Relationships
![Christie Tate - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_christie_tate.jpg)
B.F.F.: A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found
From the author of Group, a New York Times bestseller and Reese's Book Club Pick, comes a moving, heartwarming, and powerful memoir about Christie Tate's lifelong struggle to sustain female friendship, and the friend who helps her find the human connection she seeks.
After more than a decade of dead-end dates and dysfunctional relationships, Christie Tate has reclaimed her voice and settled down. Her days of agonizing in group therapy over guys who won't commit are over, the grueling emotional work required to attach to another person tucked neatly into the past.
Or so she thought. Weeks after giddily sharing stories of her new boyfriend at Saturday morning recovery meetings, Christie receives a gift from a friend. Meredith, twenty years older and always impeccably accessorized, gives Christie a box of holiday-themed scarves as well as a gentle suggestion: maybe now is the perfect time to examine why friendships give her trouble. "The work never ends, right?" she says with a wink.
Christie isn't so sure, but she soon realizes that the feeling of "apartness" that has plagued her since childhood isn't magically going away now that she's in a healthy romantic relationship. With Meredith by her side, she embarks on a brutally honest exploration of her friendships past and present, sorting through the ways that debilitating shame and jealousy have kept the lasting bonds she craves out of reach-and how she can overcome a history of letting go too soon. But when Meredith becomes ill and Christie's baggage threatens to muddy their final days, she's forced to face her deepest fears in honor of the woman who finally showed her how to be a friend.
Poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, and emotionally satisfying, B.F.F. explores what happens when we finally break the habits that impair our ability to connect with others, and the ways that one life-however messy and imperfect-can change another.
After more than a decade of dead-end dates and dysfunctional relationships, Christie Tate has reclaimed her voice and settled down. Her days of agonizing in group therapy over guys who won't commit are over, the grueling emotional work required to attach to another person tucked neatly into the past.
Or so she thought. Weeks after giddily sharing stories of her new boyfriend at Saturday morning recovery meetings, Christie receives a gift from a friend. Meredith, twenty years older and always impeccably accessorized, gives Christie a box of holiday-themed scarves as well as a gentle suggestion: maybe now is the perfect time to examine why friendships give her trouble. "The work never ends, right?" she says with a wink.
Christie isn't so sure, but she soon realizes that the feeling of "apartness" that has plagued her since childhood isn't magically going away now that she's in a healthy romantic relationship. With Meredith by her side, she embarks on a brutally honest exploration of her friendships past and present, sorting through the ways that debilitating shame and jealousy have kept the lasting bonds she craves out of reach-and how she can overcome a history of letting go too soon. But when Meredith becomes ill and Christie's baggage threatens to muddy their final days, she's forced to face her deepest fears in honor of the woman who finally showed her how to be a friend.
Poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, and emotionally satisfying, B.F.F. explores what happens when we finally break the habits that impair our ability to connect with others, and the ways that one life-however messy and imperfect-can change another.
Editorial Reviews
"B.F.F. is a love story about the miracle of friendship. But it's also an admirably vulnerable, heartbreaking-meets-funny self-interrogation. Reckoning with failed or faltering friendships-the ones that feel like auditions for a part you're desperate to play, or high-stakes competitions, or even love triangles-means reckoning with the kind of friend you are. It means facing yourself. B.F.F. made me laugh, cry, and cringe with recognition, page after page. It made me want to pick up the phone and start calling my friends." -Maggie Smith, author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
"Tate's chaotic yet heartwarming first book [Group] was all about the unconventional group therapy setting that helped her work through her issues with intimacy. . . In her second memoir, Tate focuses on the elusive intimacy of friendship, recounting the tumultuous, emotional and funny process of learning how to have and be a friend. It yet again strikes that perfect balance of an author spilling the dirt and baring her soul." -BookPage
"A meaningful, memorable journey from inner pain to honest, open, and enduring friendship." -Kirkus Reviews
"In her heartfelt memoir, Tate reflects on the implosion of her past female friendships . . . [She] takes accountability for her actions (‘I'm a work in progress'), and she captures the transformative power of friendship . . . Readers will be moved by this outstanding portrait of self-excavation." -Publishers Weekly (STARRED review)
"In close parallel to her debut, Group, Tate's second memoir is another long look at a lifetime's work of healing relationships . . . Written in three understandable, relatable parts-"What It Was Like," "What Happened," "What It's Like Now"-Tate's book shows readers how deep the work had to go for her to change." -Booklist
SELECTED PRAISE FOR GROUP
"Every page of this incredible memoir,
"Tate's chaotic yet heartwarming first book [Group] was all about the unconventional group therapy setting that helped her work through her issues with intimacy. . . In her second memoir, Tate focuses on the elusive intimacy of friendship, recounting the tumultuous, emotional and funny process of learning how to have and be a friend. It yet again strikes that perfect balance of an author spilling the dirt and baring her soul." -BookPage
"A meaningful, memorable journey from inner pain to honest, open, and enduring friendship." -Kirkus Reviews
"In her heartfelt memoir, Tate reflects on the implosion of her past female friendships . . . [She] takes accountability for her actions (‘I'm a work in progress'), and she captures the transformative power of friendship . . . Readers will be moved by this outstanding portrait of self-excavation." -Publishers Weekly (STARRED review)
"In close parallel to her debut, Group, Tate's second memoir is another long look at a lifetime's work of healing relationships . . . Written in three understandable, relatable parts-"What It Was Like," "What Happened," "What It's Like Now"-Tate's book shows readers how deep the work had to go for her to change." -Booklist
SELECTED PRAISE FOR GROUP
"Every page of this incredible memoir,
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1 1.
