The Nature of Friendship

I finished Between Friends today. It was...okay. Some of the essays were deeply personal, while others felt like the author was trying so very hard to convince us that she's unconventional, dammit!, that I just couldn't get through to the underlying message.

However, the last essay in the book stopped me dead in my tracks. It's called "Ringing the Net" by Susan Kenney. In it, she tells of the friends who surrounded her as her husband fought and eventually died of cancer. I sat on the plaza in front of the office building I'm working in and cried. Would that we were all blessed enough to have friends such as the ones she describes!

Of course, I think I am so blessed. I would walk across hot coals for a certain handful of people, and I'm sure they would do the same for me. I'm a big believer in quality of friendships, not quantity.

Which is what made it all the more hurtful and puzzling for me when one of the people who I honestly believed was becoming one of those friends simply up and pulled away. Almost literally overnight, she stopped talking to me, stopped returning my phone calls, stopped answering my emails. I've searched and searched for the way in which I might have offended her, but I honestly don't know what I could have done to make her take her love and friendship and go away. At first, I wished fervently that she would break the silence and tell me what I had done to offend her so that I could make amends. Then I was angry and wanted her to hurt as much as I did. Luckily for my karma, I was too busy to do anything but steam in private. And now I'm just sad. Sad for what was, sad for what might have been, sad for what never will be.