I messed up.
In fact I’ve messed up loads and loads of time with loads and loads of different people. I didn’t have a great sense of ‘self’ in my younger years, I knew who I thought I ought to be, but I didn’t really understand and certainly did not accept who I am.
So much of my journey therefore has been about peeling back the layers of expectation and false belief to find Me and on the way I have shed friends, just as I have shed layers.
Mostly, they were discarded because they knew the ‘me’ I was trying to dispel, the one who was so deeply unhappy and the one who, even I, couldn’t quite fathom. So often parts of them represented where I felt I should be and I wasn’t; whether that was career status, relationship security or simply a sense of contentedness in a life that to me felt like an extreme, stomach churning, fairground ride. However, in these moments of leaving, I hadn’t figured any of this out, I just knew I was suffocating in the life I was living and I needed to change things and some of those things included friends who’d been around the block with me. The type of friends who’d pulled me away from drunken shambolic decisions, the friends who answered the phone at 2am, the ones who I really really laughed with. I know that I needed to make the choice that I did, I know I needed separation to seek clarity, because within the friendships was also a lifestyle that was slowly killing me; but I didn’t do it kindly and I didn’t do it fairly.
In the film ‘when a man loves a woman’… Meg Ryan walks her sobering steps away from alcoholism and those cleansing moments of naming her shame, of apologising for her mistakes, rest with me. I have apologised to my past friends, but I feel unforgiven. I dream of them so often, there is something in my psyche that is uneasy and agitated. I cannot force anyone to forgive my past misdemeanours and for my part the recollection of how these break-ups finally occurred is so hazy that it is sometimes hard to offer the complete apology, but I do know that I need to find peace. These dreams need to stop; I need to forgive myself too for hurting those that cared for me.
Therein lies my answer, the mirror never lies, I am unforgiven because I have not forgiven myself. I would like them to release me, but instead the work is with me. To say that as a friend, I am ‘good enough’, not great, not terrible, not always at the end of the phone, sometimes with wise words, with irritation, with love, with joy and with sadness. I am.