Posts
 |
| Image - Shawn Heiner |
It was about a woman telling about her life, starting when she was in college, rooming with a bunch of girls weaving in and out of each others' lives, and especially one particular friend. She described her as a Russian girl, sometimes very animated and other times very sullen and withdrawn. Through the course of their association, they became better friends than just roommates. They ended up appreciating each other enough to do good things for each other, knowing more about one another than the normal chat-it-up at lunch things. Yet as the years rolled by, there were some things neither of them ever divulged to the other. The narrator had been abused by her boyfriend and never chose to tell her friend because of an opinion her friend had voiced about abused wives and girlfriends being weak and co-dependent. They lost touch for a few years and by the time the narrator found where her Russian friend lived, the husband informed her she had died. When she asked how her friend had died, he vaguely said she had been sick. Finally, after some research, she found out that she had died of cancer and had fought it for some time. Her friend had never told her that she was ill and suffering.
How much deeper friendship might they have shared if they had chosen to share their secret trials? I suppose it had risks to it. Either one of them might have exposed themselves, only to find themselves rejected. It's always a risk.
We choose what to curate about our lives and how we reveal who we are to the world. Some of us are blatantly authentic, choosing to risk rejection for revelation. Some choose carefully and are very veiled about what they reveal about themselves. And understandably so.
I actually have a story of my own--of friendship lost! But it is because of confiding, rather than hiding. In high school I was best friends with a girl from another country, let's call her Flo. She came as an exchange student and we hung out a lot together. We had so many great talks and fun times. It's like we found so many similarities despite being from different countries and cultures! We were like soul sisters!
But we lost touch over the years. She went back to her country, got married, and ended up back in the States with her husband. But some years later, we connected, met up, talked and laughed again. During that time, she divulged something that happened to her when she was a girl. It was pretty heavy. because it was about abuse of some form. It was hard for me to deal with at the time because I hadn't walked in her shoes. Right after that, something really hard happened to me. It was tragic and hard. I told her, and I know it was hard for her to deal with. She hadn't walked in my shoes. I told her that she wasn't helping me. She responded back in kind. We lost the friendship. Too much pain to deal with. We discovered that those innocent times in high school had become more complicated and that there were things beneath the surface that were too hard to deal with. It's been 20 years since we last connected.
