Thoughts

It's late and I should be in bed.

But my mind is active and I just can't seem to make myself quiet. The weeks have been so busy that my brain and body do not yet seem to realize that vacation has begun! There is still a lot of adrenaline coursing through me. And I'm excited to get home and see everyone.

On the flip side of expectations for home, I'm also experiencing the dissolution of a friendship. I feel myself pulling and pushing in a soft sort of way. In ways wanting it to end and in other ways wanting to talk about how and why we find ourselves at this place and time. I feel sad and lonely and hurt. It is all so subtle, so slight of hand. I'm confused at how someone I considered such a confidant, companion and even sister, can be so far away from me. I question what was the straw that broke the camel's back? It feels like it all slipped away in the dark when we weren't looking.

(Thinking about it, I'm pretty certain I initiated the parting of the proverbial waters.)

I met this person in my early 20's. We hit it off immediately and for the next couple of years were practically inseparable. Conversation was always easy and we both liked being spontaneous together. They were years filled with fun. But at the same time, if I am honest, they were years that did not always bring out the best in me. She can be an extremely negative and self-centered person. Sometimes fun came at a cost. My cost.
Looking back at journals I kept from that time, I knew even then that our friendship was not of the quality I was seeking.

But here I sit at one o'clock in the morning. Feeling confused. We live in a small town on the same street. Our spouses work together, we teach at the same school and our circle of friends more or less comprises the same people. Part of me wants to run to her and try to work out our veiled indifference. If everything could just remain more or less the same, I wouldn't even bother to try. But it is the sting of rejection and an orchestrating of events (from which our names keep getting left off of the guest lists) that hurts the most.

And I don't quite know how to deal. I keep trying the self talk. In fact I keep giving myself the same speech I give my students when they find themselves with no one to play with. And just like them, I'm not convinced. Mostly I scream inside my head how juvenile it all is and how I want none of it. And for the record, I'm not outwardly misbehaving in anyway. But it sure does make me feel my humanness, my fragility.

Perhaps I want to be the rejector not the rejected. It is safer that way.

When I think about the affirmation ~ let go of all that does not serve you ~ I know that this too needs to be let go of. Both the friendship and the fall out. To let it go quietly and freely without adding to the drama.

The most challenging part is to live consciously and recognize where I need to take responsibility. To let this be a part of my growth, for my own good. To act within my own code of acceptable and pleasing conduct. To be able to let something go, because it is better for me that way.

Namaste.

This is how we grow, by being defeated decisively by constantly greater things. Rilke.