I met Meredith in December 1998, and I still remember her outfit. A red blazer, multicolored silk scarf, gold pin. Black leather shoes with a kitten heel. A pencil skirt. Boniest ankles you ever saw. Her hair was blond with a few gray streaks, and her manicured nails were a pale pink that today I could identify as Essie's Ballet Slippers. She stacked multiple rings on several fingers of both hands, which clacked softly when she gestured. Later, I told her she'd looked like a meteorologist from the eighties with that scarf and pin. "I was jealous of how put together you were-the outfit, the manicure." At the time, I was twenty-five years old; Meredith was in her mid-forties.
We met at a recovery meeting held in the back booth of a Swedish diner on the North Side of Chicago. The purpose of the meeting was to help the friends and family members of alcoholics-anyone who loved a drunk, basically-reclaim their lives from the chaos of being intimately involved with someone who drinks too much. People had been recommending this recovery program to me for many years-starting with a biology teacher in high school who knew I was dating a basketball player who liked to party-and I'd refused, even though I spent half a dozen biology classes crying over the basketball player's infidelity and nonstop pot smoking. No, not for me. Sophomore year of college, I found my way to a different twelve-step program, one for people with eating disorders, and it helped me address the bulimia that had dogged me since I was thirteen. One recovery program was enough, thank you very much.
I'd finally decided to walk through the doors of the weird Swedish diner meeting when Liam, my boyfriend at the time, came home yet again from the bar and puked in the toilet, too blitzed to say his name, much less Goodnight, Christie, or I love you. Sex was most certainly out of the question. In those days, I spent my waking hours perseverating over the question of why Liam would pick a six-pack of Schlitz over hanging out with me, wonderful me, who was turning into an emotionally bankrupt shrew whose primary job was to tally how much he was drinking and how little we were fucking. I'd become an abacus: all I could do was count how much he drank and all the ways he disappointed me. The night before my first meeting at that Swedish diner, I'd decided there was no harm in checking out another twelve-step meeting. Meetings typically last sixty minutes, and I wasn't terribly busy with my secretarial day job and my nighttime job of waiting for Liam to tap into some desire for me. Maybe the people at this meeting could teach me how to get my beloved to stop drinking until he blacked out.
At the time, I lived and worked on the South Side of Chicago, in Hyde Park, one hundred blocks away from the Swedish diner in Andersonville. The morning of the meeting, I woke up before six to shower, dress for work, and pack food for the day, because as soon as the meeting was over, I'd have to bolt to my Honda and book it one hundred blocks back to Hyde Park, where I worked as an administrative assistant to a prominent social sciences professor at the University of Chicago. My job entailed sending faxes, answering the phone, and tracking down my boss's speaking fees-tasks an average sixth grader could have executed. The boss wanted me there by 9:00 a.m. sharp in case the president called at 9:01 a.m. inviting him to discuss his research at an upcoming U.N. conference.
When the diner meeting started, only five other people huddled around the table in the back corner. "Hi, I'm Meredith. Welcome. We're a small meeting," said a smartly dressed woman when she saw me looking around for more people. My recovery meetings for bulimia took place in hospitals and churches-solemn institutions that smelled like antibacterial soap, mold, or incense-where we sat in folding chairs or on lumpy couches. Meeting in public at a table beneath stenciled images of old-timey Swedish townspeople, I felt exposed. What if I burst into tears? What if a member of the public overheard me talking about my boyfriend's beer tab? What if someone I knew walked in for lingonberry pancakes before work? If Meredith hadn't spoken to me, I would have turned around and walked out.
