healing, loss, love

Natural Losses.

May 1, 2013

By Jennifer Pastiloff

One of the girls from my yoga class waited for me last night after it had ended. She wanted to chat. S is a sweet girl and I feel protective of her. She found me at the height of her anorexia and in the last few years has come a long way.

Last night she was visibly upset.

Many months ago she’d told me about how her best friend had been blowing her off, how she was being left out of the friend’s wedding and its subsequent planning. She hadn’t known what she’d done wrong and it was eating away at her like something deadly and invisible. Over time it breaks down the healthy cells and even though you can’t see it you know it’s rushing through you with a map to your heart.

They’d cleaned it up, she told me, that mess between them, and she even ended up going to the wedding, she’d said one Saturday after class a couple months back. She never figured out what the problem had been and I suggested that maybe it was wedding jitters or anxiety. Who knows? I’d said lacing up my sneakers without losing her eyes, It has nothing to do with you. People get weird when they are going to get married. Hell, people are weird period. Even when they aren’t about to get married.

So last night she asked me if I remembered all that drama with her best friend? I indeed remembered. She told me that things had been strained since then and she’d finally said to her friend It seems like you don’t really want to be friends with me. Do you? And the friend had said, Actually no. No, I don’t.

Oh for the love of cliché. I wanted to tell her that it had nothing to do with her. I did say that, in fact, but part of me realizes that it does. And that that’s okay. This is what happens in life. We gather, we fall away. We collect like leaves and then drift toward winter without any idea where we’re going.

I admired her courage in asking her friend if she still wanted to be friends. I have this nightmare sometimes where an old friend of mine who I am not that close with anymore tells me she doesn’t want to be my friend. This is a friend I love dearly but whom I never see and feel slightly abandoned by.

Oh, for the love of God. Does it always shave to come back to being abandoned?

Mostly, yes.

I told S that I admired her courage in asking her friend. I told her I probably would’ve been too afraid of what she might say. What if she said exactly what S’s friend said to her? What if she validated my worst fears about myself? What if she left me in a  basket in front of someone’s door with just a note tacked to it saying Not Wanted? What if she let the basket sail down the Nile? And it goes on and on. The gallery of What if’s.

I wouldn’t have asked so I bow to you for asking, I said to S.

It’s almost worse than being dumped by a lover. Friendship is a primal beast, the vein that runs through all of us, the organ that grows and holds us together. Our spines memorize friendships in some way and falter when they fail. It’s hard to get back up.

At least when a lover dumps you, you friends pick you up off the floor. Here, drink this. Here, you need to eat. Here, there are plenty more fish in the sea. Here, you are still beautiful. Here, I still love you. Here, I’ve got you.

Her friend actually having the guts to tell S that she didn’t want to be friends was also something I found frightening in the way the early morning was morning and night at the same time. The way it feels like maybe everyone is dead. The quiet a spiny thing crawling in your ear and settling like fog. This isn’t quiet. This is dead.

This is “Somebody prove to me that I am not alone”. This is “Somebody help me!” I found it frightening like that. A thing you can’t put into words for fear it will fester and stay forever.

But, I said to S last night as we descended the stairs, this is how life is. And it is.

This has happened to me. On both ends. Someone has decided that they didn’t want to be my friend anymore. For no good reason. And vice versa. Maybe it wasn’t even a decision. Maybe it was a natural progression like aging and the way sex becomes less important and also more important as we get older. Maybe it was a natural progression like crawling to walking. Once you walk there’s no going back to crawling.

I don’t know. Life can’t be explained most days and when it can that explanation usually shatters its dry leafiness the next spring because things so rarely stay one way only. They change. They go. They leave. Things are so rarely explainable.

At least invisible things like friendship and love.

I told S that I’d had people I didn’t want to be friends with anymore but I hadn’t had the courage to tell them. I just let it drift out to sea until it was irretrievable. Maybe I hadn’t even realized I didn’t want it anymore until it was a piece of wood bobbing out there on a wave and by the time I noticed, it was too late because I didn’t miss it anymore. I’d just let it sail.

It takes courage and a commitment to the truth to tell someone you don’t want them anymore. In any capacity. It’s easier to let phone calls slide, to avoid, to pretend. Is it admirable? No. Just easier.

Why wouldn’t she want to be friends anymore with sweet little S? Her guess was as good as mine, but I can tell you right now that if someone said that to me it would validate some belief I had about myself being rotten. That it would set me sailing down the river Nile in basket with a note that said Nobody wants this. Abandoned goods.

S told me that it made her want to punish herself and I got that. My instinct might have been immediately to starve myself. That’s where my pain goes. To hunger.

