Get Yourself A Frenemy that Breaks Your Heart Just Right

How to be human Kintsugi

Get yourself a frenemy that breaks your heart just right. Choose her from the crowd for the qualities you admire, and feel envy your entire relationship. Long to possess her friendship the way you longed for your mom, a mentor, or your sisters to show up for you and show you the way.

Find yourself a frenemy who keeps you at arms’ length. Her family is the negative of the photo that is your family: just as messed up, but in a more appealing way. Instead of ignoring—like your family—hers smothers. Your boundary issues will interlock and then break apart in the most spectacular way.

Pine for bestie like it’s going out of style, and that heartbreak just might forge you into the gold you are meant to become. It didn’t have to be like this. But there are things you didn’t know, because you were unparented, or, as they say, raised in a barn, aka, not great at reading the cues.

She will call herself your best friend but will call you her really good friend, and you will spend more time than you would like trying not to think petty, resentful thoughts. She will point out how much you need her, and then she will tell you what is wrong with your outfit and makeup, so you become less embarrassing.

She will tell you how you were rude to others and about others, but she doesn’t want to get in the middle of when her friends are rude to you.

If she just kept you further than arms length.

The problem with arms’ length is, in order to reach the person, you only need to stretch out your arm. And bend. Unless they take a step back.

She will keep forgetting to invite you to things, then call you last minute. She will call you drunk from a party that you were left out of in order to say she loves you. People will cheerfully call your name in the background.

When it’s over, you’ll miss that bitch. You will have had some great times and belly laughs, tears-running laughs, pee laughs (the kind we had when we were young, before they all became pee laughs). Your friendship will be like Icarus and fly too close to the sun, if Icarus was two women who instead of flying too close to the sun, wrestled each other midair, causing them both to crash down on separate sides of the earth.

Nobody could make you laugh or grab onto inside jokes the way she could. Nobody was as fun when you were the center of her attention. Nobody could dish like her. You two could talk for hours, like staring at the clouds high for hours. Laughter and fun are always a little bit dangerous, just like your frenemy.

You won’t exactly be in love with her, in fact, if you make out, she’ll be a disappointing kisser. You don’t want her. Part of you wants to be her. But a bigger part wants to be you and sometimes it feels impossible around her.

You are needy. This is how frenemyships are born. You are needy and she is cool. She is a little weirded out by you, but also charmed, and also not a fool.

But still, something is always there, under the surface. Like the Princess and the Pea, you achieve emotional intimacy with an annoying, irritating bump.

The first rule of frenemies, is, it takes two. When it does not, it takes a village. Keep trying to be a better friend, correct your mistakes, be less emotional. Avoid your instincts that she’s talking about you behind your back.

Rule two: frenemies are friends! They are fun.

So you angle for reassurance, driving her away even more, causing her to avoid you and strengthen ties to other friends, people you didn’t really invest in so you are on the outside of, looking in, feeling stupid and off. Looking back, you cringe in recognition of yourself, but also feel empathetic to past you. You had no idea what you were doing, and your childhood friends were indeed on the receiving end of your parents’ inability to guide and socialize you or protect you from the bullies inside the house.

Not only weren’t your parents good parents, they weren’t a good couple to each other, nor were they good friends to their friends. Your siblings don’t want you around their friends, and if they do, it’s because they’re doing drugs around you.

Your brothers and sisters laughed and laughed at the story of you falling down the stairs in your walker; is it a surprise you found a frenemy who laughed at you too?

Get yourself a frenemy who uncannily finds the things you’re insecure about and mentions them in front of others. Get yourself a frenemy who hugs your boyfriend a lot.

When you confront her about things, she’ll say, “I knew you’d say something!” and somehow making you feel small and insignificant.

Get yourself a frenemy that causes you to fold in on yourself, like origami. Somewhere, inside there, in the tightest, smallest shape, you fold in until you find yourself, marking your folds so you can carefully unfold yourself later, into a better shape, when she’s not around.

Make sure she doesn’t believe your trauma stories. Make sure her loyalty will remain with folks who hurt you. Make sure to be vulnerable, so she can teach you that you’re whining.

You will feel silly. You will feel petty. Everyone loves her and you are jagged in social surroundings. You will find yourself growing snarky, and spiteful, and say things that are “just jokes.” You will compare yourself to others, secretly relishing people who “have it worse.” You will become…

A frenemy.

At some point your frenemy will say or do a thing that you cannot accept unless you are willing to lose a little bit of your self respect.

She reaches out, and you choose to reach back. Anyways, you rationalize, I wasn’t actually using that self-respect. You let your guard down. It feels off. You keep trying.

You’ve been steered away from your instincts, and it’s messy when they return in bits.

It turns out, you are going to need that self-respect back.

Eventually you realize, you love her and it’s been fun and cool, but she fucking sucks;  plus, she hates you.

You leave her again, and turn towards making good with the frenemy within.