Memories from a coffee shop

An unexpected journal today
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I just finished my physiology exam and came here to the coffee shop to study for tonight's micro exam.  I do better when I don't go home between classes; I get more done without the distractions.  I wasn't expecting these memories; I've come here several times since then and not thought about it.  Now, instead of studying, I can't think of anything other than the day I sat here waiting for you, writing in this very same journal but nearly a year ago.  How has so much time passed?  Why is this memory returning just now, and hurting like this?

I saw so many of my own hurts in you.  I always felt, in certain ways, that we didn't always have to say much in order to understand the other, and I considered that a true blessing, especially with a man. My hand was trembling as I waited & wrote, my stomach in knots - I couldn't figure out why I'd offered to be there when I'd felt so invaluable to you, repeatedly and for so long.  I had no idea why you would say you missed me.

Do you know just how much someone has to care in order to keep letting you hurt her for so long? To keep letting you off the hook and telling myself I shouldn't be so bothered?

Do you know how fed up I had to be, how out of patience, to finally ask you "why?"  To wait weeks for a promised answer, an answer that placed the blame in MY lap?   To care enough to honestly consider if that might be true, and then to move past it only to be slapped in the face again?  And then, to care enough still to be willing to try and work on it after 5 months of silence?

I'm not saying you're the only one to blame.  I should have taken my cue from you at the beginning of this and kept away.  I have an increasingly clear picture of all I did wrong - continuing to befriend someone who rarely put forth the effort to connect with me, who never included me in his circle, and who would rather speak of unintended plans and avoid me than ask his "trusted friend" a simple question.  And I let that go on for nearly a year.  Instead of letting you see my hurt, I wrote instead of speaking on several chances to do so, offered more connection to make up for the lack, and minimized my own deeply hurt feelings.  I pretended everything was ok to keep from complicating or upsetting things.

It's embarrassing to look back on it - and completely my fault that I let all that continue.

I'm still ashamed that I let you back in; I guess I was just so relieved and hopeful that I lost my common sense.  I was determined, blindly as I see now, to be forgiving and gracious, so I didn't ask when I had reason to be suspicious again.  You'd said that you understood now so I chose to let you show me.  Between your words and your tears, I wanted to show the both of us that I trusted you by not jumping all over you with questions.  Maybe I wasn't completely wrong in that, but the time for trust and waiting had long passed. 

I really thought you'd share with me now.  I really thought you meant it - all of it - about missing me and feeling terrible.  I really, really thought I was in your inner circle - as one of your "closest friends."  Your "confidant."  Ha.

You knew that I sat with Sharon on April 5th as she received her second bone marrow transplant.  One of the things we talked about was you - the challenge of our friendship, the different ways to love someone, the chances we take on people.  Despite her anxiety and exhaustion and through the fog of Ativan and Benadryl, she listened and gently smiled.  She told me to go, to breathe in the beauty of the world on this day, to enjoy it for her and to work at healing our friendship.

And I was so excited to spend that time with you that I left her.  I left my friend who would ultimately lose her life to that bag of stem cells, for a couple hours with you.  And two weeks later, you sent me these words:

"I know I should've told you, but I thought you didn't care."

I know I should've told you, but I thought you didn't care.

[break] 

Just remembering that moment, lying on my living room floor in the midst of my final graduation paper, reading those words over and over with tears in my eyes, made me put my pen down just now and look over at the table where we sat for 4 hours.  There are two people there today too.  Sometimes I wonder about all the conversations - the beginnings, the re-beginnings, the endings - that have taken place in this space.  All the beginnings and endings in this life of mine.  I wonder who watched us then like I watch these two strangers now, wondering about our story. 

I miss the hope, however guarded it was, that I had that day.  I miss my excitement and my happiness, that I did enjoy with you, for 20 miles of the Gateway Trail on my new bike on a gorgeous spring day.   

Jeremy, after the words, "I know I should've told you," the rest of the sentence doesn't matter at all, but I will never understand how you could think for a moment that I didn't care.  Never.  It's the most non-sensical thing I've ever heard.  But I'm finally realizing these days that forgiveness of you has long ceased to be what keeps me hurting, but rather the ways I need to forgive myself.

It has been my heartfelt belief that if we keep putting love into a situation, eventually love comes back to us, that love can heal all things.  I forgive myself for insisting on that belief to the point of idiocy with you...and for the judgment of myself as an idiot for this long.  I forgive myself for loving well but not wisely, for caring so much more than you wanted me to and more than I knew I should.  I forgive myself for the conviction that I still can't be trusted to make good decisions for myself where men are involved - not even in friendship.

I forgive myself for not believing I deserved better.  For not finding my voice sooner.  For making space in my life for you again after all that had happened, when everyone told me not to. For the continuing inability to look you in the eye.  For being jealous and even hateful of what you were given instead of me.  For the lack of grace or desire to even be happy for you.  For having such a tender heart that I still hurt after all this time.  For burdening my friends with my continued need to process this over the last year and then some. 

For leaving my true friend that day.

The door is closed now.  The reminders still pierce me with sadness, but things are as they should be.

I forgive myself.

I forgive myself.