The “not the main friend” Friend
I know exactly how this goes, I’m soon going to be most hateful person in the room, not because of some epic argument or everything, but because I’m not their *main friend*. You know, that person who’s always in the group chat and gets tagged first in memes? Yeah, that’s not me.
I’m the backup friend, an alternate you bring in when your dudes have already said no or bailed out at the last minute. I can feel that the instant I come in. The awkward wave and the faint “oh, you came?” as if they forgot that they have invited me. Hey, that’s not too terrible. Sometimes, being the “not the main friend” is a blessing in disguise — you get to watch as things go down from the side. I mean, friendships have erupted over who gets to control the playlist. Sob.
But let’s take a trip down memory lane for just a second. Do you remember those playground days when captains had to choose the team members for a game? Yeah, I was never *that* person either. I’d just stand there shuffling my feet, as if it didn’t matter that I was still waiting while everyone else was picked. The eye contact would get pretty awkward by the end. The team captains would look at each other like, ‘You take them. No, you take them.’ And I’d stand there, trying to become invisible among the swing set. Classic.”.
But here’s the thing, everyone has been here. At some point in our generation’s collective experience, we’ve all stood on the edge of a social circle, waiting for our turn to shine. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t happen. And yet, we linger around, pretending we’re having the time of our lives.
We laugh at jokes we don’t get, nod to inside stories we weren’t privy to, and, honestly, all we can think is to *not* seem like we give a damn. For this reason, perhaps, the main battle of young adulthood is pretending to be unconcerned while being actually overly invested in every cringe-worth conversation.
It’s funny how this “not the best friend” is somehow this rite of passage for this generation-being part of the membership package to adulthood, in addition to crippling student loans and figuring out which streaming service to cut next.
