The Problem With Being a Lone Ranger

I’ve always been a bit of a lone ranger. Not because I particularly wanted to be. It just seemed to happen that way. Even as a child, I found it hard to make friends. I was painfully shy. The sort of shy that built walls without meaning to, then stood behind them wondering why nobody came in. The funny thing is, children don’t really care about barriers. Adults see walls and politely respect them. Children arrive carrying a plastic dinosaur, a half-eaten packet of crisps, and the sort of confidence most adults only borrow temporarily from alcohol, before asking: “Wanna play?” And somehow that’s enough. No awkward introductions. No compatibility questionnaires. No checking whether your political views align. Just two grubby little humans deciding friendship sounds preferable to eating sand alone. The older I get, the fewer people seem capable of doing that. Maybe we’re all just carrying too much baggage by then. Expectations. Responsibilities. Histories. Whatever the reason, friendships seem harder to start and easier to lose. And they rarely end in any kind of dramatic fashion. There are no funerals, no orchestral goodbyes, no slow-motion scenes where somebody boards a train while waving sadly through the window. They simply drift. One by one they’ve dropped from their perches. Not dead. Just escaped. Flown off to do their own shit. Careers. Relationships. New towns. Better social lives. Entire WhatsApp groups that somehow continue existing without me. And yes, sometimes it makes me sad. Not devastatingly sad. Just enough to make me stare into the middle distance while washing the dishes and wonder: What’s wrong with me? Did I say something? Did I do something? Was I too much? Not enough? Too weird? Not weird enough? The list is endless. Perhaps I’ve stopped caring. Or perhaps I’ve simply become better at pretending I don’t. The friends still clinging to their branches are worth a thousand meaningless friendships. I can count them on one hand, and every single one feels is worth their weight in fallen stardust. I just really ought to look after them better. Maybe reply to messages before they’ve fully fossilised into “sorry I only just saw this” territory. Maybe not leave people on read for three months before suddenly jolting awake at three in the morning and thinking: Oh shit. Wasn’t I supposed to answer that? Don’t get me wrong. I have tried branching out. I have genuinely attempted to make new friends. But people are strange creatures. Nobody explains the rules. School mum Kate, for example. I genuinely thought we’d hit it off. Two creatives. Writing. Illustration. Motherhood. Neurodivergence. On paper we were practically friendship soulmates. And for one glorious evening — okay, perhaps one slightly drunken evening — we were. I’d bumped into her at the local pub. Drinks were flowing. Conversation flowed even faster. We talked about parenting, art, masking, and that exhausting business of editing ourselves into versions the world finds easier to swallow. Then came more drinks. Followed by some questionable shapes on the dance floor, which, in hindsight, may well have been the moment Kate realised it was suddenly very late and made a swift exit. But before she left, we’d declared ourselves friends. Proper friends. The sort who say things like: “We absolutely have to do this again.” And even more importantly: “You must send me those dream stories.” “Really?” “Yes! Please! I’d love to read them.” So eventually I did. After several weeks of opening the message. Closing the message. Opening it again. Reading it seventeen times. Changing one comma. Deleting one comma. Reinstating the comma. I finally hit send. The story was about masking. Dark comedy. Uncomfortably honest. Very Amanda. Then… Nothing. No reply. No reaction. No acknowledgment. Not even a pity emoji. Just silence. Another one bites the dust. Seriously? What the hell is wrong with me? Or perhaps she’d read it and thought: Christ, this is awful. Maybe she should spend her energy on literally anything else. Either way, it stung. Then, a few weeks later, she crossed the road to avoid me. Literally crossed the road. Not subtly either. No tactical phone-checking. No pretending she’d suddenly remembered something. She just looked at me and practically ejected herself across oncoming traffic. I remember standing there thinking: Well that’s definitive. And ever since, exposing myself to new friendships has felt strangely dangerous. There’s a vulnerability to friendship. It’s a delicate dance. Learning somebody’s rhythm. Their footing. Their timing. And most of the time, I’m out of sync from the first step. Stepping on toes. Missing cues. And, more often than not, ending up flat on my arse. Which brings me to my dream. And to Star. I meet her at the school gates. A school mum. Not school mum Kate. A woman introducing herself with the confidence of somebody who has never spent a single second worrying what people think. “Hi,” she says. “I’m Star.” Star. Actual Star. Not a nickname. Not a stage name. Just Star. I stare for a second. Not judging. Merely admiring the sheer confidence of a mother who looked at a newborn and thought: “Yes, Star. Let’s commit to that.” “What a beautiful name.” A lie. A tiny lie. Friendship 101: tell people what they want to hear. She beams. Throws her head back laughing so dramatically I briefly worry it might detach completely and roll down the pavement. Now that would end a friendship quickly. “Thanks, love. And your name?” “Amanda.” I awkwardly extend my hand. Immediately regret it. Why am I shaking hands? It’s thirty degrees. My palm resembles a damp ham. But she grabs it anyway. Firm. Sweaty. Committed. And somehow, just like that, I have a friend. Star. She’s a young mum whose whole aura seems to sparkle. The kind of sparkle that slowly gets dulled over time, until you forget it was ever part of you. Then she asks: “Wanna be friends?” I blink. Are we five? Has friendship somehow looped back around to primary school? But before I can overthink it, I hear myself say: “Yeah.” Then, because I’m weak-spirited and desperation has taken the wheel, I add: “I’d love to.” And suddenly my fantasy comes true. The one I’d spent years romancing from the comfort of my sofa, pyjamas on by five, wondering