One shot to the heart without breaking the skin

No-one has the power to hurt you like your friends.

Kept it inside, didn’t tell no-one else;

Didn’t even wanna admit it to yourself.

But now your chest burns,

And your back aches

From fifteen years of holding the pain

And now you’ll only have yourself to blame

If you continue to live this way.

(From “Get It Together” - India Arie)

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Long friendships can be peculiar. A good long standing friend offers you perspective on yourself. They hold parts of your narrative. They are the supporting cast to the drama that is your life. When you spend more than half your life relating to someone you never have to explain. They know the undercurrents and backstories. They know the secretly held wishes and hurts. They have unique access to who you were, who you are and possibly who you will be. This makes them powerful people. Power for good…and power for bad.

The closer you are the better you know how to push someone’s buttons (see for example the enduring influence of one’s mother). When you know someone so intimately the difference between a caress and a slap may be a matter of minute degrees. Everything you say is loaded when you argue with someone you know this way. Seemingly innocuous things take on shades of meaning never intended. It’s exhausting. You’re not having an argument, you’re navigating a minefield. It’s crazy. You love them. You HATE them. They say every single thing that could make you feel like shit. They know all the dirt. ALL if it. You want to fix it. You want to call your best friend and tell them all about it…but you’re fighting with your best friend. You want to work it out. You want to never ever speak to them again.

I have never fought this way with anyone ever. I have gone through every cliched saying in my head about how sometimes things are just over, how you have to step back to step forward, how sometimes you have to leave things alone so they can heal but…why does doing that feel so much like giving up? Maybe it is because I fear that if I let this person walk away they will take some vital part of my self with them. I am nearly 26. I have known this person since I was 12. My whole teenage story is wrapped up in them, not to mention my adult life up to this point. They carry my first kiss, my first boyfriend, my lost innocence, the remnants of the child I was. They were there when I graduated high school, they asked my prom date to escort me because I was too shy to talk to him myself, they watched me change and change and change again. They are pretty much the only person with whom I have been utterly vulnerable from that time to this. Perhaps this is selfish, wanting the them around because they are “the keeper of the keys”.

It is a crazy love. It can be so destructive yet so fulfilling. Time was we could sit in a room and say nothing. Once when we laid on my couch for hours. Someone had completely destroyed me. My body felt carpet-bombed. I was cavernous and desolate. We were quiet while I cried.

When we look at each other now the weight of all that presses down on us. We say things we don’t mean, or maybe things we *do* mean but would have softened a few months ago. I feel both of us saying “How did this happen?” and then wavering: “It’s YOUR fault…no it’s MY fault.” The tenuous thread that connects us pulls, recoils, tightens hard around my heart. I put my hand on yours. You look up and say “What?”.

I want to.

But I can’t.

It’s stuck in my throat.

The voice in my head whispers. “Please…please.”

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

– Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

(Elizabeth Bishop)

Busy busy busy busy busy.

Work, study, coach, take meetings, schedule, liaise, shmooze. Offices, gyms, schools. Bars, parties, cocktails. Fill the day to overflowing. Designate every second you can. Fry your synapses, or at least try to occupy them. Maybe if there is enough music, enough meaningless conversation, enough things to do and places to be, you’ll forget. If you can cut down the moments of silence you can prevent introspection, and hopefully if you stop thinking about it, it will hurt less and maybe, maybe one day it will not hurt at all. Falling asleep and just waking are vulnerable times. Lacking a task, the thoughts crowd in unimpeded. That’s why it’s best to be utterly exhausted at night and practically vault out of bed in the morning. Whenever you lie around too long you’ll be forced to confront your suppressed musings. You’ll palpate the margins, poking at it apprehensively. There will be a slow sinking as you realize things are not better, that there appear to be no limits on how long you will go on feeling this. But eventually you get up, because even if you’re not better life can’t come to a standstill. After all, you’re busy.

Chant it like a mantra. “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.” It would be ungracious to not be fine, right? There are so many things going on, things to achieve, work to be done…you’re so busy. Smile bright for the camera baby. Whisper to yourself that you don’t care. Something else will happen along, always does. Any day now. Until then just mark time. I’m not ever sad. I don’t feel anything.

I don’t care.

I’m busy.

I’m fine.

FRAGILE! CARRY THIS SIDE UP.

Who can fix a chest full of broken glass?