I have these friends who recently split up. The separation was unexpected and, to my mind, came out of nowhere. One minute She was here and making tutus for her daughter's birthday, and the next minute she was packing up her worldly possessions to move 3000 miles across the country.
She called me the day she was leaving. She didn't place blame on anyone, but I blamed her. I blamed her for leaching His wallet dry. I blamed her for not considering couples counseling before bailing. I blamed her for promising my nephews that she'd be there and then taking off.
I put on the non-committal "whatever you have to do" voice, and firmly committed to being Team Him.
And He was a mess. He needed all the help and teammates He could get. She wouldn't even take his calls. We were there for Him and I stayed Facebook friends with Her, mostly just to check in on the kids.
Then things started changing. He got weird and his story kept changing. It was hard to tell the difference between truth and fabrication and I got to the point where I simply assumed everything was fabrication. There really seems to be no end to the depth of his weirdness and inappropriate behavior. So I've put some distance between us.
I don't know how to segue into this next part, so...
Among so many of my other flaws, I am an extraordinarily lazy friend. I'm bad about phoning, I'm lackadaisical about answering emails, and deliberately keep my phone on silent, so I don't hear the text message notification. Most of my friends have accepted this about me, as shitty as it is. This is one of the reasons I love Facebook - I can keep up with everyone from a safe, stalkerish distance.
As I mentioned, I kept up with Her through Facebook, mostly to check on the kids. But after getting some perspective about Him, my anger shifted into understanding. I became aware of the factors that drove Her to move away so quickly and fully, and break promises to my nephews. I was filled with sadness at having let our friendship drift so far apart... Long before she actually left... But didn't know how to breach the gulf that I had forged.
This sadness was further underscored when she had reached out to our mutual friends about Him, but hadn't touched base with me. I felt left out, as selfish as that is, but understood why she hadn't sought my counsel, too. But then she did.
And that brings me to the point of this whole blog entry:
She is HAPPY. She is a wholly different person than the one that I first knew, though I should've known that THIS version of her was always present underneath the materialism and selfish facade she wore for so long. She is cognizant and present, accepting of her role in the breakdown of her marriage, which started long before She ever met Him. She is in a place of honesty and peace, not altogether untinged by sadness at the waste she laid in her quest of self re-discovery.
She is a person I am not only proud of, and admire to a degree, but am envious of. She was Brave enough - or scared enough - to say fuck it and trudge forward to seize what would make her happy, despite the consequences. She is in a more honest place, that has little room for living according to other people's dictates.
I'm closer to where she is than I have ever been before, but not close enough, though every day brings me closer. And one day soon, I'll be there with Her in the redwoods.
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