Beaches
1990s to 2006, Denver, Colorado
By Karen Barton
Usually while I fold laundry I indulge in a little VH-1 reality or check in on what Paris Hilton is doing on the E! channel. But during my last bout of sock-matching channel surfing, I inadvertently stopped on the movie Beaches. Normally, between writing, doing housework, and chasing my 3-year-old, I don’t have time to actually watch an entire movie, but this time I sat down and let the film suck me in. It was the first time I’d seen it in more than 15 years, and it brought back a flood of memories.
The first time I watched Beaches was with my best friend Nicole way back when we were just 21. I’ll never forget how we sat on the hand-me-down rust-colored couch in our little apartment and cried our eyes out while we watched the movie on my 10-inch television screen. The tears, hugs, and “I love you”s lasted beyond the end of the movie and well into the night. Later, while we talked into the wee hours about life and friendship, I was shocked when Nicole confessed that she thought there might be a time when we would no longer be friends.
I had thought we’d truly be “best friends forever.” We were joined-at-the-hip, sentence-finishing best friends, and I couldn’t imagine our relationship ever weakening. I couldn’t imagine that I’d ever be happy without a BFF.
I was wrong.
A falling out ended our friendship five years later, and I haven’t spoken to Nicole since 1999. The fight that ultimately finished out relationship happened shortly after I got married. The blow-up was caused by a combination of things: an uncomfortable dislike between her and my husband; petty, unresolved annoyances that had piled up for years; and differences in priorities. It was an ugly and sad ending to a long friendship. But I still held onto the Beaches idea that someday we’d make up just like Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey always did.
I made three attempts to reconcile with Nicole. The first was when I left the husband whom she’d despised, the second was when I had a dream about her contacting me to apologize, and the third was when I was pregnant with my son. The only time she responded was the first time, when I got her phone number and caught her by surprise. We talked a couple of times, but that was it. The other two attempts were met with absolute silence. Not even an e-mail to tell me, “No, thanks, not interested.”
It has taken me years to get to the point where I no longer occasionally dream about Nicole or wonder what it would take for us to be friends again. Finally, my conscious and subconscious minds have come to terms with the fact that she’s never going to call me out of the blue to tell me how much she still loves me and needs my friendship.
More importantly, it finally doesn’t bother me anymore. I’m fine with the idea that I may never have another super-close best friend. In fact, I think now that it’s much better to have several girlfriends to share my life as opposed to putting all my eggs into one friendship basket.
These days I have several women I’d consider good friends, and they all enrich my life in different ways. One friend shares my love of exercise, one my love of writing, and another helps me practice my Spanish. The sum of all my friendships adds up to much more than what I ever had in the intensely close relationship I had with Nicole.
And there’s no pressure to be the perfect friend. I am who I am with my girlfriends, and nobody expects anybody to be the ultimate friend. We all have families, other friends, and other interests, and we complement one another without having to be an only shoulder to lean on.
I’ll admit to sometimes envying those women who still have friends from childhood. But then I remind myself that life has always fulfilled my need for friendship with the right people at the right time. I may never again have another girlfriend who finishes my sentences or knows all my inside jokes, and that’s OK. The connections I have in my life are invaluable, but they’re not all-or-nothing.
This time when I watched Beaches, I didn’t cry. It’s a great chick flick and it’ll always bring back strong memories, but the truth is that my life is even richer now with the friends I have than it was when I depended on one best friend to be there for me forever. The Hollywood ideal of friendship must be great for those who have it. But those of us who don’t have it can be content in the knowledge that real life doesn’t always imitate art, and it doesn’t have to in order to be fulfilling.
Karen Barton is a stay-at-home mom and freelance writer from Denver, Colorado.
Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 | Email This PostThis entry was posted on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 12:02 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
10 Responses to “Beaches”
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November 30th, 2006 at 1:34 am
Karen, I’m so pleased to see this story published. I’ve always loved your writing style, because you always manage to pull the right strings and strike a chord somewhere inside me. This is a lovely and poignant piece of writing.
November 30th, 2006 at 8:32 am
I can relate to this story on so many levels, and the last line is so good and true to what I believe myself. Thanks for sharing, and I hope to see more of your work!
November 30th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
Umm, Karen, don’t you think Nicole was simply in love with you?
November 30th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
I agree I think Nicole may have been in love with you
November 30th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
Liz, don’t you think you’re jumping to conclusions? This piece doesn’t give us enough information to try and explain Nicole’s feelings and Nicole’s side of the story. Karen, I agree that a diverse group of friends is ideal and that it is unwise to invest too much emotion in a BFF (best friend for now!) However your simple and vague summary of the falling out leave me wondering what the factors were and what your impressions are. Besides the personal jokes your new friends aren’t in on, is there a more meaningful void left by Nicole? You took the time to write about her after all and I suspect you didn’t do so simply to disprove the ideal Hollywood friendship clichè.
