For several days, I've been considering how to address this and whether i ought to mention it at all. August has been an emotionally challenging month for me. A woman for whom I had strong feelings unexpectedly and uncharacteristically asked me to no longer contact her and to not expect any more communication from her ever. Another woman I knew well, who after the former woman cut me off was the only woman I have known longer than a year who still talked with me directly, took her own life this week. I feel very cut off, and I don't really understand how this happened.
Maybe I'm just an idiot, but I didn't see either of these things coming. All the indications from the former woman were that she would choose me and support me and be with me. All the indications from my other friend were that she was getting some semblance of what she wanted. Sure, there were problems, but nothing was of the scale that predicted either of these outcomes, and I can't help but look at myself and ask what I did wrong or what more I could have done or done differently.
Perhaps it's just because I don't control either of these situations that it bothers me. I don't really know that I could have done anything or that anything of which I was capable was justified or righteous. I try very hard to live the things I write on this blog, and so I have reluctantly decided to let the first woman go and respect her even though I finally found someone with whom I actually wanted a family. Reluctantly too, I am accepting another kind of death, a literal loss of life in a friend who stood by me and introduced to me another better friend with whom I spend most of my weekends. If not for her, he and I might never have met, and then I don't know what I would have done with all my free time before I met the woman I loved and now that she has chosen another path.
I don't know what happened to make these women cut me off. The first one gave me very little information, and the second gave me none at all. In fact, the second had been in town last weekend, but she didn't contact me or let me know she was here. I don't know how to be better in the future. I don't know what to change to be a better mate or a better friend. Neither of these women have given me anything with which to work, and I spend most of the day agitated and upset because there is a feedback loop that will not close.
I spent some time on memory lane tonight with both of these women. I have a photo text from the one who took her own life that I saved to my phone months ago. It's the last picture I have of her. I actually drove by the other woman's house for the first time ever, but I chickened out and didn't knock on the door or call. I was trying to respect her choice. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm the villain. I am just really confused at this point, and I don't know what to do. I have very strong feelings about both of these women, and I am torn up to have lost them both. What tears me up about the first is that I know exactly where to go, but I don't want to go talk to her if I'm unwelcome. That's the only data I have.
This is kind of par for my life. This happened before, and that's partly why I am so agitated now. This latest woman assured me that things would be different, that she would heal what others had damaged. She was choice, and I thought I was her choice. Now I'm just lost because of what I lost, and because I love her, I have to let her go.
My thoughts are conflicted with the thoughts of other people. I have read things that reverberate and heard other things that echo, and I don't know what to do. I just know that I am not complete without the first and will probably never really recover from the loss of the second. I've never had a friend take their life, and I don't understand what happened to the life I thought I had with the other. I may never really know.
3 comments:
This sounds like a terrible time period for you. I think as I read this that it's (again) one of those (awful) examples of people and their use of agency. The worst part for you is that you are lost because you don't have any insight or any information that might help you figure it out. I'm so sorry. It has to have been an awful experience, especially with a friend who took their own life. I can't imagine what you've been going through.
Please know that you are loved. You are important and you are (as I always see it) on the path you should be on. Hang in there, my friend.
Sending prayers and love to you.
In the past year or so (I don't know, I try not to think about it too much), Ive lost 2 good friends.
The first, I had played online games with on and off ever since we returned from our respective missions, and he got married and moved to Colorado. In fact, I had last spoken with him just over a week before he went missing and was found in his favorite place in the mountains where he had taken his own life.
The second died of a rare, terminal cancer.
While I had warning on the one, the other I had no clue. It took hikers almost a week to find his body. I was plagued with questions, partially because he was one of the happiest people Ive been privileged to have known.
I dont know what to tell you, other than Jan is right, people use their agency to do some rather insane things, for reasons that seem completely sane at the time. All I can say is, everything will be okay in the end. If its not okay, its not the end.
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