The Friend Who Gets Chosen

There is something I find difficult to admit.

I have rarely felt like the friend people choose.

I have friends. Good friends. People I love, people I trust, people I know would help me if I genuinely needed them. So this isn't a lonely-person-with-no-friends story. It is something slightly harder to explain.

I mean chosen. The person somebody thinks of first. The person they ring just because they want to hear their voice. The person they spontaneously make plans with. The friend who gets the message that says, ’I saw this and thought of you.’

I don't know why that particular thing matters to me so much. But it does.

Perhaps that is why I try so bloody hard at friendship. I am a huge try-hard generally. If I am going to do something, I tend to really do it. Friendship included.

If somebody pops into my head, I usually contact them. I don't just think, *I wonder how she is.* I send the message. If I'm baking and I've made too much, I take some round to somebody. If I make a massive Moroccan tagine, I'll ring a friend's partner and ask if he wants some for lunch. If I order too many incense sticks, my first thought is who I can give the extras to. If I'm going to somebody's house and I know a few people will be there, I might stop and buy flowers for everyone.

There is very little distance between *I thought of you* and *I did something about it.* That is just how my brain seems to work.

For a long time I assumed friendship worked roughly like that for everybody. Apparently it doesn't. There are very few people who randomly phone me just to see how I am. Very few messages that arrive because somebody suddenly wondered what I was doing. And lately I have started noticing the absence of those things.

Not because I want flowers returned for flowers. I don't want friendship to become some exhausting spreadsheet where everyone has to contribute exactly fifty percent. That isn't how real relationships work. Sometimes one person needs more. Sometimes somebody is grieving or overwhelmed or raising children or their life is simply on fire. You carry them. Hopefully, one day, they carry you. That isn't the bit I struggle with.

It is the feeling that sometimes I am the person keeping the thread alive. Calling. Checking. Planning. Remembering. Doing. And because I am doing all of those things, I don't necessarily notice what would happen if I stopped.

So recently I have been trying not to fill every gap. Not dramatically — I haven't announced a friendship strike, and I am not secretly keeping score. I am simply trying to pause before I automatically reach across the space.

And the space is surprisingly uncomfortable. Because when I don't immediately fill it, I start wondering whether anyone else will.

That has led me to a question I don't particularly enjoy. Do I give so much because I am generous? Or because I really want to be liked? I think the irritating answer is probably both. I genuinely enjoy doing things for people. The thought of someone opening their door and being handed cake makes me happy. I like remembering the little details. I like turning up. None of that feels forced.

But I wonder whether somewhere along the way being thoughtful became tangled up with being valuable. If I am useful enough. Kind enough. Available enough. Funny enough. Generous enough. Perhaps I become difficult to forget. Perhaps I become the person somebody chooses.

There is something quite sad about writing that down.

I remember saying to my counsellor once that my husband is my best friend — the person I tell everything to. Then I said, half jokingly, that he is contracted to me through marriage, so he has to choose me. Obviously that is not how marriage works. But there was something underneath the joke. Marriage contains this very explicit idea of choice. You, out of everyone, you. There is enormous comfort in that for me — perhaps because friendship has often felt less certain.

I can think of people I love deeply, but there has always been some part of me wondering where I sit in the hierarchy. The friend, or a friend? The crisis friend, the convenient friend, the one who organises things, the one who always turns up? Would we still be friends if I stopped doing quite so much? I don't know. And perhaps I haven't always allowed myself to find out.

I keep picturing friendship as a room. I walk into it with flowers. I put food on the table. I light something that smells nice. I ask everyone how they are. I keep the conversation moving. The room feels warm, full, loved. And maybe I have spent so long moving around that room looking after it that I never really noticed who else was getting up. Perhaps there wasn't much need for anyone else to. I was already doing it.

That doesn't mean nobody cared. Some people show love differently. Some are terrible at initiating. Some might simply assume I will call, because I always have. A friendship giving what looks to me like sixty percent might be giving everything it has. The uncomfortable thing is that I can't know which is which while I'm constantly filling every empty space myself.

So I am trying something new. I'm sitting down. Not forever. I still want to be the person who turns up with cake. I still want to send the message when somebody crosses my mind. I don't want disappointment to make me less loving.

But perhaps I can leave a little more room around all that love. Enough to notice what comes towards me without being summoned. Enough to discover who remembers. Enough to find out what my friendships look like when I am not trying quite so hard.

I don't know what I'll find. Maybe that is why I have avoided sitting down for so long.