FROM FRIEND TO FOE AND BACK AGAIN
Two truths are paramount in life, argues author Christie Tate in her new memoir: friendships are essential, and they take work. Ms. Tate begins “B.F.F.: A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found,” her ode to the perilously beautiful world of contemporary female friendship, with an ending: the life of her dear friend Meredith, a woman twenty years her senior who had become a mentor. In the book’s prologue, Ms. Tate gives a speech at Meredith’s funeral, setting the stage for an exploration of how important she was to her; and the remainder of the memoir explores how Tate uses Meredith’s advice and example to navigate through the darkness of her lost friendships and the enlightenment of opening her heart to forgiveness, humility and love.
“B.F.F.” alternates beautifully between Ms. Tate’s exploration of her earliest friendships with elementary school friends and current-day fellow women and mothers, punctuated throughout with moments of visceral pain and highflying joy.
It is a lifelong struggle for her to ever truly fit in. Instead of her friendships being launchpads to a better, more mature self, they instead become measuring sticks which she uses to compare herself to others. Many readers will laugh along with the references to late-eighties and early-nineties pop culture, and some may also closely identify with being the unattractive, looked-over sister who is clearly not her parents’ favorite.
When Ms. Tate exchanges rock-solid high school friendships for an alcoholic, abusive boyfriend, she finds herself staring down an impossible situation: the friendships she has worked so hard to develop are now gone, but the relationship with her boyfriend is unsustainable — and though there is a sense of freedom as she sets out on her own and finds love on her own terms, it’s quickly drowned out by the pain of feeling light-years behind her peers when it comes to maturing socially.
Enter Meredith, an elegant woman whom she befriends at an AlAnon meeting. Meredith is part sponsor, part mother and part sibling who has Been There and Done That when it comes to female friends. A self-professed “obsessive,” Meredith leads them both to a place of openness and understanding, and it’s because of Meredith that Ms. Tate is able to do the hard work of finally looking purposefully at her life and doing the very difficult, humbling work of mending her friendships.
The two women trade painful experiences as they grow — Meredith through her marriage and communication with her mother and sister, Ms. Tate through her experiences with motherhood and disordered eating — but ultimately come to rely strongly on each other. And when Meredith is diagnosed with (and succumbs to) cancer, it is Ms. Tate who can find the strength to stay close and not run.
“B.F.F.” is at its strongest when it is most vulnerable: Even when Ms. Tate has come so far with rebuilding and maintaining her relationships, she still struggles to get it fully right, even to the point of vicious self-harm. It is a fearless and unflinching memoir — Ms. Tate is a writer who openly cringes her way through her mistakes — but it’s also one in which the author invites her readers to do the same.
Like Meredith before her, Ms. Tate inspires the reader to examine their own non-romantic relationships: a difficult endeavor, but an important one. And in a post-COVID age where everything is being outsourced to the Internet, it’s clear that Ms. Tate’s message is urgent: It is now more essential than ever to maintain healthy friendships as close to “in-person” as possible.