Hi Portia,
Thanks for empathisizing with me, and all the listening here.
T. said, "Well, I can forgive all that, why don't we start over?" And, truly, I appreciated the honesty in that: she really didn't see herself as having anything to apologize for, so she didn't.
I feel like hugging you coz that must have hurt you? Hurt to know that your friend was in that place and you’d lost a friend; although you already knew it I guess. It’s still sad though, it still hurts? I guess you can see from my reaction above that I’m still shocked (though there is less of the rest of the cycle to go through these days I think). Have you found over time that the shock lessens, as your experience grows?
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Thank you for that mental hug, P. As to T. herself, the worst had come before I stepped back. So I felt truly released by that conversation--stark evidence that backing away was all I could do. The pain came in realizing that, because the friendship was now
over versus adaptable, I would lose the strong, loving relationships I had with her H., Jay, and child. Jay and I were friends before we met T. He read the invocation at our wedding and her D. was the flower girl. We were all family, and now I'd lost them.
As far as moving on goes, in an odd way, I have an ace in the hole. Emotionally, I lost my F. young, then broke contact with him, maybe forever, as an adult. Any loss I've experienced since then has felt much smaller. I stepped away from T. with love and prayers for her and her family, like I did with my F. So, though I agonized over both those decisions on the front end, I ultimately felt lighter and more at peace after those breaks. Addendum to this story: my H. ran into Jay on the street last year on the way to one of my H's music gigs. They're old pals, chatted during set breaks, had much fun. The next day we had breakfast with Jay and his brother. Expected the old Jay I knew and loved, such a beautiful mind/heart (you'd have liked him P., insatiably curious and intelligent, and with a child's sense of awe and wonder)...instead Jay made snarky comments, came off bitter and cynical. The rest of us were stunned, even his brother. All I could do afterwards was pray that his jibes came from having to listen to years of complaints from T. about me, and didn't reflect his true feelings about his life and marriage. Which would break my heart, even all these years later.
It takes self-ish people to act outwards towards others for the sake of acting itself, not for internal reasons. Self-obsessed people tend not to act, tend to obsess I guess, until they become selfish?
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I don't have an answer, but have noticed that some self-obsessed people seem to be incapable of considering anyone but themselves in how they act. Your question makes me think of a cartoon I hung on my bulletin board at work: employee stands in front of boss' desk and says, "The meeting's at 10. I'll send you a copy of the agenda, the hidden agenda and your personal agenda."
My boss reading this cartoon =
...I thought,well, that's the thing about karma, Bubba; it's everywhere you're going to be!
Cheers, Portia,
LoH
