What the sadness is about

I ended a friendship a little over a month ago which had been hurting me for nearly a year.  Perhaps that sounds healthy or like a decision I'd come to peace with, but sadly it wasn't so.  I had tried several times to articulate my hurt and to cultivate understanding.  I strove to remain patient in my sadness, hoping I'd been heard, and eventually behavior finally, finally started to change.  After a month of cautious hope and limited expectation, I got my confirmation of being heard.  I let myself believe my friend's words and released myself into trust again.  Just two days later, I got thrown under the bus again. What had really been going on could not have been a greater shock considering our recent communication.

So indescribable, the hurt of learning my heart had known right all along.  I just wanted so deeply to believe that things could be made well, that this friendship could be as I wanted it to be.  I wanted to trust, and I wanted to believe that I was as much a priority for the other person.

Even though I missed and still miss this person terribly, I was surprised at the depth and length of my hurt.  (Losing three pounds in two days?  Foregoing the submission of my summer class's final paper?)  I was surprised that I hadn't excused away the deception or my hurt; it is astounding how fast I normally am to do this.  Derek taught me once how holding onto resentment and anger only served to maintain my own wound, and I've reminded myself of this daily, but to no avail.

I met Theresa for late-night coffee last Thursday.  She had read my recent entries here and was quick to ask what had been going on with me.  So I explained at length, welcoming an opinion that I knew would be both honest and objective since she doesn't know my friend.  When I got to the punchline, like every other friend whose counsel I've sought, her jaw quite literally dropped open.

Here's the difference:  although she held an open space for my questioning of God in this process, she didn't immediately question my deepest feelings for this person or the particular nature of what I hadn't been told.  She reached back to the words that had been exchanged before I thought all was well again, to the reasons why my heart was so broken, and to why I had been so hesitant to trust this person again.

It was this: I never thought the depth of my heart and my sorrow, and my willingness to be vulnerable about it here in this public space, would be used as an excuse for someone's poor treatment of me.   When it had been said to me by my former friend that the depth of my heart's desires expressed here, on this blog, made them slightly uncomfortable with me, I immediately took the blame. I felt as if I'd been wrong to expect my friend to follow through on suggestions and plans that they had made with me, and almost ashamed to have had the expectation of being treated as valuable - even though I'd been told at every turn that I was.  I was embarrassed about my transparency.  I let my friend hold that against me, as if I had asked for or wanted too much, and that misplaced guilt is why I accepted the apology - again.

Ah...now I see.

My heart and its expression were never the reason for how I was treated; it was a combination of our bad behaviors and limiting beliefs.  I never asked this person to read my blog.  I never asked for more than what I was given - it was just that this person feared, as a result of their choice to come here and know me more deeply, that I might do so.  Asking someone to mean what they say and to follow through, especially when the suggestions for connection are their own, is not being emotionally needy; it's simply expecting someone to be a responsible, truthful adult.  I'm not sure how I ever convinced myself that it was wrong to desire that connection, and to expect it to move in both directions between us.

What I did do wrong was to not listen to my heart when she was trying so hard, for so long, to advise me of reality.  I was afraid her bigness and brokenness would make people run away, and I see again how I have always tended to choose people and relationships who reinforce that belief.  Returning to my original post, I read again my words: "What does matter is allowing myself to have the experience of my hurt, my anger, and to not minimize it, [or] apologize for it...allowing myself to have my wants and needs...to say goodbye when it's time." 

With this new understanding, I feel my inner strength returning.  The sadness is subtly easing, and I chose to write about this here today in the hopes that I don't take it with me to Colorado tomorrow.