Its your friends who break your heart…
…and who will put it back together.
My friend Court knows I’ve had an intense year on the friendship front, so she sent me an article called, ‘its your friends who break your heart’ by Jennifer Senior, in March’s issue of the Atlantic.
This idea of being ‘heart broken’ resounded; I had a reallllly big, wrenching friend break up mid-year last year.
It wasn’t entirely new or unexpected: intense explosions and drama in friendship follow me, cuz one way I hide from my own trauma, and convince myself I don’t have any, is by consciously and unconsciously picking people with a fair bit of their own unprocessed trauma (which — headline news — we’ve all got).
As long as they’re the ‘more fucked up’ one — I can hide. I don’t have to be truly seen, and thus don’t risk actually being vulnerable.
These besties have often, in the past, been real successful, by conventional standards. For this reason, the focus is usually on them, esp cause they’re also better at speaking up for what they need.
Its got the illusion of safety, this hiding pattern I’ve had.
‘Cept it always blows up eventually; I tire of feeling unseen and unacknowledged, build a narrative of myself as the victim, and either blow the whole thing up, disappear or start acting like an asshole. Sometimes all three.
Real recipe for happiness, historically.
The hardest part of the breakup in July, was that it wasn’t just us breaking up.
We shared a big group of friends, and breaking up w her meant breaking up w them, too.
A story I’d built that we’d be at each other’s 60th bdays, there for births, marriages and breakups in between — suddenly it was dead. And I knew it was gone, cause the most painful part was realizing, somewhere ‘bout 3 months in, that I didn’t want ‘it’ back.
It was really toxic w us; the best description I’ve got, is that what hurts in her, and what hurts in me, knows how to dance.
This is also true about others I’ve been close to.
Cause these patterns repeat.
Boy, do they ever.
Back to the Atlantic piece. At the very end, Senior says (via Audre Lorde):
“all deep friendships generate something outside of themselves, some special and totally other third thing. Whether that thing can be sustained over time becomes the question.”
It struck for 2 reasons: its heartbreaking to accept that a friendship has to end because you’re no longer able to grow together, or cause envy has taken shelter, or cause 1 person is having a real big life change.
And two — if you’ve felt that third thing — then you know its really good.
Which brings me to Jackie (featured above), and to the power of friendship to heal. Right now, me + Jackie have the third thing.
We’ve together and separately got a deep commitment to inner work, and to venturing into those hardest to reach places.
And that right there — that’s everything.
In his book, ‘Intuitive Living’, Alan Seale says about this self-exploration and friendship:
“…as we explore our gifts and talents, work through our conflicts, and come to know our Love, we become catalysts for one another’s growth. No one teaches another anything. Everyone is simply, through his or her degree of openness to Love, a catalyst to help another in the process of self-discovery.”
Whereas in the past I suctioned certain needs that I wasn’t meeting on my own — Jackie doesn’t give me that. My intense extroversion that manifests by always going and doing and experiencing is the opposite of how Jackie operates. She’s reallllll good on her own. In fact — she prefers it.
My initial efforts to get more and more and more hang time from her — that wasn’t healthy.
We had to find a new language, a new way.
And we did, even if we did it while activating some real core wounds. Whereas I wanted more (IRL) time and attention; she needed to know I’d hold her in her darkest, which has historically been hard for her to show n share.
So now I fall back on the invites, and she makes sure to reach out. The beauty of the fall back, is that I’ve fallen even more in love w solitude + my own company.
Last Friday, we were at the same dinner, and in one of those next day bestie debrief calls (the best), I was sharing that I’d felt insecure about my body. She commented on how good it’d been to feel confident in her body.
I asked what she’d done to navigate body issues — mirror work — and I adopted it. There wasn’t any feeling jealous that she was ‘farther along’ than me, or that she felt good and I didn’t. I didn’t feel judged. I felt supported and loved.
Maybe cuz I know there’s stuff that’s hard for her, that’s not hard for me anymore, and I get to hold that for her. Or cuz we’re both equally honest about our stuff. Or cause we’re both aware healing journeys aren’t linear. Or maybe its cuz when we face sticky moments, we end with, “…and I’m here” — and that’s created intimacy and vulnerability.
And in that intimacy and vulnerability— we’re catalyzing each other’s growth.
There’s nothing to say this lasts forever, or even until Q4 ‘22.
I don’t have the best track record. But I’m here, and I’m trying.
David Whyte says it wayyyyyy better than I can:
“the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”
Here’s some questions / prompts related to friendship, if you’re called to further explore //
- What do you value most, about your closest friendship? Why that?
- What’s something left to say to your closest friend, that you’ve not yet said? What’s holding you back?
- What’s healthy in your close friendships? What’s not healthy? How do you know?
And here’s some invitations, if you feel called:
- Call, text or carrier pigeon a message to your closest friend, and share w him / her / they / them something (or multiple things?) that you see in them, that they might not yet see, that you love.
- Share w a close friend, what being in friendship w them feels like. Feel free to use shapes, sounds, colors, images.
For more //
Jennifer Senior’s Atlantic piece.
Alan Seale’s ‘Intuitive Living’ + the Center for Transformational Presence
David Whyte reading ‘Friendship’.
Our friend Moun is a coach and taught Jackie the mirror work to combat body dysmorphia that was so helpful to her. You can check her out HERE.
