I finished the BFF book. If you haven’t seen part 1 of this post, check back to posts from a couple of weeks ago and it will give you some background. Basically, the book is written in first person by a girl living in Chicago who is married, but still wishes to have a best girl friend. Her childhood best friends live out of state and it just isn’t the same. So she decides to go on 52 “girl dates” in one year…one per week. Some of her dates are great, others just don’t click, but one thing is for sure…all of them are very different. Not one of them fulfills everything she originally wanted in a best friend, but each of them has something different to offer.
In the end, the author (Rachel) realizes she has been looking for a friend that will be the same as her childhood best friends…but that it will be impossible to find. Why? Because they have been with her since the beginning. They’ve been through things with her that no new friend has. They grew up in different stages of life. And so, you can’t have a best friend in the same way you’ve had a best friend before…life is always evolving. She decides that the new friends she has made in that one year of “girl dating” may not have known her in the past, but that in a few years, they will be those people that were around for this present time.
I’m not sure I’m articulating this very well, so you might want to just go read the book. I did relate to it in a lot of areas. Although I would never take all the measures Rachel did to meet friends (online clubs, rent-a-friend, etc), I knew what she was talking about when she said she had tons of close friends that were long distance, but none local. That’s how it was for me when I moved to Chicago. I met people there of course, but was disappointed that none of them could come close to my already best friends. As time goes on, I realize this was sort of false. Those friends won’t ever be the same as my college friends, because we never experienced college together. But they will be my Chicago friends, and no one can replace them in the way. Different friends can fulfill your life in different ways.
Even now I am forming new friend relationships, and they won’t ever be my old college friends either. But that doesn’t make them any less…they are important people in my life, in a different way. They aren’t as easy to find. You don’t walk up to someone like you did when you were 4 and say, “Hey, wanna be friends?” You don’t live down the hall from them in the dorm or sit next to them in class. Sometimes, you have to make an effort, and in Rachel’s case, initiate…”dates.”
As for a critique of the book, I enjoyed it a lot. It was very insightful and there were tons of times I thought, “Wow! I didn’t know anyone else had these thoughts!” She did research and there were some really interesting parts. However, it wasn’t a novel that had a very big climax in the middle or close to the end. I probably would have been happy only hearing about 10 of her “dates” instead of all 52. In that way it dragged on a little, but still wasn’t boring. The author was funny and real. And I admire her for her honesty and for putting herself out there.
So there you have it, and that’s all for today. 
