Friendly Files

"Do this with a friend!" the instructions read.

At this moment, Eileen is sitting on the floor of my new apartment. She looks disproportionately small, in her khaki shorts, surrounded by the planks of wood, nails, screws and brackets that will hopefully, some time this evening, be converted into a wall unit. I’m suddenly incredibly grateful to have a friend the instructions that came in the box claim are crucial to the wall unit building process. But it begs the question: What if you don’t happen to have a friend willing to spend four hours on a Tuesday night putting together pieces of cheap wood to house the television you will hardly ever watch anyway?

Our society organizes itself around needing other people. This isn’t to say we can’t go it alone, many of us try, and to some degree we succeed. But the need for connection, to reach out, to have somebody take you by the theoretical hand and say, ‘I want to go there with you,’ well, the overpowering fulfillment that sense of bonding provides can be toxic. And perhaps this is why we time and time again, enter into new relationships and friendships, full of renewed hope, despite or in spite of, our past failures.

Are we justified in ever counting on, ever truly relying on another person? Can we ever feel totally comfortable believing our well-being is entrusted to someone other than ourselves? I’m not sure. I remember having a friend in my life a few years back who said to me, "at the end of the day, anyone is capable of walking away and leaving you. Even me." And, true to his word, he did. Not exactly a romantic vision, but a realistic one. Are we ever safe in letting ourselves go, in letting our guards down, in exhaling the pressure and forging ahead while saying to ourselves, ‘I’m not alone, I have someone to share this with me." Again, I’m not sure.

What I do know, is that I now have a wall unit, standing in all its upright glory, in my living room. And that, I could not have done alone.