This past weekend my lovely college friend was visiting me. We’ve been friends for 30 years now. It was a very healing visit. She was here to heal from a broken heart combined with exhaustion from caring for an aging parent. I am continually seeking to heal from the loss of my boys and a divorce, together which shattered the dream of my family life.
Throughout the weekend we listened to Taylor Swift and Clean became a bit of our theme song. (No hate please.)
For me it was very re-centering to be with someone who has known me my entire adult life. So much of my self perception over the last eight years has been influenced by the high conflict nature of co-parenting with a covert narcissist and the continual attempted alienation of my children. I have so many times seen myself through the eyes of my hateful ex, his mentally unstable girlfriend, and my moody teenagers, all of whom cast me in an angry, volatile, or simply weird light.
Don’t get me wrong. I have so many local friends who have known me since I moved here and even adult friends in the state in which I lived for twenty years, but there is something different about being with someone who has known you the longest.
Perhaps other people experience this through family relationships. Mine are quite few as I have lost one half of my family of origin. When my dad and I spend time together it is mostly present focused. If we reflect it is more on my childhood, our memories of a nuclear family, not really who I was as a singular person.
When someone knows you that long and loves you just as much or more and is your strong supporter it lifts you out of whatever has happened To you and reminds you that before all those life experiences battered and bruised you you were a person, kindhearted, generous, polite, educated, and stylish, and that those same core traits are there at your center, honed through the experiences of life, and together forming a strength that propels you forward.
I am super grateful for the time with her and the light feeling I am left with in the wake of her departure, feeling refreshed and renewed.
