The end of friends
May 12th, 2005 by bornfamous
I seem to be having more and more trouble with my interpersonal relationships lately–the face-to-face kind, anyway. The more I try to be honest and say what I feel, the more I’m finding that people don’t like me. It’s very isolating. I’ve lost many friends in the past few years. Tonight, another one.
Is it me? I guess she would say that it is. I know she must be sick to death of my ranting on chemicals, the environment, politics and my homeless MCS friend. But I’m sick of hearing about boyfriend troubles when we are on the brink of disaster the likes of which we can’t even imagine. I should have been honest and said so a long time ago, and let go of a friendship that was built on lies–my lies. I pretended to be interested when I wasn’t, pretended I agreed when I didn’t, tried to be supportive long after I no longer felt it. It was only a matter of time before this friendship had to fail. But I’m sad.
I didn’t handle it, uh, mindfully. I should have breathed through my anger and paid attention to how my stomach was churning and my heart was racing. That’s what the Buddhist teachers advise in a moment of stress. It’s supposed to help you calm down and see the truth of the situation. But I didn’t. I fired off two impulsive emails and it was over.
But I wanted it to be over. I’ve wanted to end it for a few months now; I wanted to find the right way to do it, without hurting her, without anger. Mindfully. How do you do that? I don’t know. Instead, I’m saying in my mind all the hurtful, angry things I’d like to say to her. I won’t ever say them out loud, but I’ve thought them and that’s enough.
Or is it? The Buddhist teachers tell us to observe our emotions without judgment. So I’m observing myself go through hurt, anger, grief, sadness and finally, fear. Fear, because I see that this awareness I now have of a reality that few people want to face about chemicals and our environment is pushing me further and further away from everyone I know in the “real” world. The only friends I have left are people I will likely never meet in person.
Does that make me a nut case? Obsessive-compulsive? A control freak? I’ve been called all three. Or maybe I just need to find some fellow environmental nut cases to hang out with.
Oh wait. I already have.
3 Responses to “The end of friends”
Truth of it is though that people change over time as well as interests, availability, needs, wants etc. Whoever planted the notion of a lifelong-bestest-friend was living in fiction land 99.9% of the time IMO. Yes, you can have friends that you can always talk with, pick up where you left off etc, but isn’t it always on some the premise of some other point in time? What if you’ve changed significantly? or suddenly?
I am going through some changes of my own and had a couple weeks where what was really floating in my head was “I’d like all new friends. I want to do new things and meet new people and talk about different things.” I wouldn’t “fire” my old friends based on that idea but it made me realize how much I may have been changing in the past year. And since I don’t really know yet what the new things are that I want to do, well I’ll be treading cautiously I guess. But it makes my longer-term friends wonder what’s going on with me. One emailed me saying that I don’t call, I don’t write, what’s up. But you know, most of them aren’t going out of their way to stay in touch.
So maybe it’s just the whole mid-life thing and an affirmation that change is good.
I could do with a friend. Your chemical rants would not fall on deaf ears. Nor do I have boyfriend troubles.
Sadly, face-to-face is out when there is 6000 miles between us.
jo, i can’t reply to you personally unless you put your email address in the space provided. don’t worry, the software encrypts them so no one will get it from the site.