I've been thinking lately of people I've met along the way
I get lost in thought and think, I wonder what they are doing today
I miss some of them still so much it hurts inside.
Friends who said they would be there forever and left before the ink was dry
I wonder what my life would be if these people had never hurt me
I think to myself I am a better person today for knowing them and knowing who they would turn out to be in the end.
I look at old pictures of them and realize that they are happy now and I am too
but still...
I think to myself what if we would have been friends and it would have all been true.
I have several friends that I miss deeply. There is a hole, n omatter how small, in my heart that they used to fill, and now they are gone, either by choice, geography or death.
ReplyDeleteWhen I am missing my friend Wendy, who lives in Israel and is married to an ultra orthodox rabbi, the only thing I can do is pray for her, and hope that she feels my love for her, even thought 24 years, a huge ocean and thousands of mile seperate us.
I think of one of my best friends, who was with me through some of the heaviest trials of my life, who drifted away when i moved about 30 miles away. I still have appointments near her, travel twice a week to exchange my children with my ex, which is only 15 blocks away from her. At first we tried to stay in touch, I would drop by and we would talk for a while. Then she stopped returning emails, saying she was too busy to keep up wiht the spam in her inbox, so she never really gets to reading all the mail that comes in. Then she started answering texts with one word answers, Sometimes the word was "Yes," when I asked if she was home and I could drop by. Those visits started to be shorter, both because we had less to talk about now that our kids are at different schools, but also because it is painful for her to hear how happy we are to be living in a smaller mountain community with lots of space for the kids to run, and short 15 minute drives to reach our 4 favorite trailheads on the mountain.
ReplyDeleteSeveral times, during one of my last visits with her, when I brought her a birthday gift that I knew would be meaningful to her, she admitted that she was jealous that we had moved to an area that she loves. She also told me that she is jealous that I have a strong relationship with my husband, that I had the strength to walk away from a bad marriage. She is struggling to keep her emotional head above water, in a relationship she feels she financially she can't leave until her sons are older.
The last thing she shared really floored me. She is jealous of how my husband looks at me, even though I am overweight and because of an injury haven't been able to keep my usual exercise in the ways I used to. She is a size two, and about as opposite physically from me as you can get. While I have large breasts that I wish would go back to were they were before I had kids and breastfed them, she never needs to wear a bra. (I have always been super jealous about that, but never mentioned it, and I didn't during this conversation.) While I am a short five feet two inches, she is a willowy five feet nine inches. She has perfect skin, I have never seen a pumple or red spot on her face, whileI still get the occasional and pimple and when my face is flushed you can see every pore without a mirror. Neither of us wears make up, but she is the one that men stare at when we went out together.
ReplyDeleteSo, how could she be jealous, when she obviously has the body that would be likely to create jealousy, in me, if I chose friends because I needed people who I could "out shine." After some gentle probing, she said that the jealousy has more to do with the fact that she can see in my husband's eyes that he loves every part of me, even my "momma tummy" which hasn't gone away even though the twins are now ten. She can't remember the last time a man looked at her lovingly, and not just as a potential sexual conquest. I might want to have sex a little more often than we do, but even when we aren't making love every day, I still know that I am loved and admired by my husband because of all the little things he goes out of his way to do, to tell me that he loves me, even if his migraine makes snuggling the limit to what we do in bed that night.
Both of these friends (I still think of them that way, even though we don't see each other at all, or very rarely) are still women I love, admire and wish I could find a way to help us reconnect in ways that are meaningful to both of us. While I don't think finding Wendy is possible, given the simplicity and orthodoxy of her life. I do feel closer to her when I look at pictures of our grade school years when we spent as much time together as our parents allow, and when we constantly were switching between first and second in weekly spelling bees in fourth grade.
I have a little more hope for my friend who is only 30 miles away. I still text her occasionally with a picture that the kids posed for, especially when they are making goofy faces. I keep emailing her about events that both of our kids could do together, because my kids miss her sons as much as I miss her.
Her birthday is coming up, and while I can't organize a surprise party, since I only know about ten of her closest friends, and even they have told me that she seems to be drifting apart from them too. So, instead my kids and I are going to make her favorite kind homemade cake! We will pick up two dozen roses from Costco and add in greenery from our yard, since she loves things that are locally sourced. then we will get around 10 mylar balloons from the Dollar Store, and surprise her with all of them, about the time the last of the toddlers she babysits for usually leaves, and then do a "heart attack" on all of her side and front windows, before ringing the doorbell and handing over all the things we made for her.
She will think it is over the top, and it may not do anything in terms of our immediate relationship, but hopefully it will at least leave a small opening in the door, so that we can both see when the other one is stealing a glance, to see if the other one is still there and waiting for the right time to rekindle our friendship!