The person in charge, seated to the right of Meredith, had short, spiky brown hair and brick red lipstick. She introduced herself as Sherri and read from pages in a blue binder. At some point, she asked if there were any newcomers. I raised my hand and said my name. Around the table, each person said "Welcome" and smiled at me. My eyes filled with tears without my ...
I met Meredith in December 1998, and I still remember her outfit. A red blazer, multicolored silk scarf, gold pin. Black leather shoes with a kitten heel. A pencil skirt. Boniest ankles you ever saw. Her hair was blond with a few gray streaks, and her manicured nails were a pale pink that today I could identify as Essie's Ballet Slippers. She stacked multiple rings on several fingers of both hands, which clacked softly when she gestured. Later, I told her she'd looked like a meteorologist from the eighties with that scarf and pin. "I was jealous of how put together you were-the outfit, the manicure." At the time, I was twenty-five years old; Meredith was in her mid-forties.
We met at a recovery meeting held in the back booth of a Swedish diner on the North Side of Chicago. The purpose of the meeting was to help the friends and family members of alcoholics-anyone who loved a drunk, basically-reclaim their lives from the chaos of being intimately involved with someone who drinks too much. People had been recommending this recovery program to me for many years-starting with a biology teacher in high school who knew I was dating a basketball player who liked to party-and I'd refused, even though I spent half a dozen biology classes crying over the basketball player's infidelity and nonstop pot smoking. No, not for me. Sophomore year of college, I found my way to a different twelve-step program, one for people with eating disorders, and it helped me address the bulimia that had dogged me since I was thirteen. One recovery program was enough, thank you very much.
I'd finally decided to walk through the doors of the weird Swedish diner meeting when Liam, my boyfriend at the time, came home yet again from the bar and puked in the toilet, too blitzed to say his name, much less Goodnight, Christie, or I love you. Sex was most certainly out of the question. In those days, I spent my waking hours perseverating over the question of why Liam would pick a six-pack of Schlitz over hanging out with me, wonderful me, who was turning into an emotionally bankrupt shrew whose primary job was to tally how much he was drinking and how little we were fucking. I'd become an abacus: all I could do was count how much he drank and all the ways he disappointed me. The night before my first meeting at that Swedish diner, I'd decided there was no harm in checking out another twelve-step meeting. Meetings typically last sixty minutes, and I wasn't terribly busy with my secretarial day job and my nighttime job of waiting for Liam to tap into some desire for me. Maybe the people at this meeting could teach me how to get my beloved to stop drinking until he blacked out.
At the time, I lived and worked on the South Side of Chicago, in Hyde Park, one hundred blocks away from the Swedish diner in Andersonville. The morning of the meeting, I woke up before six to shower, dress for work, and pack food for the day, because as soon as the meeting was over, I'd have to bolt to my Honda and book it one hundred blocks back to Hyde Park, where I worked as an administrative assistant to a prominent social sciences professor at the University of Chicago. My job entailed sending faxes, answering the phone, and tracking down my boss's speaking fees-tasks an average sixth grader could have executed. The boss wanted me there by 9:00 a.m. sharp in case the president called at 9:01 a.m. inviting him to discuss his research at an upcoming U.N. conference.
When the diner meeting started, only five other people huddled around the table in the back corner. "Hi, I'm Meredith. Welcome. We're a small meeting," said a smartly dressed woman when she saw me looking around for more people. My recovery meetings for bulimia took place in hospitals and churches-solemn institutions that smelled like antibacterial soap, mold, or incense-where we sat in folding chairs or on lumpy couches. Meeting in public at a table beneath stenciled images of old-timey Swedish townspeople, I felt exposed. What if I burst into tears? What if a member of the public overheard me talking about my boyfriend's beer tab? What if someone I knew walked in for lingonberry pancakes before work? If Meredith hadn't spoken to me, I would have turned around and walked out.
The person in charge, seated to the right of Meredith, had short, spiky brown hair and brick red lipstick. She introduced herself as Sherri and read from pages in a blue binder. At some point, she asked if there were any newcomers. I raised my hand and said my name. Around the table, each person said "Welcome" and smiled at me. My eyes filled with tears without my ...
