Time and Distance

Friendships take work. Close friendships take work, communication, honesty, vulnerability.  Time and distance is only so useful.  It exists as a tool to take a step back, reassess, calm down so that you can come back to the table ready to talk, compromise, and resolve things.  It's not a fix in and of itself.

This last fight dragged on and dragged out for a month over text.  Yes, we both stepped away, pausing to take a breath, gather our thoughts, feel our feelings, and calm down.  Within a day or two I was always ready to come back to the table.  Ready to own my own faults and actions.  Ready to talk things out and resolve things.  To find a way to come together and move forward, stronger than before.

We had both walked into this with hurt feelings.  We both had our feelings hurt worse as we texted back and forth.  There were misunderstandings and incorrect assumptions on both our parts.  I, at least, had reached a point where what guided my words the most was the thought, 'If this is my last message to her.  If I never say anything else to her, what do I need to say to walk away, no regrets, conscience clear.  What did I feel I owed it to her to say?'  For me that meant owning what I needed to own, apologizing where I felt I needed to apologize, and not bogging down in the minutia of the laundry list of grievances each of us had shared.  I acknowledged the grievances only as far as to say we can discuss them later when we were both ready to sit down and talk.

I believe I made it clear that we really needed to work on the foundation of our friendship.  She reinforced that she wanted a strong foundation and also wanted to work on it.

At one point, she wrote a novella of grievances, real and imagined (I say this not to minimize her feelings but there were things said that our text history back and forth would have literally proved wrong), she'd been holding for months or years at that point and immediately said she needed to step away and take time.  In my opinion the time to take time was before you dropped a bomb, not after.  But things get said in the heat of feelings and shit happens.  I wasn't going to argue with her about any of it.  I once again focused on what I felt needed to be said if I never said anything else to her.  I sat on it for a few days and sent it with a note at the beginning for when she was ready. 

2 weeks of radio silence.  While we did have a brief text exchange after 2 weeks, she mentioned sitting down to talk in another week or so.  

Eventually I said I'm done, I'm out.  I'm not doing this anymore.  During this exchange she said something that struck me.  It essentially boiled down to "I had hoped with time and distance we could be friends again."  She had never really wanted to work on the foundation.  To do the work, to communicate, to come to the table and resolve things together.  She was dragging it out in what I can only guess was the hope that with enough time we could just both forget all about it and move on like it hadn't happened.  Looking back, I shouldn't have been surprised by that.  It's how she handles conflicts with others.  She'd bitch and vent to me about stuff and then once she was over it, she'd go back to the person as if nothing had happened.  This is when I realized we were never going to save this friendship.  Despite her saying she wanted to work on the foundation, she had no desire to work on it at all.  To do the tough job of being honest and vulnerable with each other and to own her own side of things.  She was never going to go back over that novella of grievances with an eye to resolving, repairing, and healing from them.  She just wanted to ignore it all until it went away.

The thing is, it worked before, even with us.  We'd never been in this big of a fight before but stuff had happened and after taking some time we both said we were sorry and went right back to being besties.  No deeper work, no introspection.

So what changed?  Simply...me.  I changed.  I have been a people pleaser who avoided conflicts.  I was always the first and the quickest to say I'm sorry any time I even thought someone might be upset or frustrated with me.  Even if I didn't do anything wrong I'd still apologize and try to smooth things over.  But I'd been really working on my own self-worth.  On not taking on the burdens of everyone's feelings. That even if my brain told me they were frustrated with me and blaming me, that didn't automatically make it my fault and I don't have to apologize for everything.  I don't have to be sorry and think that I exist as a burden in the worlds of other people.  I'd been trying to practice this is small ways.  Acknowledging that my mind immediately told me I did something wrong and everything was my fault and I needed to apologize for it.  Acknowledging but not giving in to those thoughts.  I'd get in discussions where I would have automatically apologized and stopped myself.  Reminding myself that I didn't do anything wrong and that I have nothing to apologize for.  If the other person is truly mad or upset at me, then they can use their words to say so and we can then address it.  Their bad mood is not my fault.

So yeah, therapy and working on my own self-worth.  Taking the time to convince myself that I deserved better than to act or be treated as if the other person's feelings were the only ones that mattered. I don't need to run after people and beg them to be my friend.  My feelings matter and deserve to be recognized and accounted for just as much as theirs. 

Yes, I kept leaving the door open for her, and in a way it's still open, just a little.  If she called me or texted me right now wanting to talk, Id have some hard questions regarding her motives and intentions but I'd probably do it, for her sake.  It won't change the status of our ex-friendship, but I would talk to her for her sake if it helped her find peace or closure.  I will not reach out to her though, I am better than that.  I have closure.  There are no remaining doubts, no regrets.  In this I am at peace.

I hadn't realized until almost a week later how much at peace I was.  How much better and more free I felt.  Yes, I'm still a little sad and still a little hurt but they are healing now that the source of the wound/infection have been removed.  I miss my best friend but my mental health has improved by leaps and bounds now that we aren't friends.  I feel stronger, more self-assured.  The friendship was toxic.  Not because either of us had ill intent, we were just incompatible fundamentally and that made it toxic for both of us.

I do hope she has found peace herself.  I wish her all the best