Friends for a…what’s between season and lifetime?

August 29, 2010

Edit to text for August 2010-I thought this post went out back in April, and by some fluke, I see it didn’t. So I’m posting it now.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A few months back, a dead person came alive into my life. Maybe it would be easier on you if I called them “lost”, or a “drifter”. You know the person.

You’ve heard the terms-

Friends for a day; a season; a lifetime.

This was someone who was in my life for a couple of years, pretty close, then whatwith one giant change, thingamabob, decision, choice, bugupthabutt what have you, he was gone. just evaporated. Drifted, as if across a great divide.

There was a space left when he did. A vaccuum. I hurt terribly. This time, I knew it had to be my fault. The ones from before, it could be debated. My fault, their fault. You say tom-ay-to, I say tom-ah-to.

I went through something similar a few years ago, and called it a Friendship Divorce.

So I was shocked and scared when the drifter contacted me out of the blue and wanted to have lunch. To talk.

Old friend comes back from the past, but it may or may not mean you’ve dealt with the core agitation. Is it time to forgive?

Different people have different ways of dealing with pain, in terms of those we love. Some clam up (I don’t want to talk.) Some storm out (Screw this!). Some just leave the person/situation. Some keep it deep inside , and explode only on occasion. Or hardly ever.

This means that the other party is sometimes left to reconcile their feelings, if they weren’t heard, or didn’t get the chance to. Sometimes this reconciliation cloaks itself nicely as Denial (Nothing’s wrong.) Sometimes its Indifference. ( I don’t even care/I’ve let it go.) Sometimes its Anger (Screw THEM!)

So when I had the chance, the real chance, in front of the person I loved, a friend I counted dearly, and when I took into account all the decisions,choices, blah, blah, and yes I considered that I may not “get” much from this friend initially, it came down to the same thing its almost always come down to for me.

Forgiveness.

It’s in my nature to forgive. It may take a long time, and it certainly takes pro-activity on each person’s part, but essentially, I don’t want to <maintain> the hurt. The wound. The broken shards in my heart. If other people in this world choose to not forgive, I respect that, and figure they probably have damn good reasons. And sometimes not forgiving just means choosing not to engage. I lost another drifter right around the same time, and there’s been no such reconciliation. And while I forgive what happened,he and I will never be the friends we were before.

It can really seem like a crapshoot, this whole friendship thing. You never know who your friends are, as it turns out.

But this post, this one right here, is to say, I’m glad for the seasontimer who’s back.

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