What about your friends?

I was actually seeing someone else at the time, but that ended abruptly after about a year, during the summer following my first year of graduate school. It was my first serious relationship, but it'd been a rocky and stressful one. I spent a week in my apartment, scoring animal behavior on my TV (to my cats' amusement) in my hot, un-air-conditioned duplex while watching seasons of Charmed that I'd been loaned out from the nearby library. It may have been one of the most pathetic phases in my then-25 years.

My graduate school frenemy finally goaded me out of my shitty home and out to a weekday concert in our small, semi-southern town. IT WAS AWESOME. Hippies were dancing! Some industrious people moved a couch into a public park! It was so packed that you would have sworn that every person within 10 miles was in attendance. I ran into this totally cute guy that had been in my Psychopharmacology course the semester before, and he was sporting a fabulous beard and had pretty eyes. Tall, dark, and handsome? Yes, please.

The following summer, we were living together and celebrating these free and public 'sunset' concerts by hosting cookouts with our circles of graduate school buddies, most of which were couples. It was great - I could binge eat and drink with all my friends. In fact, one of the craziest but best memories was the cookout we hosted to celebrate a dissertation defense, which still managed to occur despite a major, power-outage-causing storm. We and all our friends congregated at our house immediately following the afternoon's hurricane-typhoon-tornado-like storm, and wandered the neighborhood, gape-mouthed at all the fallen trees, destroyed homes, and battered cars. Then we started drinking, emptied the freezer's contents onto the grill, and drank and ate everything we had on hand.

At the end of the summer, my handsome man then moved to Tuscon to complete his pre-doctoral clinical internship at the VA hospital there. It was fun going on the road trip to move him there and set up his home, but it was really hard to leave him and our kitty Sterling Hayden there to return to our small town graduate school. I had two years to finish, and I was scared our relationship wouldn't survive 1000 miles of separation.

When your best friend, boyfriend, and sole roommate moves across the country, your entire life changes. In hindsight, I'm pretty surprised that the relationship survived (spoiler alert). At first, our graduate school friends were okay about my pseudo-singlehood, but the changed dynamic quickly saw my social calendar opening up. A new co-worker's long-distance girlfriend then met me and supposedly thought I aimed to pursue her boyfriend (I did not, at all), and openly despised me. Then, my friends had to choose between this couple (the guy was nice, she could be fun, but was high maintenance) and myself. Before long, I was only getting phone calls to meet up at the bar for drinking after everyone else went on group dates. It was a friend-style booty call and I wasn't loving it.

I befriended a much-younger, but much more crazy, fun, and single friend, and four months after my best friend soul mate boyfriend moved away, I again had a close friend with which I spent most of my time. Sure, I drank and partied more than I have - or probably ever will  - but it was awesome and exactly what I needed. I'd felt so slighted by my paired-up graduate school friends. Later, my friendship with her was probably the final push that severed my connections with a number of these graduate school friends (by no means all, but at least one), but I had already given up on being a meaningful member of that social group. Didn't need them, didn't want them. Not only had they been replaced, I'd upgraded.

It was with bemusement that I learned, in the ensuing three years since all these shenanigans went down, many of these same couples found themselves in similar long-distance situations with their significant others. In fact, I believe it has struck ALL of them (thanks, Facebook and gossipy academics). I'd be lying if I said that I didn't get some smug satisfaction that these people had to face the same trials and tribulations that I faced - without their help. I hope their friends were better selected than many of my own.

It's really, really, hard to be in this type of situation. In many ways, it feels a little bit like your significant other is dead, because all the things you once did together are not only now done alone, but stink with the frequent and painful reminder of your heightened social isolation. Just like the day my frenemy dragged me out of the self-induced solitude following the breakup, you sometimes need friends to help you cope with this huge and meaningful life change. I didn't really get that - I was mostly on my own.

Furthermore, what transpired also highlighted the notion that many of your 'friends' in graduate school are your friends more so because of your shared environment, common academic interest, and/or proximity than meaningful emotional connection. These connections are predominantly out of necessity. Most of them will become just some person with whom you once had some (graduate school) shit in common with, and they'll never be part of your life again. The precious few that defy that categorization are probably now some of the best friends you could ever have.