 |
| Image copyright DC Comics 1979 |
| For My Friend Early Fall 2001 I'm going to start this piece by apologizing. I am in a mood tonight-- a mixture of sadness and anger and other negative things, so it's a given that this won't be pleasant! This is something I have no control over. One of my best friends is going through some stuff with respect to her love life. Tonight we sat down to discuss it, see what advice I could give, etc. Although I had thought this before, it hit me full force tonight how much her current situation is almost identical to what I went through back in 1997 (yes, you guessed it, with THE ex, the one I thought was THE ONE). Believe me, I was in no mood to re-live that, I'm never in the mood to re-live that, but hearing my friend speak just put me there. She sounded like I used to. She repeated phrases I once said, expressed feelings I once felt. It was terrible, because she is walking a road I once walked, and it is an experience that I don't wish on anyone. I looked in a mirror tonight, and I was sad for this dear friend that I feel so bad for, but I was sad for myself too. It is now extremely rare that I ever allow myself to think back on that time, but if I do, it makes me feel uneasy. It's standard stuff, the unanswered questions, the anger at being used, humiliated, ignored, and the sadness of knowing that I felt so much, so deeply, so completely, and it was utterly un-reciprocated. Getting over that experience took too much from me. That's why I never bother to think about it, why it's pointless to re-hash the details of that time. I guess that's why it was unpleasant to find that my friend is in the same exact boat that I was once in. This will change her. This will affect the deepest parts of her soul, and it will forever alter how she sees relationships, how she feels about the concept of "love," how she sees herself. She will come out of this with scars and memories to last her a lifetime. She will feel the rage, the humiliation, the frustration-- she will watch all her illusions and dreams fly out the window in one brief, unforgettable instant. And in the end, she will come out stronger than she ever imagined she could be, and she will be wise about who to open her heart to. She will know the lengths and depths she can be driven to and return from unscathed. She will come to believe, in time, that the kind of love that's based on respect, friendship and trust really does exist, and it will find it's way into her life. She will know the difference between a coward and a man. She will know these things, because I know them now. I returned from my night out, carrying the weight of my long-ago pain, now so fresh in my mind. I stepped into my bedroom, and fast asleep on the bed was my husband. I just looked at him, and thought in a flash of the world we've built together, and all I could think was, I'm home. And that's all I need to know. |