Today was filled with thinking. With contemplation, with the end of summer cleaning of the mind, body and spirit. And my counters, I cleaned those too. And my teeth, my teeth were cleaned too, I had a dentist appointment. It was early, but very useful.
I was lucky enough to have my best friend come with me to watch Kirby while I had my appointment. Strangely enough, I don’t get mad that often. I get frustrated, sad, angry, but not really mad. Mad is an emotion that I tend to not accept, I don’t believe in holding onto anger, which is what I think being mad is. I let it go, I try to let it fly away. There is too much going on to let yourself harbor negative feelings towards something that can not change. Boy oh boy was I wrong, and I was in for a new awakening.
For years, I had a best friend. We did EVERYTHING together, and I practically lived at her house to the point that I had my own room and kept things there. I helped her family with chores like any other kid, I cooked family dinners, babysat her little brother, we danced in the same ballet company, we were best friends. All three of us were best friends, and we all had the same schedules and enjoyed activities, but had our own interests as well. Like a troupe of super heros, we all had our strengths. We had the reader, the learner, and the doer. We felt like we could concur the world. Then I met Harold, and things changed.
You know when you watch a horror film, and the person you think is the killer isn’t actually the killer at all, and it’s the best friend? The one that was there at every scary part, at behind every corner? I guess it was a disagreement, and a melding of minds that just never happened. We drifted apart, that’s expected. I was in college and living on my own with Harold, and she was working and living with her mother. When Harold and I got engaged, it was not always a mutual acceptance.
There were harsh words, mean things were said. It wasn’t pretty. All of a sudden I had a person who had been there for me for years, not wanting to have anything to do with me. Wanting me to make choices that agreed with their life plans and goals, and not mine. It hurt. It still hurts, because regardless of what anyone says, it never stops hurting to lose someone you love. No one will ever tell you to stop being sad when someone dies, so what is the difference if it’s because they leave your life?
Change can hurt, they say to rip off the band-aid and just move on, but for me, ripping off that band-aid took me out of all my social groups. There were pieces to pick up, but I felt like I had done something wrong. They say there is strength in pain, but that comes after the storm, after the water has washed away all that you had and you are left with the sordid remnants and are painfully aware that there are holes in your sneakers.
I have taught myself to be positive, to move like the tall stalks of wheat in a field. I can look back and say that I did everything right for me. I had my got married, I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy (that whole pregnancy thing wasn’t accepted well at all, because apparently that whole growing a life inside you is easily given up by some people, I will never understand that, I was raised to understand how precious it is), and we bought a house. My family and I have foraged a life for ourselves, and we are happy, but that doesn’t take away the pain.
So today, when my best friend accompanied me to the dentist, and in the car when I inquired about her birthday plans, in hopes of planning her a birthday party in a mere two months time, she let me know that she is going to be going to a musical with her for her birthday. Never before have I been so mad, that I actually stop talking to someone for an entire car ride and ferry boat journey, and then the remainder of a car ride. So I’m talking through the I-5 corridor from Federal Way all the way to the island, I was that peeved. It’s not that she is going to my favorite musical, the one that I introduced all of our friends to in high school, because in all honesty, my whole schtick in high school was Broadway music, it’s that it made me see where the line in the sand has been drawn.
I am on one side of the line, the line with kids, a husband, a career, responsibilities, the need for babysitters, friends who have kids, friends who appreciate a good glass of pinot, or any glass of pinot, and pieces of wood and blocks, hammers and nails, to build this amazing life and all the things we desire or need. Their side of the line is so much different. Their side of the line has no mail box to receive bills, no phone numbers tacked to the fridge in case of an emergency, no picture frames filled up with pictures of growing families, and love notes taped to computer monitors. That’s not to say their side isn’t a great side to be on, but it’s not my side.
It’s hard to compute why I am still hurt so bad by a girl from my past, to act in such a way in which grown adults said things about me that weren’t true in the vain of thinking of themselves in a better light. It’s not something I wish upon my daughter, or future daughter. Maybe someday they will see what they have done, and look back and feel poorly. But for now, I can pull all my kids close to me, smell their lovely childlike scent, and look around to what I have built. This is a house of positivity and happy times, and Harold and I have built that together.
Scraped knees included.
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