This is never a good conversation… It simply means we are going to have a long conversation about how much I suck, and then we will no longer be speaking after that…
I have been the lucky recipient of this more than once recently… Don’t get me wrong I knew this was coming… I had just assumed that it would all fade into the woodwork as ending friendships often do… I had figured that after the way everything had gone down at Halloween, I was on borrowed time… It is very hard to admit that only one of you can have the friends at the end of the divorce… It matters not how much time is invested, one partner remains in the group and the other moves on to a new group of friends that doesn’t know the old ones… We like to believe that when we get older we get wiser and we handle our relationships better… It isn’t really true, we still play high school, who is the most popular, who gives the best parties…
I will explain the Halloween thing a bit; for years my ex-husband and I threw the annual Halloween party… Even while I was in the UK, he hosted and I attended by skype… It was a very popular party and everyone discussed it with excitement as it grew close each year and for some time after as well… Though last year my friends and I waited for the announcement and none came… Finally about two weeks before Halloween, my close friend and I began discussing how we could throw the party since it appeared he and his girlfriend were not going to… We made the decision that it would be at her house and I would ask to borrow some of the décor ***after all we were friends, best friends he said*** ; so we pulled together notes and she would let me know after talking to her husband… The next morning I get a message from her that he (my ex) had sent out a Facebook invite to all of our friends for the annual party… I did not need to rush to my computer, she also mentioned that my invite was not there, and that she was sorry, however she was going to the party and we could have a party another time… All my friends, from that part of my life attended the party, all of them knowing I was not invited… One even called me the night of for directions…
Needless to say, I felt a little hurt by this… Since then his new girlfriend/now wife has joined my book club, and been at all the gatherings of our friends… I do not choose to go to these parties any more… I do not see where I need to pretend I want to be friends with people who do not want me around, or are so willing to slide someone new in my place… I have chosen differently, which has come at the cost of a message with the words “we need to chat”… So I met her reluctantly for dinner and shared what was going on with me and then she says well here is the heavy part… Our friend and our other friend and her have been talking and decided that; I don’t answer soon enough, I don’t show up to things, I cancel at the last moment… I must be depressed, have I sought a doctor to see??? I say that I have not been having an easy time of all that is going on in this new life of mine, and that I wait until I am sure I am up for it before I let them know yes or no… She says that only means I am waiting for better offers… Sure if crawling into bed and crying is a better offer??? They just want to help me… I explain the only one that can is me and I am doing the work… This goes on for a while, and then of course it is all better, she has said her peace… All better for her; I smile and agree, it is all better… All the while knowing this is it… It matters not how much you love someone, how many years you have been there for them and them for you, when it is over… It just is…
So the one I did not expect, is the one that called me sister… The one I went to help, the one I spent hours with, working through it all… We met a couple years ago, she insisted we be friends… Lol… Really she did, we met at a meditation group… She asked for my email and phone, I remember thinking she will never follow up… She did, and she pushed at a time when I had no one she pushed to be my friend… We found that we journeyed together, same place in the ending of our long-term relationships, with family, especially mothers… We had the same responses to how our work should look and following our spiritual paths… Seriously if I was going through it, so was she… We held hands through it all, one of us pulling or pushing the other…
I have been distant recently I admit, I have hidden in my bed, crying for months… I have been trying to sort what is going on with me… I am told to be gentle with me, and that this is a hard time for everyone… If I can make it to June it will all start to level out, they didn’t say my needing my space would risk my friendship… They did say I would be going inward, and that many would not be travel past this place with me… If you had said two months ago she would be one left behind, I would have laughed and told you how very crazy you are…
People always surprise me, I shouldn’t be surprised anymore… This type of thing happens over the years, and yet it always surprises me how easy it is to end relationships… I know in a few months this will all look different, however today I wait for an appointment to have my heart broke; again…