I truly woke up on the wrong foot this morning, when the first thoughts I was aware of were about a lost friend. Maybe I was dreaming, and the dream bled into my first waking thoughts, but it made for a sad kind of awakening.
It is possible that the sadness is rooted in other issues I'm grappling with right now, like a family member we should not have accepted to do business with who is now dissatisfied with a delay, and which breaks my heart a bit because we really like them and now it's gotten weird. Or maybe it's just more fatigue caused by our financial woes, which force me to keep a happy face on almost all the time despite crushing worries and no idea what our future will look like, or even where we'll live.
Or maybe it boils down to learning that we're getting a late-winter dumping of snow tomorrow at the end of a season of dumpings of snow interrupted only by periods of slushy, gross thaws. For one of the first times in my life, I joined the hyperbolic masses in griping about this seemingly interminable winter. But I think this is more than a simple case of Monday Blahs.
The loss of this good friend is something that I often think I've gotten over, but just when I'm cruising along without a single thought in my mind about the entire thing, my senses are sparked by something that reminds me of this person and I get sad for a moment. And for some strange reason, I woke up this morning with a strong sense of loss and a nagging persistent thought that wanted to know: why?
This former friend was the kind of friend that you talk to every day. That knows pretty much everything about you. That you've gone on holiday with, and who has stuck by you in your hard times. It was an improbable friendship between two people about whom others wondered how we ended up friends in the first place. I was closer to this person than to my own family members. I cherished this friendship. And one day, without much warning that I could feel or see, my friend stopped returning my calls.
Like the jilted lover who won't take a hint, I couldn't take the hint. It was simply inconceivable to me that there was a hint that I should have been taking. I couldn't understand how or why more than 10 years of close, intense friendship would be subjected to hint-dropping and an unspoken break-up. But when I just wouldn't stop calling and acting as though our friendship was unbreakable no matter what, my now ex-friend had to tell me explicitly that I needed to stop calling her, and that she would call me when and if she were ever ready to do so. I vaguely remember being told that the Ex "needed some space" and something about me being "intense". And for almost five years following that shocking talk, I heard nothing else from my Ex-Friend. I was never told how my unwavering loyalty in her time of need had been interpreted as being too intense. I was never told how this expressive and emotional person had gone from telling me and everyone around her that I was her sister-soul, to being banished from her life and barred from calling her. I never understood what it was about her and her life - and more personally, what it was about me and the friendship I offered - that made me go from sister-soul to banishment in what I perceived to be almost overnight.
Years passed, and like any other bad break-up, I mourned my loss and got over it, resigned that I would never know what happened and simply forced to accept that it did. I gradually stopped thinking about it and moved on. Every once in a while, either through friends or on Facebook, I'd be reminded of this person's existence and the fact that I was deleted from her life, and I would be reminded of how much this person had hurt me with her sudden rejection. Once, we were at an event where she called someone else her sister-soul in my presence, and I had to walk away. And since this new sister-soul was able to give something to the Ex that the Ex needed, the only thing I could think about her was that she was a lying, hypocritical liar who used people when she needed them and discarded them once they no longer had anything to offer her.
But overall, I buried the relationship like a dead relative and got on with things. I did what I used to do to get over old boyfriends: I focused on her faults and forgot about what I thought had been her good qualities. I got over it, and moved on. Because what else can one do, really?
Then, out of the blue, nearly 5 years later, a phone call. An invitation to go out and have dinner. To talk. My injured pride told me to decline and stay home, but my curiosity and need to know WHY got the best of me, and I went. After some awkward small talk, I was told that there was no real reason why. There were some attempts to explain that there were bad times, lots of "it wasn't you, it was me", some apology for the break-up being so radical and so woefully unexplained and then - surprise - the admission that she missed me and an offer to renew ties. I was funny and smart and she missed that about me, and missed it in her life.
I felt more blind-sided by this offer of renewed friendship than the actual break-up itself. I came from from dinner even more confused than before and, if possible, feeling even more betrayed. There was no enlightening reason why I was treated so shoddily, nothing I could wrap my brain around and learn to accept. I hadn't done anything necessarily wrong, I just, well, needed to get gone out of her life because of not me, but her. And now I was being invited back into this person's life because I was funny? Or something? So after being pushed away for no concrete reason, I was being invited back for no concrete reason.
I couldn't accept. As much as I missed the sisterhood of friendship that I had not known up until then and have not enjoyed with anyone ever since, I could not allow myself to trust this person with my heart anymore. Had I been provided with a reason - any reason, even one that was a blatant fault or error on my part - that my rational mind could wrap itself around, I could have contemplated forgiving and forgetting and rekindled a sort of friendship with her. If there were something I could have apologized for, something that we could have avoided repeating in future... But from my perspective, all I got as a reason was, "I was going through stuff, and I suddenly decided not to see you anymore." Ok, fine. But why would I invest myself in you and trust you again? What keeps you from doing this to me again later on?? All of it is basically arbitrary, and based on whim.
And that's what came out of my mouth as an answer at that fateful dinner, five years after the break-up. I told her that I felt exactly as though I'd been dumped (which I was) and that I worked very hard to get over the pain and sadness and sense of loss I felt at being cut off from a friendship that I thought was for life, unshakable and always there to rely on. I learned to live without her without really understanding why I'd been forced to do so. And after so many years, I was over her and had learned to live my life differently. This new invitation to become friends again was like an ex-boyfriend coming back so many years after you got over him and telling you he never stopped loving you and that he wanted to be part of your life again. I can finally remember our good times fondly and without so much pain, but I can't fall back into love with you. It all just hurt too much.
Some tell me that if I were a true friend, I would forgive and forget. That the friendship I miss so much would be worth it. That it took my Ex a lot of courage to call me up and offer to be friends again. But I just couldn't do it. I didn't hate her, I wasn't really bitter anymore, and I hope she has a wonderful life.
But I have a lot going on in my life that makes me feel vulnerable, and that I steel myself to face every single day. I don't need more drama, thank you very much. I need to save up my courage every day to just get through the day, I don't have any courage left over to take a chance, open up my heart and get stomped on again.
Apparently, despite all of this, I still wake up every once in a while with a sense of loss and a need to know the "real reason" why.
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