Why do friendships fade? Why do people hurt each other? Is it better to be honest and a little cruel or lie and let someone think they are imagining the loss? That it isn’t real. That the trees are full of foliage as spectacular as burnt sun rather than than a bare arm reaching for the sky, fingertips pulling at the moon. Grabbing at nothing.

Is a loss imagined worse than a loss that’s real?

I don’t know. I feel sad for S. I put myself in her shoes and quickly stepped out of them because that basket speeding down the river is one I know well and didn’t want to be in. I felt empathetic towards her but I knew she’d be fine after all was said and done.

It hurts when someone rejects us. No matter what.

The thing with this honesty business though is that there will be no guessing. Now she knows where her friend stands, even though she truly has no idea why, she can stop wondering if she is imagining that her friend is pulling away at various degrees. She is pulling away. It is not an imagined thing.

The loss is real.

And as loss tends to go, it will heal eventually. The pain won’t necessarily fully go away but it will seal up and stop bleeding and one day she will run into the friend on the sidewalk and they will hug and that will be that.

And that will be mostly that.

Her friend told her that she just didn’t need her anymore.

Talk about honest! I was pissed for S when she told me that part of the story. She doesn’t need you anymore? What are you, a sponge?

But again, isn’t that life? When we don’t need something anymore we stop using it. We sell it or give it away or abandon it. Sometimes we try and hold onto it but usually we end up realizing that it’s taking up too much space on the countertop and it never gets used anyway, so let’s just get rid of it. Isn’t that how life goes? The natural progression? The cyclical fashion we move through our lives, the ebb and the flow of I need you, I don’t need you, I need you, I don’t need you.

It’s complicated as a sponge too. Full of holes and water. Holding on to too much.

I personally don’t keep my friends based on need. But maybe that’s a lie? Maybe everything in life is based on need? Air, water, food, sex, sleep.

I do know for certain that not taking things personally is multi-million dollar business and also maybe another lie. Sure, it happens at times, but don’t tell me that when someone you love tells you that they don’t need you anymore or that they don’t want you anymore, that you won’t take it a little bit as personal as if someone was trying to saw your arm off?

No one wants to be rejected. It doesn’t feel good. Ever. Nobody wants to feel abandoned. But the truth is, you are not sailing down a river in a small wicker basket, unclaimed. This is part of the viscous nature of life, this sticky and messy navigating.

You have to don your captain’s hat and tip it at the person who is rejecting you and move on. You have to let your sweet little heart recover a bit then open your eyes and realize you are back on the tree and that you are vibrant and very much full of color. That there is life all around you, pumping, mysterious, unexplainable.

 

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Click to order Simplereminders new book (which Jen is featured in.)

Click to order Simplereminders new book (in which Jen is featured.)

 

Jennifer Pastiloff, Beauty Hunter, is the founder of The Manifest-Station. Check out jenniferpastiloff.com for all retreat listings and workshops to attend one in a city near you. Next up: South Dakota, NYC, Dallas, Kripalu Center For Yoga & Health, Tuscany. She is also leading a Writing + The Body Retreat with Lidia Yuknavitch Jan 30-Feb 1 in Ojai (2 spots left.) She tweets/instagrams at @jenpastiloff.

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16 Comments

  • Reply Jenniferlyn Chiemingo May 1, 2013 at 7:43 am

    This gave me chills. I can feel ‘S’ – I have been ‘S’ – Maybe we all have…. So much love to ‘S’ and to you Jen. You are a remarkable person. I am so glad you are in my life.

  • Reply barbarapotter May 1, 2013 at 8:06 am

    Wow I feel her too. I have been her so many times but I can tell you the pain of the not knowing, but yet knowing, is pretty bad in any relationship and I would always prefer the truth and the immediate shock and getting over it than the lingering nagging that something is not right and you know it is not all in your mind as others will tell you. Very good.

  • Reply Anna May 1, 2013 at 8:12 am

    I can defintally relate to S. I keep telling myself and others that people come and people go in our lives. Some stay a lifetime while others leave and forever leave an imprint on our hearts and souls.

  • Reply Lizzy May 1, 2013 at 9:46 am

    This is one of your best posts yet!! I constantly remind myself that I am all I will ever need and it’s their loss. Nowadays I just try to enjoy life one day at a time because all we really have is today.

  • Reply Sonia May 1, 2013 at 10:07 am

    If the friendship is worth it, I want to have the conversation. It’s difficult, but with each difficult conversation you have, you step into your power more and more. Like the time I asked a friend of 20 yrs why she had become diatant. She said i was “broken” and she had too much good going on in her life to be friends with me. This was shortly after my mom died – no shit I’m broken! I forgave her and gave her another chance. Then the Universe decided I was stupid for doing so and removed her from my life. In short: trust the Universe!

