The Ballad Of Greg Richane: COVID And Smashed Friendships

How the shit trickles out.

Written a little bit about COVID and friendships before, as well as about what COVID is doing to mental health, and now I want to tell a quick story that evolved in “COVID times” but isn’t really about COVID per se. I’ll try to loop it all back.

I had a crew of friends through my ex. The thing we don’t discuss is that when you get divorced, you also have to essentially divorce the friends. It’s hard, and maybe even harder than the divorce itself, because by the time you get divorced, the relationship is kinda fucked, but you’re still OK with the friends, and chances are they don’t even know your relationship is fucked. Related: on the exact same day that my ex and I decided to divorce, her sister texted me for relationship advice. How’s that for LOL?

Anyway, one of my friends in that circle was this kid Greg. He tried valiantly, and I do mean to give him lots of credit, to remain friends post-me and my ex. We’d text about dogs, NBA, the Buffalo Bills, and some other shit. It was sporadic, but it was nice and I felt a connection back to my old life. Whether or not that’s entirely healthy I cannot tell you or speak to; it quite possibly isn’t, but humans are weird creatures emotionally.

Now, before I was divorced, I’d say I hung out with this kid 15-20 times, including a bunch of weddings, group texts, 1-2 NYEs (that picture above is us toasting on NYE ’14 into ’15 at their house in MA, I believe), etc. We were definitely and conclusively friends. It was above the idea of acquaintanceship.

Now, during COVID, at one point I was bored, sitting at a bar, as I’m wanton to do, and I decided to start deleting photos from my phone as a project. I got from 2,442 photos to 51. It was quite a little undertaking.

In the course of this photo deletion, I would sometimes come across some cute kid or couple stuff, and I’d send those photos to people. Since it reminded them of pre-COVID times, I had a decently high response rate.

I found a picture of my man Greg’s wife, whose name would be Amy, sitting with a fat Asian child. It’s not her child; since that photo, they do have a child, but this was some random kid inside a museum. So, I sent her that picture as I kept deleting.

I got a response almost instantly that I should never contact her again, which is completely logical, within her rights, and probably for the best. It definitely hurt in the moment — I had been friends with her since probably July 2009, same wedding circuit, text circuit, events, etc. — but I get it.

A few days later,