Yesterday's blog discussed a quote claiming people in our lives are a reflection of who we are at the moment, not necessarily who we really are. I've been thinking about that a lot, trying to apply it to every person in my life (past and present) in an attempt to see "who I am or was" in the moment I interacted with them.
One former friend in particular stuck out in my mind so I'm trying to determine if I was who she thought I was at the time of our friendship's demise. This is literally a work in progress since I have no idea what the conclusion to this experiment will be so here goes.
So I had this friend. She and I really weren't anything alike and probably would not have developed a friendship in the real world but in the arena of working in the same office with only a couple of other women swimming in a sea of men...we met and a friendship was born. She and I had very little in common with our background, but I was accustom to the that thanks to my crazy dysfunctional past. We also didn't have personalities that meshed in any way but a few interests were similar enough to forge a relationship.
She had a personality that could soar high in the clouds or crash land. Her quicksilver temper often left me speechless and fearing for her life. In other words, her moods were unpredictable and spending time with her was like riding a roller coaster in the dark--with potential to be the most fun you've ever had or it could leave you trembling with fear and sitting in a puddle of your own urine! Which personality would show up was anyone's guess.
The breakdown of our friendship began when a mutual friend asked me to lunch (twice) without including her. She has a son struggling with addiction and needed to talk--needed advice--needed reassurance. Basically she needed an outlet to vent and since she knew I'd "been there and done that", she invited me out of the office for an in prompt-to therapy session. At the time, I had been working through most lunches because I was behind on my hours and trying to catch up, but I knew our mutual friend needed me so there was no way I could turn her down.
The first time we went out to lunch without her, she was angry but got over it. (Strangely, even though she had an explosive temper, she didn't confront me but instead choose to give me the cold shoulder). A couple of weeks later, the fateful second lunch occurred and our friendship ended at that moment. Again, she never confronted me or chose to take the high road to get my side of the story....or actually any part of the story. Instead she decided to be passive-aggressive and let me know through the grapevine that she was tired of being used by me. I'm not completely sure how I'd used her, but that was her opinion of the situation.
In hindsight, I realize I should have been the bigger person and simply tried to explain myself....I should have told her I was going to lunch without her and why...maybe explaining before hand would have been enough to prevent her hurt feelings. I should have asked her to talk about why she was so angry in an attempt to salvage our friendship. I should have done a lot of things but instead I did nothing. I allowed her to wallow in her pain--feeling alone and hurt. I have no idea why she felt like I used her but if that's how she truly felt then somehow I must have used her...at least in her definition of being used. I should have handled it differently but when our friendship ended so abruptly, I felt a sense of relief. I suddenly realized how drained I felt in this relationship. I had no idea how much effort I'd put into trying to keep her from plunging onto the dark side of her personality by constantly discussing the exact same situation over and over and continually offering the same advice...that she never took. In a flash it was like my energy tank was suddenly refilled to high! I felt so good without her!!! Yet I also felt really bad because she was so hurt and angry. It was such a weird mixture of emotions, I really wasn't sure what to do...so I did nothing. I realize now that I handled it completely wrong. I had been feeling very drained by her for several months prior but didn't say anything because how do you tell a friend of several years that you suddenly need to distance yourself from them? How do you say that without causing real damage to them? I couldn't...I didn't...and so it ended without so much as a good-bye, good luck or kiss my butt. She probably still hates me to this day.
So how did she represent who I was at that moment in my life? Our personalities weren't similar although we both had a tendency to bury our pain and only reveal it to our closest friends. We both had allowed our past to influence our present even though we weren't willing to recognize it in the moment. We both found ways to justify why we carried our past baggage into the future and would defend our decisions with vigor. We both felt used by the other person even though it took something big to make us realize it.
So in hindsight, it's obvious how she reflected me. Even though we didn't look like an obvious match on the surface, it was everything bubbling below that made us comrades. And even though she handled her pain in a very passive-aggressive manner of refusing to talk about how I hurt her, I did the same thing by refusing to be the first to give in, by refusing to simply ask her why she was so upset. We both drew a line in the sand and then got our feelings hurt when the other refused to step over it.
Several years have passed since our falling out and whenever someone asks me what happened, I always say she got mad because I went to lunch with someone else. It's a truthful answer, but also a belittling one. I come out smelling like a rose while she looks like a crazed lunatic. I realize now how wrong I've been, how badly I've handled it. I don't want our relationship back but I do wish her the best and hope that she's moved on to a better place in her life. And I now realize that her pain wasn't any different than mine. She truly was a reflection of myself in the moment, albeit an explosive one. I'm digging and clawing to become a different person today so I doubt we'd have the same things in common now. If she's still the same person she was, she'd no longer reflect who I am and I suspect had our friendship remained, we would have simply grown apart. The one thing I'm not sure of is if it's possible to grow as much as I've grown while holding on to dysfunctional relationships. I suspect I would have had to make a choice--hold on to everything familiar or let go and grow forward without them.
From now on, if someone asks me what happened to us, I'm simply going to say we had a misunderstanding and couldn't seem to recover from it. Mistakes were made on both sides.
Even though she won't ever get this message, I hope she feels a slight change and somehow my apology wafts through the air and into her thoughts. Because I do wish her the very best in life. Good luck friend.
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