Sophomore year, high school, more than 20 years ago. My best friend had a boyfriend and the three of us were inseparable. We did (almost) everything together – except lunch. Our school had two lunch periods; she was in one, he and I were in the other. Naturally, the two of us ate together. One day he leaned across the table and said very seriously that he had something to tell me. His tone caught me off guard and I shifted in my seat. “Okay,” I said. I don’t recall the words he spoke, but he told me that he liked me better than her, that he wanted to see me instead of her. I sat rigid, in shock, blinking with astonishment. I could not believe his betrayal of my friend. I don’t remember what I said to him. I don’t think I said much. I certainly did not react to his pronouncement with enthusiasm.
I left the lunchroom in a daze. I should tell her, I thought to myself, still utterly disbelieving this turn of events. And yet, I didn’t. It was years before I understood why I made that choice. When he said those words to me, my unconscious looked over my shoulder at the yawning void created by the two people who were supposed to love me most. A void that was always nipping at my heels, threatening to swallow me whole. Then it looked at this boy. He likes me. He likes me. Could he love me? And suddenly I saw a life preserver snaking through the air. One that would save me from the depths of that void, that would maybe hold me up and help me fill it. But all of that was invisible to me at the time. Felt, but not seen or understood.
All afternoon I wrestled with what to do. Tell her! I thought to myself, and yet I clung fiercely to that life preserver, refusing to let go. No boy had ever said he liked me. It was the first opportunity I’d had to fill that hole and I was reluctant to let it pass by.
At the end of the day they approached me. I shuffled my feet, consumed with guilt. “He told me about the joke he played on you at lunch,” she laughed, “that was pretty funny.” “Yeah,” I said, and smiled weakly. A joke? Was it really a joke? I suddenly felt so stupid.
(Can you believe that it is only now, as I write this, that I realize my reaction unnerved him and he figured he’d better cover his tracks, and fast. Better to get to her before I did, with the story of this “joke.”)
I went home, crushed and confused – by what he had done and even more by my reaction to it. Later that night he called me. It wasn’t a joke. He really meant it. He wanted me to come over.
Now I may have been confused, and I may have been blind to my unconscious desires, but I was not going to do this – do anything – while he was still her boyfriend. I’ll call her, he said. I’ll explain everything. To this day, I don’t know what he said to her, or if he called her at all. He told me he did, that it was taken care of. And with that formality out of the way I leapt, and made the first of many swipes at that elusive life preserver (although this particular one was rather chaste).
In the days that followed, everything unraveled. My friend was furious with both of us, and rightfully so. No matter what he did or didn’t say to her, I had betrayed her. I put my ferocious hunger for love and acceptance before her, before me, before everyone, as I would again and again in the years to come.
And I felt betrayed by him. Things had been so good until he muddled them up and left me feeling so overwhelmingly confused. Why had he done this? I still don’t know the answer to that question. Did he really like me? Or was it perhaps some boyish prank, cooked up with friends. “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could bag them both?!” Or maybe there is some other explanation that is beyond my imaginings. Whatever was behind it, in the span of just a few days, the three of us were lost to each other.
This started a downward spiral for me that ended in a deep depression with constant thoughts of suicide. And while this event may have triggered that depression, I know now it was not at the heart of it. That rested with my parents and the wound I carried from them. The one that said I was not worthy, not acceptable, not loveable. Again and again I examined my betrayal of my friend. How could I have done that to her? What was wrong with me? What kind of horrible person was I? And I embraced with open arms the messages from my parents, and took them even further. I was not worthy. Of love. Of like. Of life.
Down, down, down I went. I punished myself by not wearing make-up or doing my hair (amusing in hindsight, but very real at the time for someone who was almost entirely defined by what others thought of her). I couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t stay awake at school. My grades plummeted. I withdrew further and further, locked in my room, hugging my beloved cat who seemed to be my sole source of unconditional love, the one reason I could not kill myself. I believed I deserved to suffer, deserved to feel miserable, deserved everything I was feeling as punishment for being such an awful person. I made no move to help myself, convinced that I was doing penance.
