In my mid and late twenties, I wasn’t in a good place. A combination of bad decisions and bad luck landed me in emotional and financial ruin.
And yet in that time when I was hardly equipped to make meaningful connections, I met two people who are today very dear friends. They met me at my worst. One was the girlfriend of a friend, and the other I met while taking prerequisite classes to get into nursing school, and they have taken two very different paths.
D was a successful office manager who fell in love with a man, had a child with him and seemed well on her way to a nice middle class Canadian life when the cracks in their relationship and within her led to am emerging manic depression. She says now she thinks she was depressed her entire life and did not recognize it. She fought for years to try and hold on to her version of a “normal” life and now exists on a small disability pension. Her teenage daughter has chosen to live with her father, a bitter alcoholic, her daughter is behaving in ways that make us think she might head down a similar path as D. D was one of two friends who really reached out to me when I went home to visit my mother and grandmother and knew things with my grandmother weren’t going well because she lives in the same apartment building and speaks to her all the time. d is currently going into another manic phase. She is compliant with her medications. She is moving in with a man who I met and seems quite nice. But I wonder if he will really be able to support her in her peaks and valleys. I have a hard time with it and I have plenty of experience. When she is truly manic, she just cannot listen to anybody. She feels good and is frustrated when those around her express concerns.
P is a vivacious, charming, and hilarious woman. She works as a counselor at a community college helping students with various disabilities/challenges cope and navigate college life. Until recently, her obvious intelligence helped her get several jobs, but they were always on “contract” and at age 45 for the first time in her life she has a decent paying, permanent, union job and has bought a house. P has a tendency to try and “fix” people and has been taken advantage of many. She got quite angry with me years ago when I told her that there are some people with whom you have to cut your losses with and move on, because she firmly and deeply believes people have the capacity to transform their lives. She abhors fatalism and is a committed atheist.
The world is a better place when I am hanging with P. It doesn’t matter what we are doing, the world is a better, more interesting place. She is endlessly curious and inspires that in others. She can walk into any place and make a new friend.
When I am with D, I am amazed by her capacity to reach out to others when she herself carries so many burdens.
This is for friends I have drifted from, friends I have lost, and friends I perhaps did not recognize…..
Please don’t rec pony party, hang out, chit chat and then go read some of the excellent offerings on our recent and rec’d list.
21 comments
Skip to comment form
how’d the tatoo go???? did one of them go with you?
of that song… simple and sweet. Thanks, calico.
Used to attend retreats, generally two a year. eventually a core group of people developed around each retreat. for some of us, that was the only place we saw each other. there’d always be a newbie who’d come alone and we’d swing them up into the orbit of the weekend. i miss those days but am so grateful to have had them. anyway, one retreat was focused around the idea of ‘soul friends.’ the leader’s quote was:
“You don’t meet your soul friend on your best day.”
🙂 that one really hit home with me.
at your worst and love you anyway….
i read recently somewhere, something along these lines:
a good friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting beside you on the bench exclaiming “Yeah, but wasn’t that a blast?”
true friends for me have been few & far between…i attribute it to moving a lot (18 schools in 11 yrs) and being burned once too often when i had trusted too soon. i can count my true friends on one hand~ my dad, mrD, & rick… funny/strange~ all guys… i know, without a doubt, i can count on these people for anything at any time all i have to do is say so; i know i’ll always be safe with them; i know i’ll have a Great Time being with them; i know they’ll never, ever do anything to hurt me. i hope they feel the same about me.
women, i’m just starting to understand them. and only since i’ve been here, at docudharma, have i called a woman friend.
when I was growing up. We moved several times, and I always found that one special person I could depend on. Since I was never close to my mother, I’ve always thought that they were the ones that “held me up” as I was growing up.
Something happened after high school and I haven’t really had that kind of best friend since then. Maybe I just got tired of saying goodbye. But I really miss it.