Long Lost Friends

Look again and you'll find a pile, like I did

Credit: friendshipday.org free wallpaper

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Once upon a time, I was lonely. Not simply alone but, according to my husband, profoundly lonely - profound loneliness being a bit of a new epidemic in our digitized, homogenized, isolated world. According to the experts, physical, in-person, social contact is the antidote to the poison of profound loneliness. Coincidentally I’ve spent the last year experimenting with this idea of being physically present and can attest to its effectiveness first-hand.

At the time I wrote this, early last year, it was only the 5th story I’d ever written. Over the intervening 12 months I’ve had more social interaction with people than I had in the entirety of the the 3 prior decades. This is saying a lot. As an awkward, bookish, late bloomer I was not exactly the life of the party. I was not even the coat checker at the party. I was, in fact, not at the party. What I’ve found out about myself is not what this post is about, exactly. What it’s about is realizing I was not excluded from the party so much as I figuratively wore a cloak of invisibility to protect myself from the sometimes painful foibles of human relationships. I’d literally ‘uninvited’ my own self.

It seems as of this writing, that I’m no longer concerned about that. Hubby and I are on our way to visit with friends 2,000 miles across the USA on what’s maybe our 3rd solo vacation in 33 years. Other than high school classmates, our friendship with Cheryl and Ray is older than my eldest son. We’ve known them for 35-ish years. They were the first non-family to hold my first son and we were at their wedding before their now grown sons were even a twinkle in their eyes.

Last year when Cheryl read this story, she called me to share her shock that I didn’t believe I had many friends and to share her sorrow about an excruciating medical decision she was making about a family member. We hadn’t talked in years but there we were trading tears and misgivings. It was a pivotal moment in my emotional comeback from the invisibility cloak era. We’re really looking forward to 5 days with our oldest and dearest of friends.

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How many friends do you have? Wait, don’t answer that yet. What if friendship was defined as a relationship with someone who will come to your rescue at 3:00 a.m. - on the side of the road, at the airport, in the woods, at a fight, you name it? You need help, they’d come no questions asked. Now, how many friends do you have, not including family or your life partner? Prior to last spring, I could count mine on one hand.

What happened last spring? I caught up with someone I’ve known for years, but hadn’t spoken to in several years. Last we spoke, Maria was going through a challenging time battling a disease no one should have to deal with, but especially not someone her age. She was shocked to hear from me. I could hear it in her voice. What I thought would be a quick hello during my normally 10-minute long wait in the Chic Fil A drive through turned into almost an hour-long conversation with a promise to talk again this weekend.

Maria worked for me in the way-back machine. She’s special. In a way I cannot adequately explain, she’s number one in a really long list of “best employees ever” each of whom topped the ones before them, until her. She is 100% efficient. Candid, to a fault, but in the nicest, sweetest possible way. I lost count of how many times she cussed (I know, that doesn’t sound sweet but wait…) at me when she was calling me on my bullshit, and it is all just such an inherent, authentic part of her DNA that she probably will immediately think “I never cussed at her!”. But she did. And the only thing that ever bothered me about her getting that lathered up was what kind of a fuck-up I was being to get us there. It’s not like I ever reduced her performance rating for getting pissed. That would have been not only absurd, but also chicken-shit.

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In just 55 minutes Maria and I shared SO MUCH that it felt like we talked for hours. We talked about how so many people have lost so much and lost so many people in the last several years. We talked about her loss of her father, which left a gaping hole in her heart and her life. We talked about fear and how to process grief. We talked about my losing my mom to a drunk driver when I was 9 years old and how everyone we see in day to day life has lost a loved one and whether it is a quick or lingering death, it is devastating all the same. I shared about a similar time, with multiple tragedies in a row, I’d had in my life and how a counselor said to me that what I was experiencing was simply too much. I needed to take a step back, breathe, and just process it. Not try to get through it, around it, or over it. Just let it be. And then we connected over the topic of opening our minds and hearts and being present. She’d wanted to feel something of her father and found a book really helpful - Signs, The Secret Language of the Universe by Laura Lynne Jackson, which I asked her to share with me. Our talk about her experience with and from this book brought to mind how much the universe was ‘after me’ to be present. To engage. To be here with my environment and the people in my space versus looking at a device or watching TV or not listening to their words, which indicated their longing to connect - with me.

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And here we are back to my pile of “new” friends. Despite Maria’s shock to hear from me, she was so sweet (see, I told you she’s sweet) to indulge my urge to know how she was faring in life. She and I opened up in ways I don’t recall our doing before. That 50-some minutes was momentous and fortuitous and serendipitous. It drew, as if from a bottomless well, a tidal wave of nostalgia from me to ‘go back’ because she’s amazing.

It was a day or so later, that Cheryl called me from the hospital where she was making the excruciating, but right, choice. We too spoke like old friends, as if no time had passed at all. These are the moments we epiphanically realize we’ve always been friends. But, in the way-back, even one-on-one I didn’t feel a real connection to most ‘friends’, never mind work acquaintances which were the only acquaintances I had because work seemed to be my whole life, my whole me. I wouldn’t have had any of them on the “pick me up on the side of the road at 3 a.m. list”. Looking back, it wasn’t them who didn’t connect. It was me because I didn’t feel worthy of them then, but I know better now. Maria and Cheryl those friends, whether I’m worthy or not.

Rethinking my self-worth, they’re not the only ones who became my friends seemingly overnight. I have a veritable shit-ton (look it up it’s a lot) of friends. Lots of people who would go out of their way for me without complaint, and for this I am grateful, happy, and rich. I wish you all a pile of good friends on this beautiful spring day.

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