December 1st, 2006 at 8:08 am
LOL! While I’m flattered that you two would think she might have been in love with me, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the case. Very funny that you’d suggest that, though!
Carly, you raise an interesting point. First of all, I don’t exactly disaprove of the ideal Hollywood friendship cliche. I’m just saying that life can still be great without it. I admit in the piece that I sometimes envy people who have those super-close best friend relationships but that I’m still happy with what I have now. If I’ve learned anything in my 37 years, it’s that life isn’t black and white and you have to make happiness out of what it gives you. Now as for the vague description of the falling-out, that part wasn’t exactly the point, and it would’ve taken the essay way off course if I had tried to explain that whole messy thing. I certainly understand your curiosity, because that’s the juicy part! The truth is that the details were a bit unseemly, and I’d prefer to keep some things to myself. My ex-husband was quite the jerk.
Thank you all for your interest and your comments!
Thank you, Louis for your continuing encouragement. Folks, if you haven’t read Louis Richard’s piece here, please go find it and take a look. He writes beautifully!
Karen
December 1st, 2006 at 8:43 am
Louis’ piece is called “Adagio Sustenuto”, by the way.
December 2nd, 2006 at 9:46 am
The “Nicole” in my life is still only about 20 miles away, and I don’t know why she hasn’t been responsive to my efforts to communicate with her in the last couple of years, even though we had found each other again and were close again for a few years.
She tends toward the very dramatic in life. I recently received a VERY short note from her in the mail, as she had come across a letter I had sent her when I was seeking sponsors for a recent ministry trip to Japan. The trip occurred about 4 months ago, so instead a donation, she sent a note. In the note, she told me that her husband had been in a bad car accident in June, and “I’ve been in jail and now things are calming down. Hope your trip was all you hoped.” Signed not with “Love,” but “Later,” this was, even for her, a strange communication.
It’s a bit strange. I know that if I were diagnosed with a fatal illness, she would be at my bedside, or researching cures on the internet, buying me wigs if chemo took my hair, but to grasp all that’s available in an ordinary day-to-day friendship seems to be not important enough to fit into her schedule.
I used to agonize over our lack of closeness. Now, like you, I am thankful for the people I do have in my life. I knew back in the first two years of our friendship, when it was the most intense, that it was a bit stifling in its intensity and exclusivity. Even though we both had plenty of other friends, we almost never added one or two other people to our special times together. We would do group activities, such as church picnics, visiting families, or other things involving several people, but the things planned by either of us usually involved only the two of us — and I do recall feeling a little guilty about having feelings that I didn’t want to be quite so dependent upon her friendship and exclusive with her. I felt that I was betraying her in a way.
The initial change in our friendship came about when she was falling in love with the man who has now been her husband for 30 years, whom I believe to be an absolutely marvelous man. However, it had been difficult for me to accept that suddenly I wasn’t very important anymore, and he was the one she spent all of her time with. I was in their wedding, and the next year, she was in my wedding. (She had introduced me to the man I later married.)
I will contact her and inquire as to why she was in jail. We have both been very dedicated church-going Christians all the time we’ve known each other, so this is going to be an interesting story, I am sure. I, of course, also want to know how her husband is doing now, along with the details of the accident. She will be cordial, but the warmth probably won’t be there. I have gotten over longing for it.
December 2nd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Karen,
Thank you for this story. I disagree with the person who said there was more to the story, more behind your need to write about Nicole. At only 22, I, too, understand what it’s like to lose the friend you thought you’d have in your life forever. It’s happened to me a couple times, primarily through mistakes of my own, character flaws I had yet to remedy, but now that I am at a palce in my life where I am happy with myself, I sometimes (often) find myself wishing I had friends to share myself with and, very often, I just don’t. I miss the girls from my high school years, who are all still friends but have discarded me, and wait for the day when they’ll say they want me back…
But this story made me feel hopeful. I may never get those girls back, may never have that lifelong friend with childhood ties, but as you said, I always have the right people in my life at the right time. And maybe that’s more important anyway.
Thank you so much,
Kate
March 13th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Karen,you are right.whe a friendship is lost and caoont be reclaimed it is sad,then you find others to take the place of that friendship.Hollywood lives in fantasy,the real world is that friend come and friends go.I have friends that I have not talked to in years.I don’t care if I don’t talk to them,it seems that I have to call them or they don’t care about me.
I even had one friend that crossed the line,he and my first wife had an affair. I have forgiven them for that we divorecd a couple of years later for a different reason.
I was liveing in Sacramento Ca. at the time I moved back to Ohio and meet a great person in sept 1979.on 1 March 1980 we were married and have been since.Sh is my friend,lover and my wife and I’m her friend,lover,and husband.