The Kindest Cut

I have wanted to write about friendship for a while now.   I have started and stopped, struggled with the words.   It is hard to put on the page how genuine friendships have transformed my life; everything I wrote sounded like a cheesy Hallmark Card or a Miss America acceptance speech.

So I guess I'll start with the truth:   I have always had a lot of friends, but for most of my life I didn't know a thing about friendship.

Ironically, it was the comfort of strangers that taught me what it means to be a true friend.

Like with so many things, I'm learning, you get back from friendship exactly what you give.    Before getting sober I didn't put much thought into what it meant to be a friend.  As I slowly unraveled inside, I tried harder and harder to put up a 'normal' front, to show my friends the version of me I thought they wanted to see.    Without realizing it, the versions of myself I showed the world became my reality - I lost all sense of self, or perhaps more accurately, I gave it away.

I kept waiting for my friends to realize how deeply flawed I was, and I believed with all my heart that once they knew I was inherently broken, they would all go away.    My definition of friendship evolved, over time, into a mad scramble to pull together a persona that gave people what I thought they wanted.  

If you played tennis, I professed a love for tennis.   If you were artsy, I talked about creativity, feigned an appreciation for whatever form of art you loved.    It didn't matter to me if there was a genuine synergy between us.  I gave you what you wanted, validated you, tried to be your missing piece.

So when I went sailing off the cliff, babbling all the way that I was Fine, it is no wonder that people didn't see it coming.   The only way I knew how to be a friend was to meet your needs.   Mine never came into play.  I didn't even know what they were, so how could anyone else?

I fell, and fell hard.  As I lay at the base of the proverbial cliff in a broken heap, I left my friends on what they thought was our solid ground, peering over the edge and scratching their heads in bewilderment.  I turned away.    Well, now they know, I thought.   Now they know I was never worth the effort. 

Congratulations, El.   You sabotaged yourself, and it worked.

I dragged my broken body into a recovery meeting, thinking, so this is what the end of the road looks like.    This is all I have left.   I didn't have anything to prove to the people there, didn't care anymore anyway.  There was no need to morph, to validate.   For the first time in a long time, all I could do was exist, be.

So when strangers' hands reached out to me, literally and figuratively, I had nothing to lose.   I grabbed on like a drowning woman reaching for a life raft.   I had nothing to give.  I had nothing to offer.   And they helped me anyway.   Complete strangers came into my life, with no expectations and no pretense, and allowed me to piece myself together bit by bit.   

When I re-emerged, sober, into my former life, I feared people wouldn't like me anymore, that I would be shunned, judged, pushed out from the herd as weak and flawed.    

I was wrong.

My friends were still there, only now I had allowed them to see my fault lines, my humanity.    The ones that stayed knew they were seeing the real me, possibly for the first time.    They showed me their own fault lines in return, like veterans comparing old war wounds.   The scars had always been there, but until I allowed myself to be real I couldn't see them.  

To be a good friend, now, means I start with me.   I try to stay true to myself, live authentically.   I can't afford be around people who make me feel compelled to be something I'm not in order to feel accepted.   It's easier to be inauthentic.   It's simpler to show the world what they want to see.  It's harder to trust people, at least it is for me, with my truth.   I learned that it takes real courage to be vulnerable.    I learned that it's worth it.

I get what I give.  Without my "I don't matter anyway" defense, I've been hurt in sobriety, but at least it is genuine.   It's real.   I have hurt people, too, because I can't afford to gloss over the tough stuff.   Now, though, I'm surrounded by people who walk with me through my mistakes, and celebrate my victories with me.    

But mostly?    We are together, just being.