Reminiscing: Part III

I started to cry immediately. I felt set up. I felt like the heart strings I'd been patiently mending and caring for had suddenly been torn. I was reminded how vulnerable I was. The weight of love lost and hopes for a different kind of love pressed down on me. I made up some excuse for why I was crying - something that made sense in the greater context of our conversation but allowed me to pretend that it wasn't his actions that had hurt me. It was some sort of an analogy for what would become my greatest fear in facing life on my own: that the person I would fall in love with someday would not fall in love with me because I just didn't have all the pieces that they did. It's a confidence issue to the core - worrying that because I haven't read the right books, or learned to play more than a few chords on the guitar, or lived extensively abroad or created something artistically significant and tangible - that I won't be good enough. And yet this is just stuff. I don't evaluate people based on these things - I just tend to be drawn to a certain type of spirit and some of those things come along with it - and I worry that somehow my spirit won't match up. How awful to be attracted to something you feel you cannot match? I am working on this.

Anyway - our conversation closed with me supporting him - I knew it was a huge step for him to make a commitment to someone - I knew this was not a situation he could have possibly foreseen. I knew he was handling it the best way possible by being honest. I didn't doubt that he thought he had feelings for me when he shared them with me - I just think this other person came into his life and swept him off his feet as all the things he was looking for in the back of his head were suddenly in front of him. It was something he couldn't walk away from. And I totally got that.

So though I was disappointed, I wrote him the most honest email I could. I told him I was hurt - our friendship had been built on honesty, it was not a hard thing to do. But I also told him that I understood - that I got how significant this was to him - this was not just a guy blowing off a girl, this was a guy that had suddenly been presented with a reality of something I think he didn't really think existed by finding someone with such a similar background, faith, life view etc. And I left it at that. I thought that by being honest, but also being supportive, we could maintain the friendship that beyond all romantic feelings I'd let seep in, had become really important to me in a continually vulnerable time. I was wrong.

While he was in Israel I got maybe three emails (over the course of 4 months). They were for the most part fairly superficial - and this is when I really grieved. Because I felt like I'd been robbed of something I hadn't asked for in the first place. I let this person in, I confided in him, I shared my life with him - and I supported him even when he had more or less led me on, because the friendship was worth it to me. And suddenly he was just gone. This was a much bigger blow to me than his relationship with the Mennonite.

A couple of months before he came home (he ended up leaving his program and moving back to Arizona last January) I received a mass email he sent to his closest friends letting everyone know that he and the Mennonite were no longer together. It hadn't worked out - they wanted different things and he wanted to let everyone know. I didn't really think anything of this at that point - I had more or less come to terms with his absence in my life and I did my best to squelch any sense of pride or satisfaction. I still really just missed my friend, but I'd long sense come to terms with my own path and why it was best that things happened as they did for my own growth and well being.

Fast forward to this spring. A is back in the U.S. and starts to get back in touch. I am uncomfortable at first - I'm a naturally forgiving person and because I treasure the opportunity to open up with someone and A was always someone I could simply spew my take on the world or my life with, I wanted to jump back in. And yet I'd been wronged. I still felt like I'd been seriously dissed - and the stronger pieces of me that have gradually been building up and taking control over the weaker pieces held me back. "Don't be stupid, don't get yourself back into something where you're going to be let down." So I kept it at arms length. We've talked every once in awhile for months - sent messages but until recently it hadn't felt the same. I have become closer with his best friend who lives by me and we discussed it once - the first time it had come up since it all happened. He told me he'd felt bad about how everything had gone down, and asked me what my experience had been. It was nice for him to acknowledge it - it validated that I didn't make the whole thing up. He encouraged me to talk to A - and I wanted to, but I didn't want to be vulnerable and a comment A had made to a friend made me think his take on the whole things was so off that I didn't want to risk getting misinterpreted again.

Fast forward to last Monday night and the start of this epic post (which if you can't tell has been highly therapeutic, if not brief or well written). A and I had set up a phone date after he left me one of his famous singing messages on Saturday night. It was the first time since he's been back where I somehow felt totally comfortable again - like finally I had the friendship back that I'd lost. Enough time had gone by, I've had a whole host of other experiences - and he was making an effort again. I was ready to let the friendship back in to be what it was - a joyful person in my life who was willing to share some of his struggles, and hear mine. It felt good.

And then, out of the blue, he apologized. After an hour long conversation he said he wanted to talk about what happened 13 months ago. He said he felt stupid for having been unable to follow his heart and keep me in his life at the same time. He said he regretted missing out on my life in the past 13 months, and having the opportunity to have shared his with mine. And then he let me share my experience, and he accepted it with honesty and with humbleness. And while I no longer needed that from him, it makes me feel immensely better to have had it. To have been able to express that however he interpreted my tears over a year ago, I did, in fact, understand. That yes, I was hurt. That yes, I felt led on. But that I let it go immediately because I trusted he was following his heart. That it wasn't because of me that our friendship was suspended - I would have carried it on if it had been an option - without guilt. The friendship that had so blessed me by falling in my lap last year was back. The honesty, the joy, the openness was back.