  • Reply justmeactually May 1, 2013 at 10:29 am

    Amazing. Thank you for your words. This is very timely in a world where we are all being told to rid our lives of “toxic” relationships. We need to be careful with each other.

  • Reply Melody May 1, 2013 at 7:08 pm

    Thank you. I have been “S” time and again. The loss of a freindship with no explanation…this is a beautiful perspective.

  • Reply Bernadette Duggan May 2, 2013 at 1:24 am

    A life long friend of over 40 years has suddenly stopped calling, ignored birthday and xmas cards 7 months ago and still I have no idea why? the irony is that it was I that was becoming very upset and angry with her attitude towards me ever since she met the new man in her life. I have been tempted to call her but pride prevents me doing so. There is so much more to tell, but basically it still winds me up inside to think about it. I guess betrayed and undervalued is how I feel. I am 60 this year. Still hurts though. I follow you from the Uk Jennifer. Have never taken part in any Yoga class. Just love your open, intelligent, funny, deeply moving loving posts. x

  • Reply Lynn Johnson Hasselberger May 2, 2013 at 11:10 am

    Beautiful!

  • Reply Sara May 2, 2013 at 5:15 pm

    This is so timely for me. In fact, when you ask on FB what you should write about I’ve wanted to say this but it felt so selfish because it’s what I’m going through. I didn’t realize how many others have gone through it as well.
    The thing with my friend “break up” is that she sent me an email telling me how horrible I am and how she has wanted to be rid of me for a long time. Even said my parents did a shitty job raising me and that I should be fired from my job.
    And it really hurt.
    Still, my first thought when I read it the first time (because I’ve read it over and over) was “what a deeply unhappy person”.
    It was very much like a breakup with a boyfriend. Perhaps worse. It sure hurt more than when my last relationship ended. And both relationships lasted about the same time, 6-7 years.
    I reached out to my true friends. I needed to hear from them. To know that some people value me. Love me, flaws and all. And they were great. They were all quick to come to my defense, and to criticize this woman and what she did. I needed to hear it. I obsessed about the email for a long time, and it still comes to mind often.
    And I realized: I’m a good friend. I really am. Honest and trustworthy. Kind and caring. Oh, I have my faults. I’m very much a work in progress and being a better person is always a goal. But I have a lot of good traits as well and am blessed with friends and family who appreciate them.

    So letting a friendship drift off without a call or email may be the coward’s way. But I prefer it. Do we really need to know if we are despised? I’m going to have to say no.
    I saw this woman all the time. We lived minutes apart and spent a lot of time together. If she had simply let our friendship drift off I’d wonder why for a long time. But I still think it would be preferable to the beat down I received. If that makes me a coward, so be it.

  • Reply Casey Hicks May 2, 2013 at 5:30 pm

    I’ve been slowly going through this process for a few months now. Finally coming to terms with it, and when I thought about her today, I realized I was okay with it. Thank you for sharing, as always.

  • Reply Lockey May 2, 2013 at 7:05 pm

    In the last 3 weeks or so, I have been S. I have been disinvited from someone’s life. Rejection in any form is humbling in that it brings out all our negative thoughts about ourselves. It makes us feel the raw feelings we never want to feel. Jen, then next time you see S, please hug her and tell her I think she’s special.

  • Reply balancedintentions May 2, 2013 at 9:20 pm

    If I look closely, I can still feel the sting of a couple friendships that broke up over the years. It is interesting how that feeling can still linger, even more so than romantic relationships coming undone.

  • Reply Adrienne Smith May 3, 2013 at 8:14 am

    Beautiful and riveting to the end. I will share this advise with my children if they ever need it some day: “Maybe it was a natural progression like crawling to walking. Once you walk there’s no going back to crawling.” I will also use my favorite Jennifer quote to date: “She is not in my tribe.” Repeat as necessary. Cannot WAIT to meet you in person in Ojai…

  • Reply Sheila Bergquist August 27, 2014 at 10:47 pm

    I feel for S…it hurts so much to be told that. I have been in that situation and I usually am glad it’s finally out in the open and I know where I stand, even though it’s breaking my heart sometimes. There’s an old saying that we all need to remember at these times: “It’s their loss, not mine. ” It might not feel like it, but you have to know that they are the ones who will suffer more in the long run for having cut you out of their lives. And, also, that you truly don’t need such a person in your life. A big hug to S.

  • Reply Karanbir August 28, 2014 at 6:22 am

    Your posts are all so heart touching..so deep. Thank you for sharing. I feel the freedom comes only through looking within and looking at the bigger picture that there are so many of us who experience the same kind of losses. A hug to S from my side too.

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