Thursday, August 26, 2010

Parting

Perhaps I am being silly here, but am both embarrassed and hurt by something that happened today.

A number of years ago a close friend went with me on a school trip to the UK. She lives over a thousand miles away so it was a treat for us to be able to travel together. On that particular trip we brought our daughters as well as my students.

Things went well at first, but my students came to me and were complaining about the bickering going on among some of the other kids. None of the teen drama made any sense to me, so I pulled all the kids that were arguing together and made them sit down and talk out whatever the heck was going on.

My friend's daughter was behind the mess. She was carrying tales back and forth between groups of kids doing the teen girl "she said this about you" or "he said that about you" thing. Possibly it was a divide and conquer thing to get into one of the groups - I don't know.

I told my friend what was going on and she was angry with her daughter for being so dumb and life went on. As the trip progressed things became more strained though. My friend was spending more and more time with her daughter because the rest of the kids didn't really want anything to do with her anymore. Add to that mess the fact that this friend of mine has had various mental health issues in the past.

I'd been there for her through a number of them. Some of those things included me talking her out of suicide and being there to support her through issues that drove her depression into a serious mess. I think seeing her daughter unhappy made her angry and she became somewhat of a bitch for the remainder of the trip.

When we got back to the States, I was uncertain how to handle things. I felt uncomfortable calling her because she stomped off at the airport without even saying goodbye. I just didn't know what to say so I hoped she'd contact me.

Time went on and I missed her. I missed the wonderful things about her. I missed the bond we had and how we always seemed to have each other's backs. Even so, I was still edgy and didn't want to make that first move.

There were so many times I stared at my phone over the years. There were so many times I started to dial and hung up. There were a couple of times that I blocked my number and called only to get a voice message. Rather than leaving a message, I hung up. I just didn't know what to say.

Last November I called her and left a message. My hope was that years put the rough feelings of our last time together behind us and we could possibly regain some sort of a friendship.

She called me back the next day and we talked for hours. We laughed and joked about all the things that have happened in our lives over the years. She sent me an email and said she would rather keep in contact that way because her work schedule made it crazy to be able to catch each other to talk.

We began to write back and forth about once a week. We shared feelings, laughs, and stories about what was going on with us. She sent me pics of her family - yada yada yada. In the meantime we talked on the phone every once in a while.

I hadn't heard from her for about a month so I called her last week. Today she responded with an email that shocked me.

She said she doesn't know why I bothered to contact her after all these years and that she knows it certainly couldn't be because I missed her. She said she has no desire to renew any kind of friendship with me and told me to have a good life.

I was stunned.

Why would she suddenly decide that? It makes me sad.

Peace

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