Like Mist Over Water

As I’ve been thinking about the conversation I had yesterday that blew me away to a very negative space, and has caused me pain ever since, I realized some things that I couldn’t see before when the truth was blind to my eyes. This person who no longer wanted to be my friend, and who I realized struggled (at least he somewhat tried) to empathize, had about the coldest heart toward me. I felt, in some ways, that he was angry at me for caring. But one particular part of our conversation really stuck out to me.

Ex-friend: “You know, I’m just an asshole right now. I hit my breaking point two years ago...”

Me: “Ya, well me too.”

Ex-friend: “Your breaking point is now.”

Me: “NO! My breaking point was two years ago. I’ve been kinda crazy since then.”

The above blip from our conversation speaks a lot to me about what this person was expecting and how he viewed himself in comparison to others. I know for a fact that I had talked to this person about my painful experiences that were still weighing on me. It occurs to me now that he was expecting that he would be the primary cause of my pain, and it’s true that he personally caused me a lot of pain. But his words, “Your breaking point is now,” seemed to suggest that he didn’t believe the pain I had gone through before. That anything I had experienced before could not compare to the pain he caused me. It seemed to surprise him that I had experienced such intense feelings before or something. He seemed a little confused that I had lived at all before becoming close to him. And through that, I know that I was dealing with an incredibly narcissistic person.

It just so happens that we had two completely separate experiences when we weren’t even friends that broke each of us separately at the same time of life. And these experiences were affecting the way we acted toward each other now. I am angry at the world. He is angry at the world. In that particular way, we are very similar. There was something very precious within each of our hearts individually; a similar dream that really had nothing to do with each other, that was shattered through our own separate experiences. Both of us lived our lives in our ruins. And it was like both of us had a photo negative of that breaking point held up to our eyes at all times, and we were looking through them at each other, and at the rest of the world. Like a destructive pair of sunglasses, shielding the sun from our lives and distorting our perceptions. And he couldn’t help me. And I couldn’t help him.

So then I reflected on how I’ve responded to different relationships since the time two years ago that I would consider the time my heart just died, and I haven’t fully gotten it back. What do I see in these two years? I see friendships come and go. I see anger. I see abandonment. I see immense, unbearable loneliness. I see desperation. I see depression. I see anxiety. I see forced strength, like working at a couple jobs for the first time. I see lack of strength at being able to continue. I see me forcing myself to ignore suicidal thoughts. I see myself at least at one point giving into them. I see me forcing myself to have self-control in my choices with people. I see other times when self-control, in certain ways, was totally abandoned. I see an immense effort to try to understand my situation. To try to love the people who hurt me and still love myself while being fair to both sides. I see a failure to do so. I see an effort to fight for life which was something I had to believe was worth it, because I just didn’t feel it was anymore. But I didn’t believe it. And I confess, even now is a struggle. So I see myself clinging to life for the love of God and others in my life.

And one particularly interesting thing I see is me devoting my energies to fighting the things I thought contributed to my pain that were external, that were evil. I had anger. I needed to attack something, so I attacked the injustices of the world rather than the people who had hurt me who needed grace, and didn’t completely deserve such rage. I started reading articles about these injustices. And I started aggressively sharing them through what I felt was my only social outlet, Facebook. I started a blog and shared my opinions about what I perceived about some of these injustices. I directed my energies toward trying to justify myself through making other things the underlying cause of the agony I felt. And I think the principles behind these evils I was fighting did contribute to the actions that left me dead inside. They were a part of it. And though I never managed to let go of my anger, I think I found a decent outlet for it.

And this makes me think about the different ways that people cope with their pain. I know that the person who I thought was my friend eventually acted as if I had no right to be broken. I finally realized that he expected me to be just fine. That apparently, I hadn’t experienced enough pain to warrant the disaster zone that I tried to relate to him I was in. He would pretend to care, but now I know that he didn’t. He resented my pain. I think to him, if I had been in as much pain, I would have been driven to do the things that he had done in response to his grief, not the things that I chose to do. I think he regrets a lot, and he uses his pain, in some ways, to justify it, which is why he can’t believe the idea that I would be in so much pain without choosing the same cliff to jump off of as he did. But you know, you really can’t compare.

I think sometimes the things you hate in others the most are the things that you can’t stand in yourself. Or maybe sometimes they are the things that you fight desperately against within yourself that you can’t seem to conquer. And despite our different experiences, I think this ex-friend of mine and I were looking through very similar photo negatives. We were mirroring each other.

And this is where I recognize a difference in character. I noticed it and wanted to work through it. He noticed it, and bailed. He bailed.

He doesn’t make me angry right now for bailing, though he did. He makes me sad that I couldn’t do anything for him. He makes me want to reach to comfort him and I can’t. He makes me hurt, because I so desperately wanted to fix his heart and I couldn’t. It was like we had a fire and ice friendship. We were trying to fix each other. I was trying to melt the ice of his heart with fire, but I needed that fire for myself, because there is ice in my heart too. He was trying to prove to me that ice was the answer. He didn’t want to approach the fire.

But ice isn’t the answer. And I sincerely hope that one day he recognizes that. Because underneath that ice is a treasure that I miss. The world needs that treasure. I can’t stand to see it buried. And I think maybe one day, the warmth of his heart will melt the ice. And though I likely won’t be there to see it, it’ll be beautiful. Like the mysterious calm of mist over water. Wispy and light. Weightless, but deep.