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10 de Agosto 2009
her
I want to tell you so many things and it is so hard to find time.
And the words are all confused.
Lately there has been a rash of failures around here.
Best friends (like me) are really sucking it up. So I thought I would send you all a little message from the bottom of the friend pile where things with girlfriends, yours and mine, are really breaking down.
So here is what I really think about her, myself and you (really the pronouns are pretty exchangeable because this is as much a confession as it is a description) I have observed and participated and so this is what I tell myself about the women in my life, and yours:
When I say I wish I could just like her, it is easy to assume that I am saying
I don't like her because I have decided she is empirically
unlikable.
What I am actually thinking is a thought about my failure to
believe the reasons
and trust the logic
around your admiration or need (or love?) for her.
I want to understand how you choose your friends, how you commit in the ways you do; I want to know what works and what doesn't because I am tired of making the same old mistakes over and over again.
And I want you to see that you do commit, in unconventional ways, in your ways, which are wonderful ways that fail sometimes because relationships are wonky.
You do make promises and keep them.
You do love, and you love well.
Her accusations sound so true because she is seeing you clearly, from her perspective, which is just as valuable to you as any other.
You are not giving as much as you could:
if your father hadn't been so broken hearted, you would be a different person--last month, this month, every month, in your last relationship, in this relationship, in future relationships.
If your mother hadn't overworked your own breaking heart, well, you know how different things would be...
You have made promises you haven't been able to keep:
you are human and you failed.
You have not shown her the love you should have:
You intended to love her well, you started out really appreciating her and then things sort of fall apart on your end
You abandoned her, you stopped feeling the same desire for her, you just didn't have the energy to sustain the excitement you first felt for her.
I know you know all of that but I also know that sometimes you like for someone else (me) to confess that I know it too
When I say it, in my voice
the voice that usually tells you lovely things, hopeful things, funny things, even painful things you hear the sad parts in a way that remembers the love I feel for you, the hope I have for you, the fun I have with you, and the pain that we have borne together. When you hear my voice you are conditioned to think of soft places to land when
everything falls apart,
future and longevity and trust and light.
And that is why I think sometimes you like to hear me tell you things you already know
Not that we are blaming your father's failing heart and your mother's unhealthy habits;
you are a grown up who can take responsibility for your choices
but I just want us to be clear about what you are taking responsibility for
we are not excusing your failing or boredom with her
instead I think I just want to point to your faults in a way that
makes room for them to stand,
for them to be real and holy ground.
I want to connect them to the best of you, so that you can be integrated, so you can see that your greatest failures are the fertile soil for your greatest triumphs.
Your commitment to your father took you away from the promises you made to her
And your fervent avoidance of your mother exhausted your ability to be present with her.
But relationship with your parents will always come to bear in a big way on your most intimate relationships. Those intimate relationships need to account for the father factor, to absorb the shock of it and allow graciously for you to experiment, risk and be angry about it. Also, those relationships need to respond with love to the degree that you share your life, as your mother's child, the degree to which you are willing to reveal or submit your story to query at any given time. Those relationships will also, if they are open to it, reap the benefits of the love lessons you learn from being the person you are.
Your old patterns of behavior around making promises and loving well in--fits and starts, the rhythm of your desires, are not yet elongated enough to carry you through the exhaustion and rejection you have experienced recently.
so your wise and burning desire for deeper companionship,
the fundamental desire that kept things going as long as they have,
is abandoned in the heat of the moment because
the one who cares so much for you
suddenly comes up short, and bold with a machine gun mouth spitting out
truthful accusations in rapid succession
and the rejection at hand (coupled as it was with an accurate description of your greatest faults) displaces your tiny hope that this care was
the deep and lasting care you longed for.
Of course you are guilty, but what good are the feelings of guilt if you don't learn from them, if you don't separate out what you are guilty of and what she is guilty of?
The guilty feelings should not lead you to punish yourself, but to discipline yourself and the first thing you should disallow yourself is to fall into the masturbatory nature of narcissistic guilt that says
This is ALL your fault. Because really, you are not that powerful around here, you are probably not the biggest thread in the tapestry of your community, and you are most definitely not the biggest snag in it--let's leave that descriptor for really awful stuff like sin, depravity, mental illness, rather than one single person, its easier to work with if its bigger like that.
I know you know about that.
Whether you believe it or not, you will be careful when you point to her faults and failures, because you have trained yourself all along to be compassionate toward her.
But I'm not convinced you know yourself or care enough about yourself to recognize what she did that triggered your boredom, anger, frustration and ended in your behaving in ways you regret.
Nor am I convinced that you know enough about yourself to know admit that
You must have shown her a lot of care.
You
encouraged her
to search for healing,
to tell the truth,
to see clearly,
to love passionately,
to ask for more of you
or else she wouldn't have done any of that and you wouldn't be so ambivalent about the brokenness of the relationship right now.
Something about you was so strong, maybe even stronger than ever before because you made the best of this opportunity to be so:
you made space for her,
whether she used that space lovingly or not, she moved into it, toward you. For that movement and all that encouraged it, we should be grateful to both of you, but not naïve. We should mourn the loss of a relationship that fostered that kind of behavior, but not in a way that wishes idly to change the past.
Things have been said that have hurt so much,
there has been a brisk trade in shame and
sloughing off of responsibility.
There are profound weaknesses and
wounds that need time to heal, to shrink, to forgive.
Talking about it may not be the answer, just yet. Exposing a wound to the light will not necessarily slow the healing process but it often makes the scarring worse. Maybe a few protective measures will help, a certain retreating to safer territory,
humility and a season for mourning are in order.
The truth is, these wounds may never heal because no one knows what will heal them or what will reopen them. The trick is to live boldly, honestly, hopefully, knowing that when they do reopen the pain will send its message that it is time to find a safe place to cry over how badly this hurts. And to remember that pain is pain: it always leaves a mark, and healing,
well, as for healing
that is the greatest miracle.
help yourself | By crymytinyflood | 4:17 PM
