Dolly Mama Strikes Again!

So yesterday it happened. Someone asked me, "So do you hear from _____ any more? How is she?"

Well, um, no. As a matter of fact I do not hear from her any more. Because she decided that our 12 year long friendship was no longer valuable.

How do you have these conversations with people? How do you admit that someone considered you so worthless after you invested so much?

And even after a year and a half of living with this reality, of being able to sort out the reality of that relationship, to see the negatives as they were and know that it is good for me to be free of those.....even still, it's shocking to me. Even though it wasn't even surprising behavior for her. I watched her carelessly and selfishly toss aside her own parents, sisters, friends, and acquaintances for 12 years. I knew my day was coming. When I mentioned my concerns about that to her once, she didn't even offer to lie to me and tell me that she would never do that to me.

So. Yeah. You know. Not that surprising.

So, is it my pride that's hurt? Maybe. Or maybe it's just that I understand that when you get to know someone really well, you learn about the unlovely things in their personality. And if you want to have the benefits of a deep relationship, you have to deal with those warts. I knew about many of her flaws and dealt with them. But to me, the value of having a shared history with someone was worth sticking together even though it wasn't always smooth sailing.

Our children were life-long friends. Our firstborns met as one year olds, and all the rest of our children knew each other from the get-go. Many times I heard our children referring to each other as their best friends, even though they ended up living almost 3 hours away from each other.

We still have a photo of her kids on the fridge. Every now and then one of my children will ask, "When will we see those people again?? Our friends??" And I have to say that I don't think we will be seeing them. Mercifully, as time has gone by, they forget more and more, and they don't mourn their loss like I mourn it for them.

**Disclaimers, since it'll bother me if I don't clarify:

1. Yes, S, I know you still read my blog. Oh well. I'm tired of editing myself because you're lurking around, feeling entitled to knowing about my life while I've been shut out of yours.

2. By mentioning unlovely things about others, I did not mean to imply the she was the only one with unlovely aspects of her personality. I am well aware that I have many of those too. I don't know if it was my "warts" or hers or something else that caused her to no longer consider our relationship valuable.

3. It's very sad to me that through this situation my children are getting one of the many lessons life teaches you: "People in your life: Easy come, easy go." I had hoped to create a different culture for them, where they could have something that most people only dream of. Something that I thought I had found and felt immensely blessed by. I had hoped to give them an example of something wonderful, that I thought was possible. And now I think it's nearly impossible, and I feel somewhat crippled by it. And even more than for myself, I wanted to give that to my kids. Of course, they still have me, their father, their siblings, and our own family culture. And I have faith that this is going to be a sustaining force in their lives. But it would have been a real blessing to give them friends that aren't biologically obligated to them, so they can see what can be, when people are willing to stick together and care about each other in a deep, meaningful way.