where exactly my social life had wandered off to. Star and I become inseparable. She’s creative too. A painter. Although when she first shows me her artwork, I have to summon my best Year 9 drama skills and pray I look convincingly impressed. The canvases look like she’s abandoned paintbrushes altogether in favour of elbows. “What do you think?” she asks excitedly. “I think…” I search desperately. “They’re very… painty.” Which is technically true. I say, as though that means anything at all. We meet constantly. Mummy Mondays. Shopping Tuesdays. Wandering Wednesdays. Wine Fridays. And, on particularly difficult weeks, Emergency Wine Any-Day-Ending-in-Y. At first it’s wonderful. Everything I’d ever wanted. The friendship I’d spent years imagining. Someone who actually texts me first. Someone who wants to spend time with me. Someone who chooses me. Then the texts begin. Ping. Ping. Ping. PING. “How’s my BBF?” “Miss you already.” “It’s been 37 minutes.” “Omg.” “You’ll NEVER guess.” “Watch this.” “Did you watch it?” “Amanda?” “AMANDA?” The messages arrive faster than humanly possible. Hundreds. Thousands. An endless digital avalanche. I’ll be halfway through some horrific TikTok she’s sent — a man gently chewing his grandmother’s forty-year-old breast implants after coating them in hot sauce — when another notification arrives. Then another. Then twelve more. Jesus Christ, woman. I’m trying to enjoy my breast-implant ASMR in peace. Then come the voice notes. Those absolute bastards. Seven minutes long. Twelve minutes long. One reaches twenty-three minutes and starts to feel like it could have been boiled down to two minutes, tops. Every time I finish one, she’s sent another. And another. And another. One features somebody whispering motivational affirmations to a cabbage. I stop questioning anything. The internet has won. Humanity has lost. And if the messages weren’t enough, it’s the meet-ups. At first we saw each other three times a week. Then four. Then five. Then every day. Sometimes twice. I don’t even notice it happening. One minute Star is a lovely addition to my life. The next she’s become the entire bloody thing. Every spare hour belongs to Star. Every gap in my diary is filled with Star. Every quiet moment is interrupted by Star. And suddenly all I can think is: I want my old life back. It’s not that she’s unkind. Or cruel. Or even remotely a bastard. She’s lovely. Just in small doses. Okay. Microscopic doses. So after another avalanche of texts, videos, voice notes and TikToks involving deeply concerning forms of ASMR, I am done. Done done. Stuck-a-fork-in-me done. My Star days are numbered. The message takes me an hour to write. Three hours to edit. Four separate crying-face emojis removed. Two unnecessary kisses deleted. Finally I send: “Star, you’ve been such a light in my world. But I need a little time out. I’m going through some things. I appreciate you being a great friend. You’re truly one of a kind. All my love, Amanda.” I nod. Proud. Mature. Boundary-setting Amanda. Look at me. Thriving. Then I press send. And wait. Nothing comes back. No reply. No heart. No thumbs-up. No passive-aggressive GIF. Nothing. Just silence. Exactly what I wanted. Yet somehow, sitting inside that silence, I begin to miss her. The messages. The nonsense. The voice notes. The random adventures. The ridiculous videos. The feeling that somewhere out there, somebody was thinking about me. Constantly. Relentlessly. Exhaustingly. But still. Thinking about me. The following morning confirms it. I spot Star in the school car park, wrestling her toddler into his car seat. For a second I hesitate. Maybe she hasn’t seen the message. Maybe she’s been busy. Maybe I’ve imagined the whole thing. Because that’s the trouble with overthinking; eventually you can’t distinguish reality from the stories you’ve invented about it. I raise a hand. “Hi, Star.” She looks up. Our eyes meet. And then something happens that feels far worse than being shouted at. Nothing. No smile. No wave. No “morning.” No anything. She simply looks through me, as though I’m part of the scenery, before turning back to her son and slamming the car door shut. A moment later she’s gone. Just like that. School mum Kate all over again. Although at least Star remains on the same side of the road. I stand there watching her car disappear around the corner, and at first I feel relieved. Relieved. How ridiculous is that? And now I’ve got exactly what I wanted. Silence. No pings. No “Hey BBF!” No Star. For weeks I’d been fantasising about this moment. Reclaiming my time. Afternoons that belonged entirely to me. Not having to sit through voice notes so long they required refreshments and an intermission. And yet, I don’t feel liberated. I feel empty. Because that’s the thing nobody tells you about friendship. We spend so much time worrying whether people like us, whether we’re too much, too strange, too quiet, too needy, that we forget how rare it is for somebody to simply choose us. No obligation. No history. No reason. Just: “I like you. Let’s be friends.” As adults, that almost never happens. We hide behind schedules, responsibilities and carefully maintained distance, circling each other cautiously, terrified of rejection, terrified of looking foolish, terrified of caring more than the other person. But Star wasn’t cautious. She arrived in my life like a shooting star. Bright. Unexpected. Impossible to ignore. Gone before I’d had the chance to appreciate how beautiful it was. And as her car disappears from sight, I suddenly feel the full gravity of her absence. Not because she was perfect. Not because we were destined to be lifelong friends. But because, for a little while, somebody chose me. Maybe that’s the trouble with being a Lone Ranger. You get so used to your own company that you start believing you don’t need anyone else. Until somebody comes along and proves otherwise. And now, standing alone in the silence I’d asked for, I realise loneliness isn’t always the absence of people. Sometimes it’s the absence of being chosen. And maybe that’s okay. Not because it doesn’t hurt. Not because I wouldn’t have liked Star to stay. But because some people are only meant to pass through your story. Like a shooting star. Brief. Beautiful. And no less meaningful for not staying.