for other members of our speech team to go along as well. This was the first time I had ever been this comfortable in a public group of kids in my life. And much like the investment we'd made with the speech team, we wanted to learn everything we could about this new niche we'd discovered.

As we became more familiar with the culture, so did our knowledge of it's music. Before long, our music collections changed from bubble gum pop and heavy metal to punk and alternative bands most had never heard of. That was ok by me. The less I am reminded of the groups that used to persecute me, the better.

A couple paragraphs ago, I mentioned that an event took place that surprised everyone. There came a time during my senior year when most of the teasing and bullying that we all had endured one time or another, stopped! The days of being threatened, tripped, intimidated, insulted and ganged up on, were no more. The small group that we had become in the beginning, was now a much larger, stronger and appealing force. This meant that for the first time, school royalty were forced to acknowledge us as a social class, something they never saw coming. If you ask me to identify the turning point, I'd have to say that it took place right around the time when the freshmen and sophomores began to express interest in what we stood for. If I were asked what I felt were the most significant events that took place that year, I would have to say it was this paradigm shift. We went from being one of the biggest groups of social outcasts to the ones who younger kids wanted to be like. I believe the culmination of our efforts occurred during the school dance where the dj agreed to finally play our music.

As quickly as it began, the school year ended. During that summer before college, most of us continued to hang out together. I remembered feeling fear because I was afraid that when school ended, so would the closeness I felt toward everyone that I'd grown to know that year. To my delight, the bond of friendship remained; stronger than ever. Eventually, everyone in the group graduated from high school and the group did everything it could to get together as often as possible. Weeks and months went by and the friendships we all shared remained stronger than ever. I thought it would last forever.

Although the friendship we shared was better and stronger than I'd imagined, there were elements of my life before I met them that went largely unresolved. Having gone fast and furious all year long, I'd never really dealt with the horrible, ugly things that we hope our kids never experience, but sadly, and all too often, they do. I feel it is those events that contributed to using alcohol as a means of coping. It was available and it was an easy way to deal with darkness, especially when you don't want others to see your weakness. I had never been a habitual drinker up to that point, but many of my friends/classmates began to sense that something just wasn't right about my way of dealing/coping with problems. And sadly, it was just the beginning of a very long battle for me.

Like many of the stories we've all heard throughout our lives, my use of alcohol grew steadily. In fact, I can recall times in my life where I was drinking very heavily. There were numerous times where it was not uncommon for me to drink a half gallon of hard liquor every couple of days. This pattern of abuse lasted for years. Having been an addict for so long, I guess I never really realized until later that almost every single time I would get together with all of my friends, I would be drinking. As is the case so often, my alcoholism resulted in a roller coaster of chaos in my life. Much of which was either witnessed by or involved my group of friends. For example, there were probably hundreds of times where I would make the drive between Kendallville and Fort Wayne with a blood/alcohol level two and maybe three times greater than the legal limit. I was all about taking risks. A gamble that nearly cost me my life more times than I care to mention. However, I was never the only one in the group who was dealing with demons in their lives. Each of us had our own unique way of coping; most of which were just as unappealing as my drinking. But, like our outcast creed to accept others as they are, we dealt with the problems among us in stride.

Several years after high school, my friend Nik married a fellow speech team member named Mandy. Coincidentally, at one point, my wife was as close to Mandy as I was to Nik. My wife Jodi told me that she and Mandy had had a huge falling out. Jodi told me that she'd been really hurt by some of the things that took place between she and Mandy, so she decided to write Mandy a letter years later, in an attempt to repair the rift that had been created between them. Jodi hoped to work through the conflict between them, and was really anxious to receive a reply from Mandy, but instead of receiving an olive branch in her reply, she received a letter that announced the permanent end of their friendship. Jodi allowed me to read the letter she'd been sent and I was furious! Mandy's reply cut Jodi to the core! But before I let it tear me apart, I began looking at the past and I realized, if I were in Mandy's place right now, I'd be drinking.

Thinking cooler heads would prevail here, I decided to write Nik an email asking him to basically help me sort through and attempt to understand the events that had just taken place. To my surprise, the response I received from Nik wasn't all that different from the one that Jodi had received from Mandy.

To paraphrase his response, Nik told me that all of my unpredictable behavior made me a force to be reckoned with. He also added that he regretted not getting involved and put and end to my drinking a long time ago. He basically ended the letter by stating that they (he and Mandy)finally reached a point where they decided to walk away from the chaos once and for all. I was devastated. I don't remember if I ever told Nik or not, but he is the only person EVER to have called me a best friend. I remember it in exacting clarity. I felt it was an incredible honor to have gained this title considering how many friends he had. I may have been older than Nik by a couple years, but in many ways I looked up to him. I have never met anyone who was not limited by surrounding and circumstance, or by the expectations of others. It was these strengths that drew people close to him; including myself.

Looking back at all the things that were related to or were the result of my drinking, I can't blame them for becoming overwhelmed by it. It reached a point where my drinking became a consideration in almost every instance where I was involved. I can't fault them for reaching a point where a difficult decision had to be made. People dealing with addiction lose friends in similar situations all the time. And although the contents of the letter hurt deeply, it's the principle of the thing that hurts the most.

It hurts so much because this was the same group of friends that back in high school accepted people just as they were. This is the same group that despised the popular kids bent on exclusivity and popularity. You didn't have to come from a wealthy family or wear designer clothing and listen to all the mind-numbing corporate rock. But now, it appears we have lost sight of our creed. But, 20 years is a long time and I can imagine it would be difficult to remember how hard it is to deal with rejection like that.

Of my speech team family and those in our extended family, only one of them was there for me when I was at my worst. In fact, that person I am extremely close to this very day. At a point when I was living in Florida, I had hit absolute rock bottom. Drugs and alcohol had taken their toll on me, I'd lost my job, my car and was on the verge of homelessness, when one from this large family of friends, took vigil by my side. That person happens to be the woman I eventually married. I reached out to her when my life was in a death-spiral. And no matter what it took, she was determined to help me get my life back in order. The amazing part about this is the fact that Jodi wasn't part of the speech team gang. In fact, I really didn't know her all that well. She was in our extended family and of the hundreds of times I got together with the whole gang, Jodi was present for fewer than a dozen. Nevertheless, she was there for me.

I'd like to say the drugs and alcohol problems went away when I moved back home to Indiana, but they didn't. In fact, the first couple of years we were married, I continued to struggle with addiction. And instead of throwing her hands in the air and say, "that's it, I've had enough !" She has continued to be there for me, to love me and to do whatever it took to see me through it.

After a number of years, I have finally conquered these problems and have established normalcy in life for the first time. She is the embodiment of what true friendship is all about. I still see members of the old speech team gang every once in awhile, but the adhesive that held all of it together is long gone. I have been invited to get together with the whole gang on a few occasions, but I think it was extended to me because it was the polite thing to do. I'm sure they knew I would not attend.

It is this experience, and many like it, that have allowed me to become a better judge of character. It has also allowed me to appreciate and value the true friends I do have. I would also like to add that I am not trying to trivialize alcoholism. It continues to destroy families and friendships all the time. And when I look back to the letter I received from Nik, I keep going back to the part when he told me he regrets not having become involved and put an end to the problem long ago. He should! If I had a friend that I was close to like Nik and I were, I would do everything in my power to see them through. But, I guess that is just the way I value friendship.