I went to a wedding of one of my closest old friends a couple of days ago (for privacy reasons, I'll call her Lana). I noticed that she was friends with a bunch of lads (who made quite a few sexist/homophobic/racist jokes), a pseudo-intellectual (let's call him Alex) and a girl who used to be my best friend in secondary school (let's call her Sophie).
Lana used to be pretty close to me. We travelled a lot, she was one of the only friends to visit me from my home town in my university town. I do however feel a bit surprised by her new choice of friend.
When I heard that Sophie would be there, I remembered that we had drifted; we had been close friends during tutorials from year 7 to year 11 and outside of school, but she didn't hang out with me in school (I was too "unpopular", though she didn't actually say that). We had sleepovers, went to our first gig together, went on shopping trips etc. I got anorexia in 6th form and she just ignored my existence, we didn't speak since.
Now we are all 24, I decided it'd be polite to write to her and say how it'd be nice to see her at the wedding and that my mum had found some of her old letters and how I felt sad that we had not stayed in touch. She replied "I know! I can't believe she is getting married! I can't wait to see everyone and hear what everyone is getting up to!"
Is it me, or did that seem a little dismissive? Nothing like "yes it will be nice to see you too", just turning the question over so it talks about people in general, and not responding to my message really.
At the wedding she more or less ignored me, but hugged me goodbye along with everyone else saying "so nice to see you" smiling really fakely.
Lana had told me that I would really like Alex. From the description it sounded like we'd get on well: liberal, desire to set up an NGO in India, into photography. What was not to like?
When we started chatting, I quickly discovered - a lot. It was a monologue of clichés. He was probably in all fairness a nice guy, just either not on my wave length or overly confident. He came out with a patronising and yet stupidly obvious statement "the thing is, when it comes to politics this country always tends to swing from left to right", and earlier was glowing as he was telling me about his very overly stereotypical perception of India: "India is such an incredible country. It's so colourful and the people are so happy despite the dirt and the poverty" "..." (long ramble about how idyllic India is). This shouldn't have bothered me maybe, but I just thought it lacked awareness, having been to India myself I can definitely say that it is not the Utopia he made it out to be. It has good sides and it has bad sides, just like every country on earth. He also seemed more keen on buying the biggest, most expensive camera than on taking good photos, as evidenced by the photos I saw he took of the wedding.
I felt pretty judgemental for what I felt about Alex, but also felt pretty dismissed by Sophie. What's more, there were all these lads saying really embarrassing stuff, also directing it at my partner who is of Asian descent. How could Lana think Sophie is a nice person and not see through her artificiality, how could she enjoy Alex's arrogance and lack of depth?
I moved away from my rural part of the country quite some time ago, and hoped that people would have matured/gained some life perspective.