I became close to the best friend I ever had basically because I was the only one who hadn’t idolized her.
In our freshman year of college, we were in the same dorm. I was put off by her looks from the first moment, and her accent only doubled my aversion. (I was 17; I’ve learned a lot since then.) So I barely spoke to her all year. I was revolted by the way the other girls clung to her. They told her all their troubles and went to her for advice. They even called her “Mama.” I wasn’t envious of her—I certainly didn’t want to be called “Mama.” I just thought it was ridiculous that a couple dozen college women were such big babies that they had to have a surrogate mother in the dorm, and that she went along with it.
Well, I went home for the summer, but most of them stayed on campus, right in the same dorm, and kept on letting her mother-hen them day in and day out.
When the new school year began in the fall, I went back. And just then she had a million-megaton blowout breakup with her boyfriend. She was devastated and heartbroken. And guess what! All those girls who’d been crying on her shoulder for a year suddenly disappeared. They couldn’t handle it when she was the weak one who needed to cry. It was a one-way street.
So there I was, the only one who wasn’t avoiding her because I wasn’t involved one way or the other. While she was being shunned by everyone else, I was there. So she talked to me. And I began to see who she really was, and we became close and remained so for many years over long separations. I’ve never had a closer friend. She died 5 years ago.
After a time, the other girls started coming back around and wanting to snuggle under her wings again, but by then she and I were really tight and she had lost interest in being Mama. So they then proceeded to ostracize her and badmouth me for stealing her away from them. It wasn’t a bit nice, but we did not care.