A sentence that has never failed to fill me with well-earned dread:

“You’ll like her!!!!!!!”

I’ve lost count of how many times these threatening words have been uttered towards me, full of the bright-eyed enthusiasm and misguided hope that I, a person who voluntarily worked at her high school library on Sunday nights, am capable of bonding with a stranger vetted only by a well-meaning mutual friend. It never ends well, and while fleetingly I sometimes wonder if things would have unfolded more organically had introductions not been laced with such high expectations, I fucking know better.

Recently, I met a friend of friend as a result of those infernal words, and no, tragically, I did not like her. Theoretically everything was there to make this a less awkward encounter:

• Amerasian? Check.
• Likes mussels? Not hugely important, but sure! Okay, check.
• Well-traveled? Check.
• Friend of a friend? Check.

In retrospect, that’s really all that was going for this encounter, and I’ve made faster friends of people who have checked precisely none of those boxes but felt all the better for it.

Making friends is a dark art to me, as I rarely approach people with high expectations anymore. Maybe it’s a reflection of my self-esteem, but it seems too grueling to put so much effort into determining what a person is like before you find out that they’re a total asshole. (I mean, granted, so am I. So there you have it, prospective, current, and former friends!) How do you qualitatively evaluate friend material? Or is that why some people possess more in quantity than substance? I’ve never been a fan of that method, personally.

Somewhat tellingly, as a child, I never had a best friend, despite amassing my fair share of cheap jewelry suggesting otherwise in half heart shapes. Instead, I had something which I later identified as my childhood arch-nemesis. Not a standard thing for an 11-year old to possess, I think, but this girl and I were repeatedly thrown together with all the expectations that we’d get along like seagulls on a trash heap. (Use your choice of metaphor here.) Once again, a list of check boxes:

• White dad? Check.
• Vietnamese mom? Check.
• Unable to speak mother’s mother tongue? Check.
• Older sister? Check.
• Bookworm? Check.

Once again, that’s where the similarities ended, but because our parents were friends, that didn’t mean I could get away as easily. A surface-level “friendship” was cultivated, while the real seeds of dislike were sown in the shape of mutual suspicion.

I wanted to like her. I really did. We were pen pals for what seemed like years but was probably only a couple of years in reality. It was an excuse to use all my fun stationary, share wild ideas, create paper-based games, and talk about books. But only on paper. I think we visited each other all of twice during this time, as we lived in different states, and it was abundantly clear during both visits that she was more interested in my mother’s hobbies than me as a friend. Lest you think I was misreading the situation, she directly quoted me in a phone call to a friend when lamenting her despair at having me, less so my mother, as a house guest. Ahh, preteen conviviality.

Following that incident I developed a guarded approach to this “friendship” than perhaps was immediately relayed to my well-intending mother. After all, my mom didn’t have a reason to dislike her friend’s daughter….. until AFTER she’d already shoplifted from a Thai department store, lied to my mother and sister, and then tried to have a computer delivered C.O.D. to my mom’s house in my name ahead of her anticipated stay. (Who the hell actually uses C.O.D.??? PayPal was alive and well even in the dark ages of my twenties, man.)

Thankfully, in response to that last incident, my mother quickly rescinded her offer to host her friend’s daughter and sweetly informed her that we wouldn’t be able to accommodate her after all. Tragic indeed.

It’s easy to see how I might have developed some trust issues over the years as a result of this and a few other people that have drifted in and out of my life, but it no longer matters as much. Now I choose to focus on the goodhearted and the steadfast, and can only hope to be as inspiring to my friends as they are to me. <3

EELS: Are We Alright Again