How to Lose Friends Without Even Trying

Date: 12/12/2025

I’m back at the hell hole that is work — where the lighting hangs low and grey, like it’s given up trying to illuminate anything, least of all me. Paul, my manager, stands before me with his fold-up flipboard and stick, brandishing them like a prophet of traffic law. He’s reciting the Highway Code as though my 18 years of driving experience were actually a rumour I started to feel better about myself. To be fair, I can’t remember sod all about the Highway Code. Muscle memory handles the actual driving while my brain reclines somewhere in a mental hammock, sipping a margarita. It occasionally jolts awake — usually when I nearly mow down a cyclist. No one’s perfect. There’s so much information being hurled at me like road-sign shrapnel that I’m beginning to feel a bit… compressed. “Do you want to take five minutes?” Paul asks, gently. “Yes please,” I reply, fleeing before he can open another laminated page of doom. I scuttle across the depot — shoulders up, chin down, posture of someone trying to fold themselves into a smaller version of already-small me. I accidentally brush against the shoulder of a woman who looks like she eats corporate nonsense for breakfast and uses confidence as her actual skincare routine. She’s immaculate. Heels clicking. Suit pristine. Aura screaming competence. “I’m so sorry,” I stammer, pathetically. “Never apologise for existing, Amanda,” she snaps — but her eyes are gentle, like she actually means it. “I’m sor—“ “Stop that.” “I’m sor—” “Stop. Apologising.” I have, indeed, been told. I attempt to adjust my posture, straighten myself, but my body sinks again; like my bones are tired of holding me up. I push open the doors and am instantly blinded by daylight. I always forget how dark and dingy the depot is until I escape it — like stepping out of a cave and discovering colour again. In the yard, there’s a sofa. Just sitting there, like it grew out of the concrete. I sink into it, beside a mum from my son’s primary school — a safe placeholder known only as “school mum.” Not lovely Kate, though. Kate, who begged me for my dream stories. Kate, who called herself a “fellow writer.” Kate, who promised she couldn’t wait to read them… …and then vanished so completely you’d think my stories were cursed. Ghosted by someone who literally asked for my words. Classic me: reaching out, only to watch the thread snap. “How’s it going? Haven’t seen you in ages,” school mum says. “Same old shit, really,” I answer honestly. She laughs that polite laugh people do when they don’t know whether they should comfort you or back away. “You look like you need wine,” she declares, pouring me a glass. The glug-glug-glug is oddly comforting. We chat, sip wine, talk about our sons, pretend adulthood is manageable. Then — rustling. Ripping. Stuffing erupts from between the sofa cushions, followed by POP — like a mole emerging from its burrow — my husband’s head appears. “Give us a hand?” he asks, as though being lodged inside the inner organs of a couch is perfectly normal. I yank him free. At this point, dream logic barely fazes me. “Invite your new friend to Christmas drinks,” he whispers, loudly enough for the whole yard to hear. Brilliant. Now I have to socially perform. My personal hell. He doesn’t understand that making friends as an almost-forty-year-old is like trying to glue glitter to a wet surface — it just doesn’t stick. But he’ll keep pushing, so: “Would you like to come for Christmas drinks?” I ask school mum. “Hmm. I’ll think about it,” she says. Translation: Not in this lifetime, pet. Thanks, Mat. Now I want the sofa to consume me. And it obliges. I’m suddenly outside Laura’s house. Her husband, Karl, is slumped in the doorway like a man who’s been temporarily unplugged. I nudge him. Nothing. Asleep? Dead? Emotionally buffering? Hard to tell. “Oh, don’t mind him,” Laura calls. “Black dog.” I nod knowingly. We’ve all sat in that doorframe. She pulls me into the longest hug, the kind that wraps around my ribs and whispers you’re safe. I inhale incense — earthy, sweet, nostalgic. Home. Then she eases back and frowns. “You’ve got cobwebs in your hair,” she says, gently lifting a strand between her fingers. It glistens in the light. Always cobwebs. She plucks out another, and another — threads clinging stubbornly, like old thoughts, old fears, old versions of me I’ve been dragging around without realising. “You know,” she murmurs, smoothing my hair, “cobwebs don’t mean you’re stuck… just that you’ve been still for a while.” Her words land softly, settling in cracks I didn’t know were open. I exhale, a small laugh escaping. “Maybe I do need to get myself back out there,” I say, brushing a final thread from my shoulder. “Only when you’re ready,” she replies. And for once, the world feels a little lighter — not because anything has changed, but because something inside me finally has. A quiet loosening of threads. A tiny slither of light getting in. And for the first time in a while, that feels like enough.