After several months my mother started dragging me to doctors. I was wrongly diagnosed with narcolepsy, although fortuitously one of the medications used to treat it was an antidepressant (or perhaps the whole diagnosis was cooked up as a way to get me to agree to take the medication). The pills eventually resurrected me from the pit of despair, although the real reason I was there was never addressed nor resolved. Instead it started me in a love-hate relationship with antidepressants that lasted well into my 20s. They were a tool that allowed me to function but did nothing to help me sift through and heal the primal wounds in my heart. Did nothing to bring joy into my life.
This desperate search for love was repeated in many shapes and forms as I barreled through life surrounded by fear, despair and darkness. There were different actors, different circumstances, different casualties, but some things remained constant: the unconscious desire to quench my thirst for unconditional parental love from some other source. My complete disregard for the needs of others as I pursued this quest. My complete disregard for my own basic needs, including whether or not I even liked the object of my desire. The fact that they liked me, showed one shred of caring for me, was enough to make me leap, again and again and again.
I tumbled from one disastrous relationship to another, seeking, seeking, seeking that which could not be found – at least not outside of myself. I finally chose someone who was more destructive than me, more damaged than me, and he spent the next two years taking me apart, bone by bone, cell by cell, strand by strand, until I was reduced to a pile of rubble on the ground. I had finally hit bottom.
But scattered in that pile of rubble there were glowing embers of my spirit; beaten but not broken. Though crippled by grief, I somehow gathered myself and fled him, my instinct for self-preservation stronger than the twisted, painful love that bound us together.
I did not know it at the time, but I was taking the first, tiny step on an infinite path. One on which I would encounter unimaginable obstacles, would break down and put myself together again and again. One that would hold deep, painful grief, as well as cleansing, transcendent joy. If I had seen ahead of me then what I see behind me now, perhaps I would have trembled with fear, overwhelmed by the task, and stayed forever in that heap on the floor. Perhaps.
But I did not. I put one hesitant foot in front of the other. I blundered and bumbled. (I still blunder and bumble.) And without really knowing it – urged on by the spark of my true self that had lain dormant for so long, uncovered only when I was completely deconstructed – I started to heal my heart.
It has been a long journey that is far from complete … will probably never be complete – not in this lifetime anyway. My friend and her boyfriend came to mind the other day for one simple, silly reason: I joined Facebook. And was stunned by the torrent of emotions that were released when someone from high school contacted me and wanted to be my “friend” (a word that Facebook has seemingly redefined). You see, that situation with my best friend was just the first in a series of events that unraveled almost all of my friendships by the time I graduated two years later. The simple act of joining Facebook threatened to open a door I had closed long ago, and I was shocked at how painful it was to contemplate that opening.
After all the healing I have done on so many issues that seem so much more traumatic than these, the intensity of my reaction took me by surprise. But I suppose it shouldn’t. Hurts tend to stick around until they are directly addressed. So that is what I am doing today. First and foremost, I want to apologize to my friend (although the likelihood that she is reading this is next to nothing). I am sorry for what I did to her, and my heart winces with pain when I try to stand in her shoes and imagine how it must have felt. And I also want to apologize to all the others I have hurt as I stumbled forward on my helpless quest for external fulfillment. I understand now why I did the things I did, but explaining it does not excuse it. So I am sorry; deeply, deeply sorry.
Most importantly, I am forgiving myself. I never acted out of malice or hatred. I came from a place of pain and fear, and was doing the best I could at that time. I know that at my core I am a person deserving of love and always have been. And so I now extend to my young, hurting self the unconditional love and acceptance she so desperately sought. I hold her in my arms, stroke her hair, and assure her she is worthy. I wash away the guilt and self-loathing that consumed her. I open my heart and welcome her into me, no longer apart from me and ashamed.
I heal her.
I am healed.
