Monday, July 8, 2013

keep your friends close... and your first aid kit closer


have you heard of a book called "Daring Greatly"? this is the video i wanted everybody i know to watch, and today i wanted one person in particular to watch it, but unfortunately i couldn't make that suggestion. the real reason this book came to my mind was that i was hurt and i thought: "oh, i haven't read Daring Greatly yet!!!" meaning that i'm not, yet, equipped with enough mental weapons to fight back, to justify why on earth did i dare greatly and invite this friend to be my friend, why did i open up to her, become so vulnerable, i needed weapons to kill or numb my feelings of hurt.

i thought there are two reasons behind what my friend did: number ONE is that i don't matter much to her so she said words haphazardly not thinking of consequences or that a person like me (the only person she knows to whom her words can be relevant) could get hurt, so why do i still care about her? why can't i just cross her off my friends' list, i wish this was as easy as "unfriend"ing somebody on facebook. TWO is that i did matter and she read my response, so why hasn't she reacted yet?
this got me thinking that maybe it's not her fault, maybe it's my fault for keeping her so close to my heart as a dear friend so when she stabbed, the knife went right into my heart, deep inside, leaving a fatal wound, and our friendship might die as a result.... when someone is too close to you, you feel when they breath, when they rejoice, when they hurt, but what about when THEY hurt YOU... well THAT's painful

recently i've been craving friendship, as you might have read here and i remembered two girls who were good friends, and our relationship had the potential of developing into true deep long-term friendship, the first one emigrated with her husband and two children to Canada over a year ago. M is a girl i met in the USA, as weird as it is, back in 2001, she's Egyptian and i'm Syrian, years later, i got married to an Egyptian man and moved to live in Egypt, when we moved to this city, where M lives, i met her at church and she was 9 months pregnant. she remembered me (there's no way i could recognize the pregnant M) and i looked up a photo of the two of us in Atlanta and showed it to her. yes, that's true, the world is such a small place, not only that, but over the past few years we became good friends, she had similar difficult circumstances, she had two children, she understood me very well, we used to finish each other's sentences when we shared our struggles with motherhood and raising two children when both our husbands were too busy and we had almost no friends of family around to help. during the farewell gathering we held for them (there were three families emigrating) i tried to say something but ended up crying and leaving the room. i'm glad to hear every now and then that she's happy in Canada and starting to settle down as things get better for them.

as if losing one friend wasn't enough, i lost another one, who also emigrated, she went with her husband to start a new life in the US. i met L almost two years ago, also at church, and we couldn't believe how much we have in common, she's such a mature, kind, and smart young lady and i enjoyed the time we spent together. so our friendship was building bit by bit and getting stronger when i heard that they've made up their mind and it's final, they're leaving. i learnt the lesson, so i didn't open my mouth during L and her husband's farewell gathering two months ago, i even left early and used "escape" as a defense mechanism.

today i can say that i lost a third friend, just like the other two, i need time to morn this relationship, but when things happen and you blame it on faith, or God, it's easier to cope than when things are made to happen by a human hand. i try to keep in touch with M and L in spite of the distance, but with this friend who still lives here, i'm afraid i'll gradually lose interest in mending our relationship if i'll keep needing my first aid kit often.
i honestly am not as mad as i was initially because i tried to find reasons for her sharp unkind words, but i still believe that it's my right to protect myself against further injuries... so what's between me and her can sadly no longer be called a "friendship".

anyway, i've done what i usually do with my dear friends, say something, send an invitation for us to talk. had she been somebody insignificant to me then i wouldn't have gotten so hurt in the first place, then it would've been easy to me to just forget about her. but with my friends, i do things differently, because i CARE about them, i care about US so i try to mend things, i try to listen to the saying: "Don't let your friend's mistake make you forget his (in this case "her") continuous white hands"... so i'll hope that it's just a "mistake" and for now will remember my friend's white hands...

p.s. a few minutes after i finished writing this post, i went back to the youtube page where i got the first video link from and i found THIS

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