I lost a friend at the end of 2012. She didn’t die – she basically broke up with
me. It’s a friend I’ve known for
literally decades, but as someone pointed out to me recently an old friend
isn’t always the same thing as a close friend. She has been both at various times, and though
she’d kept the “old friend” status all along, in the last few years we’d
definitely grown further and further apart.
The petty, small part that we all have had been tempted to
use this, my own personal sandbox, as a place to hash out the whole damned
situation. And if I said I don’t still
have that temptation I’d be denying all of the sentences I’ve already typed and
deleted in what is only two paragraphs of writing. Because I’m frustrated. Because the end of this long, and once
important, friendship came in the form of an angry, accusatory, vitriolic email
to which I chose not to retaliate. I
took what I had decided was the ‘high road.’
I honored the demand that she made for our relationship to be
‘done.’ I let her have her say and
didn’t lash out and carve her down to a sad, quivering, humiliated lump, and
I’ll be bold (ok, smug. Cocky even.) and
tell you that I could have. Instead I
just said “ok.”
The thing that most frustrates me about all of it, and which
makes this post really hard to write the right way (by which I mean the fair
and correct and not evil way) is that I didn’t do anything wrong. I protected people who were important to me,
and kept confidences that were entrusted to me and let my own happiness be at least as important as the happiness of others
and for all of this I’ve got more than one person out there considering me
evil. I know the truth of it, and the
people who see me through this kaleidoscopic view are not the people who matter
to me. So why does this still
occasionally pop up in my peripheral vision and eat at me?
I’m sad to say I think it’s pride. It’s years of “she dids” and “I nevers” that I
didn’t get to play in this terrifically stupid game. It’s this final “high road” I took after what
I see as years and years of high roads bringing me to the point where I’m on
the frickin’ Mt. Everest of damned high roads but which I don’t get to
flaunt. And, most lame of all, it’s this
really inherent sense of what should be “right” and “wrong” in the world but
which isn’t being those things. And my
need to get them there. To make the
world line up with my view of it. And to
be able to see my actions as being exactly what they should have been, and
noble to boot.
In the last year before this friend stormed off she and I
connected with each other maybe half a dozen times. Certainly no more than a dozen. So we’re talking one chat or email or “ships
passing in the night” encounter a month at best. I’ve got people that I actually DON’T like
that I interact with more. As far as
things I can live without go this friendship is a doozy. And yet I have stopped and walked through the
conversation that I didn’t get to have with her a few damned times since she
proclaimed herself “done.” So, in the
end, what this whole thing did more than anything was force me to face some
things about myself that I need to keep working on. Ironically none of them were things with
which she took issue, but as it always is it’s not the things that others tell
me I should care about that matter. It’s
the things I know I want to improve.
So if my ex-friend were to stumble back on this blog I’d
want her to know that I’m working on the stuff I think I need to improve, and
thank her for giving me this annoying, niggling view once again on my
imperfections.
Damn her.
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