Friendships and the maintenance thereof

The pandemic took a lot out of, and from me and gave back to me. I’m still counting and licking my wounds. I came to learn that love is an action word. Love isn’t present if in a single instance of disagreement, harsh, hard words are spoken and the aftermath is a broken egg, the yolk oozing out onto the floor.

I said goodbye to friendship with two people that hitherto I thought will be my ride or die until the end. It was a goodbye to the everyday minutiae of our interactions with each other.

One of them committed what to me is the ultimate betrayal, an intrusion into my deepest, most personal thoughts. They took my journal and weaponized my words against me, something that was, used to be a solace to me. They stole my peace. Journals used to be my escape from the world and that was taken from me. I am not sure where to turn now, maybe this blog? But this is a public space! Not too safe a space for me to put down my thoughts, my ramblings.

Journaling was my escape, it was my way of processing my thoughts, of putting them down on paper, even discarding them sometimes. Its where I try on ideas for size, crumbled bits of discarded paper from a writer’s desk. When your brain is continually alive with thoughts, sometimes the only way to maintain a tenuous hold on sanity is to write it all down as talking to oneself is severely frowned upon by society, fantasy and all. My journaling does not always clearly define what’s real and what isn’t. Because I journal for me and I know the difference.

To have that safety stolen is an ongoing rape, an assault on me and everything I held dear and considered true about life, boundaries, and limits. Where lies the space where I begin, where you begin and where we both end? This is a question I am still struggling to answer.

The other person was someone who in an instance of anger spilled out their bile and revealed the underlying truth of the nature of the spite and contempt their felt where I was concerned.

In an instant I was an anchorless ship, cast adrift and tossed about by the waves of rejection, hurt and pain, headed to the rocks. My heart broke from the added weight of this unexpected betrayal, and I had to scramble to find ways to stall the onslaught of pain.

Maybe this is my karma coming to get me. Many years ago, I betrayed a friend and ever since then I have been waiting for my version of the proverbial sword of Damocles to break loose over my head and send me to my death. If this is it, then I’m glad to have it over and done with and I no longer have to deal with that sense of impending doom?

In all of this, I remain grateful for those relationships/ connections I was still able to maintain. Those that have stood the test of time and the new precious fledgling ones as well. I don’t take them for granted at all. I am still healing but I choose to leave my heart open. After all, hasn’t it been said that “it is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved?”