It's Not Easy

Posted 3:30 PM by Gerald So

I titled this post after Five For Fighting's 2001 song about Superman because it has to do with my best college friendships, and in college I identified with Superman. I had romantic feelings for one of said friends, and their going unrequited threatened our friendship and my equilibrium. I could only handle it, I imagined, if I were Superman. My disappointment still spilled out at times, but much less than it would have without my super thought experiment.

Fast forward thirty years, for about half of which the same college friends have dreamed of a destination reunnion. It's finally happening next month, a long weekend at a rental house in St. Paul, Minnesota, only I'm not going. My friends are all married, most with kids. I'm single, no kids. I'm also disabled. Can't drive well enough to pass a road test. We became friends in part because they drove me, enabling me to join in any group fun I could ask.

For the reunion, too, a friend offered to book flights together and arranged airport rides. I think this longstanding dynamic blinds them to realities of my disability always apparent to me. For one, getting ready each day. At home I do it in private. At a rental house with six roommates? Not entirely possible. They are my friends because they accept everything about me, but for my part, I'm self-conscious around anyone. It wouldn't be an issue if we had hotel rooms, but the rental house is the point of this trip.

I paid my share of the rent shortly after my mother's death. I thought a getaway would be good for me by the time it rolled around, but I find I'm still concerned I'd bring down the mood. So I passed, but that was far from the end of it.

While it's true we haven't gotten together in persion in many years, we chat and email and video call regularly. I count all these because I never know if I can make events or trips. A lot of things to line up. That's true for everyone, but it might not look that way in my case. I've freelanced from home with my mom's and brother's support since well before the pandemic and the past three years caring for Mom after her bouts of pneumonia. In calmer times, it looks as if I can rearrange my schedule to do anything. My friends are used to including me, convincing me, literally enabling me to go along. Maybe they also feel they have to parry all my excuses and get me out of my shell.

In their place, other friends might have intuited my self-consciousness and accepted that about me, too. It doesn't mean I'm backing away as a friend. It means I'm cool anyone else wants to keep something to themselves.