Yay, we get to celebrate yet another week of stay at home. Yes, I’m with you, I’m absolutely sick of being in the house and experiencing new levels of boredom I never knew existed but I’m healthy, employed and alive, I really couldn’t ask for more. With most of us staying home and doing what it takes to make it safe to go among other human beings sooner, some of us are dealing with different types of stress. What I consider ‘stressful’ are such 1st world issues and menial in the grander scheme of life such as, waking up to dirt scattered all over my living room floor this morning because my cats decided to get into and tear apart the succulent my girlfriend gave me.
I’m not even going to lie, I was pissed because I’m already challenged when it comes to having a green thumb and if she learned I couldn’t keep a succulent alive, we’d all begin to wonder how my teenager is still thriving. We’re being faced with stressful situations, periods of boredom to the point we’ve finished streaming services and experiencing dark moments which feel as though they are coming up from the depths of our souls and bringing every painful memory to the surface. It feels as though we’re being faced with so much more shit at this point in our lives but, honestly, all of this has always been there, we just now have the time and space to actually deal with and heal the parts of us that have been holding us hostage because we don’t have the hustle and bustle of life distracting us.
A couple of days ago, the 10 year anniversary of my father’s passing arrived and I’ve usually been quite the asshole to those closest to me during the week of that date in an effort to push people away and be sad all by my lonesome. I have the most amazing people in my life because they let it slide the first 2 years because they chalked it up to PMS or just me being my emotional Aries self until I shared with them during my apology the following week why I picked arguments 5 days prior to May 22nd. When the 3rd year came around, they told me I wasn’t allowed to alienate them, they are my friends and will be there for me. I, being who and how I am and not used to that type of support, blew it off and didn’t believe it and went about my business until that week approached and they reached out more even when I tried to pick a fight, they told me they weren’t going anywhere and they stood by that statement.
This year, I’ve been blessed to add 2 more phenomenal women to my circle to stand by me and make sure I didn’t feel alone during this dark period of my life. Even though we are dealing with stay at home orders, 2 of them showed up to my home, ordered food, had libations, and laughs with me on my patio all while fighting bugs into the late-night hours. I also had someone check on me throughout the day to make sure I was okay because they knew the significance of that day.
When you become friends with someone, it’s done with the understanding that every day isn’t going to be sunshine, rainbows and unicorns, there are going to be dark periods that each of you goes thru at some point and the most important trait of a true friend is still being there with love and space for them to break. I, as well as most of you reading this, have been thru some quite dark and shitty periods in life where I just wanted to find a dark corner, crawl into a ball and just disappear in hopes the pain and stress would just stop long enough for me to catch my breath so I could actually handle everything being thrown at me at once.
Being who and how I am, one of my biggest flaws is not divulging a lot of what I’m going thru because I don’t want to add to the stress others are currently going thru and don’t share until I’m able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. While I may not share all that I’m dealing with, I don’t snap at someone innocent because the weight of the toxicity in my life causing a dark cloud over my life……………………………………well, I don’t anymore. I used to be the person who had so many innocent bystanders in my wake due to them just trying to show they cared at a point I was ready to explode and they got everything which should have been directed and unloaded on one specific person. The amount of humble pie I had to eat to salvage relationships became exhausting and I learned how to precisely direct my displeasure at the appropriate person. At this point in my life, I live by the adage of
Don’t come for me unless I send for you because I’m too grown for childish shit. If you’re going thru something, share with me and I’ll be there for you but I will not quietly absorb ill guided anger meant for someone else; that’s not how this works.
During this period of solitude, I’ve had time to reflect on my friendships and have taken the opportunity to repair and heal the damaged ones, strengthen the ones I have, build upon new ones, and appreciate those which have stood the test of time. I took the huge step to put on my big girl pannies and confront a friendship which hurt me to my core because, in reality, she is genuinely a good person who made a bad decision but it never stopped her from being there for me and mine when we weren’t even speaking. One night, after having some spirited beverages, I picked up the phone and called my friend, shared my pain and apologized to her for allowing her back into my life only to treat her like shit the entire time, it wasn’t fair to her or anyone in our circle. We spent about an hour on the phone talking about what had happened to clear that air and then another 1.5 hours talking about our jankety love lives and getting another perspective on those relationships.
Over the course of our conversation, many tears were shed but, more importantly, wounds were healed with love, understanding and forgiveness and not just with a temporary band-aid to be able to be cordial around one another. My soul felt the peace of healing that important relationship and we now speak every day once again as best friends, no longer frenemies.
Over the course of my forty-great years on this planet, I’ve gone thru some rather less than stellar friendships in which I’d given all I believed I could, sometimes having gone above and beyond for females who probably wouldn’t spit on me if I were on fire. By the same token, I’ve been blessed to have women show me what it means to be a true friend by filling my fridge when I wasn’t able to and buying gifts for my children on holidays I couldn’t. Just as any other facet of life, you have the good and the bad, each one teaching you a lesson in some form or another.
Thru my shattered friendships, I have come to learn a lot about women and their personalities, mannerisms, and character and that just being one doesn’t automatically mean you understand another. I have a best friend whom I clicked with immediately upon meeting while I was with my other best friend and we, oddly and eerily enough, became somewhat of a trio. I will openly admit that the road hasn’t always been smooth sailing, there was an entire year I missed, didn’t see or speak to my bestie because other people put their raggedy $.02 in and stirred the pot. During that year apart from her, I grew, matured, and came to see the limits which people will go to try and destroy that which they don’t understand because the same people who tried to destroy us were the same ones who questioned why we were friends. Just like any other relationship in our lives, only those personally involved in it understand why it works and it shouldn’t be for anyone else to judge but that’s not to say they don’t and that’s fine, I’m not asking them to be my friend, my pea sized circle is enough for me.
I find it amazing how many times my friends and I have been called lesbians because someone didn’t understand how women could be as close as we are without being intimate and that’s the craziest concept to me. I now see that if it’s not them reaping the same benefits of that friendship, they believe it’s only because they’re not willing to talk to the ‘man in the boat’ and get that person off sexually. It’s sad that guys can have their best friends since grade school, hang out together, cheat on their spouses with approval/non-judgment and never be accused of being gay but women who share the most intimate, darkest secrets of their lives with one another, protect, depend on, and spend time with are. Yes, I bring up men in this post because they’re among those who insinuated we were sexually pleasuring each other because we were close and, unfortunately, got a little gleam in their eye in the hopes of it becoming a threesome and quickly became disappointed when they learned, in no uncertain terms, that we don’t swing that way.
Life is too short, drama and stress filled to attempt to go thru it alone. If you have at least one solid friend who’s been there thru all of your ups and downs, would beat someone’s ass for coming at you wrong, supports you, has your back, views your children as their own, won’t let you leave the house looking a hot ass mess, and you can go over theirs in your jammies with spirited beverages in hand without judgment, HOLD ON TO AND CHERISH THEM!
Individuals such as them are a rare breed but also understand you need to be the same for them in order to keep them by your side. Stay well, healthy, and sane my lovelies! Smooches
