What’s The Reason?

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Last night I watched the movie “Sisters” with my husband. It’s not often that we get a chance to watch an adult movie together and we were both in the mood for some mindless comedy. I am also a huge fan of both Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. I enjoyed the movie enough, yet something about the last scene of the movie struck a sensitive chord with me.

This scene, which extended into the rolling credits, sees both women dancing with each other, obviously havin a good time just goofing off and enjoying the best parts of their friendship with each other. Watching this reminded me of the chapters in each of their books where they talk about the development, importance, and significance of their friendship with each other. I was reminded that I don’t have this kind of friendship or relationship with another woman. It makes me sad to realize that. 

This realization was significant for me at this moment. Over the past few days I have been having more dreams and pervasive thoughts about my old friend Kay, whom I’ve mentioned a few times here on this blog. While she is often on my mind more than I would like to admit, I don’t know why dreams of her and I becoming friends again seem to come back in waves and bounds and overwhelm me, with little explanation. Sine the middle of last week, I have probably dreamt about her 3 times and then spent the proceeding days fixated on why they are plaguing me, or what those dreams mean.

This week, however, has been different from the previous times I’ve thought about her. This time I have an overwhelming feeling that I should be acting on my thoughts: reaching out to her and somehow telling her how she’s been on my mind. I almost feel like there is some kind of “force” that is telling me that she needs to hear from me. 

But why?

When I am sad about how our friendship failed, I try to find solace in pictures, quotes, and memes that circulate through social media: Those ones that encourage us to let go of the people in our lives who hurt us, or to recognize when people are causing distress in our life and decide to remove them (as I try to understand why she ended the friendship), or just simply accepting that the sun sets on some relationships even when we don’t always know why.  So, I don’t understand why, after so long, I still feel compelled to reach out. What good will it do?

Besides likely lead to more rejection, what could possibly come from this? What do I think is going to happen?  It’s not like anything will ever be close to what it was before – it’s not like I will ever have the valuable closeness and sister-like relationship that I saw in its purest form at the end of the movie last night….

However, I can’t stop thinking about the one time, far back at the beginning of our mentoring relationship, when I took a step out of my comfort zone and sent her a letter of kindness and support. I feared, for weeks, that I had steeps over a boundary; yet it turned out that my letter was the exact offer of kindness and compassion that she needed in her moment of struggle.  It was that letter that really paved the way for what Our friendship did become. Are these dreams and thoughts just some calling that she needs this kind of compassion now?

I don’t know.  It’s doesn’t make sense to me. And mostly, I am just confused about what I am thinking about and why I feel so compelled to reach out to someone who hurt me so much an showed such little compassion to me in my time of need. 

11 thoughts on “What’s The Reason?”

  1. It’s weird and I get it. I have a friend like this, I love her dearly but she can’t seem to reciprocate in a way that makes me feel valued. It’s not that I need so much from her, really., I have other friends that fill my needs quite adequately. I want this friend to be like that but she can’t, that is not who she is. I want to accept her for who she is and I do but I can’t be as close to her as I would like because of her inability to value our friendship. I would say it is her loss but I think really, we both lose.

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  2. My best friend since childhood turned on me for various reasons and I felt hurt for so long. I didn’t see how little I actually lost from her ending the friendship until recently. It’s been 6 years. I don’t know if time heals all wounds, but if you let it, time can bring clarity. I gave her my heart, had never valued and cared for a friendship more, but her heart she didn’t share and that was what I wasn’t seeing all along. I hope whatever you do, you give it time. Just feel the hurt when it hits you, cry if you feel you need to, but know it gets better. And I’m sure you’ll find a woman friend who values you and your friendship. It will happen for you.

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  3. I still think of the friends who turned their backs on me, one in particular, and like you, I’d love to see her and find out what’s going on in her life, but the issue that broke us would always hover in the background and I know the relationship we had will never be revived. She did reach out to me a year or so after blocking me from her life, and I was tempted, but every time I thought it through, I knew I would never be able to believe or trust her again. The difference between my situation and yours, is that I only want to reconnect for a moment for curiosity’s sake.
    Maybe one day you’ll get to that place too.
    Is your desire to reach out to her based on a deeply hidden belief that she’ll welcome you back and you’ll become best friends again? Because even if there’s a tiny part of you thinking that might happen, I’d worry about you reaching out for the greater likelihood is that she’ll reject you all over again. Is it worth the risk?

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    • Everything you say is exactly how I feel – and it is so confusing. Sometimes in my dreams I see myself reaching out and us becoming friends again. So in all likelihood, that is probably a part of it. But I know that it will never be like it was because she never gave to our friendship what I did and it is unlikely to be different a second time around.

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  4. A few weeks ago I received a call from one of my childhood friends. We were inseparable as teenagers. Her sister and my brother are married. So we always know what’s going on in each other’s lives. She called to tell me that she’s been reading my blog since November. I was pleasantly surprised. I have 4 good friends. 3 of which I grew up with. We can talk about anything but we don’t have that hug, laugh, cry and fall asleep on each other kind of relationship. I wish I did too.

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