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Grieving friends
Dec. 11th, 2021 08:50 amAbout 20 years ago, my brother outlaw[1] died and, every so often, I'm reminded of him and have a little cry. There's a well defined understanding of grief and that's part of it, so I have my little cry, decide if I need to indulge it or not, and then get on with my day.
Losing friends has only recently been described as a grieving process to me and it makes sense of a whole lot of feelings that I have about moving away from a very important friendship group. It makes sense of sitting in bed for 2 winters, unable to do anything but watch another episode of Glee or Outlander and it makes sense of these times when I just have to sit and cry about it for a bit. Today I've written about the end of my friendships and the associated grieving because it's a great way to understand it better and to keep integrating the feelings into my actions.
When I was a child, my father was a part of a couple of friendship circles that were very intimate. We ate together regularly and went on holidays together for weeks at a time. The group worked on projects at each other's houses too. And then as I describe it, someone slept with the wrong person and the whole thing blew up. I watched it happen twice and, as an adult was aware that my friendship circle was in the same danger as those friendship circles of my childhood. In fact, my friendship circle lasted longer than some of those groups from my childhood and I'm very grateful for that. I still grieve for the loss of that circle in my life.
It started when she was unwell for 6 months in about 2012. 6 months of regular headaches, queasiness and inabilty to work. I worried about my friend every time I heard about another bout of her being unwell, as well as in between when I wondered what could be wrong with her and if it was something that needed a full medical investigation. I suffer from a bit of medical anxiety and I invested my medical anxiety brain space on her. Unfortunately, my feelings didn't get better when I discovered that she'd been suffering from anxiety due to the secret she'd been keeping. Then I just moved on to a sense of betrayal that the person who I told all my inner most thoughts, and who I thought told me hers, had been keeping this really big thing a secret from me. And that I had expended so much of my emotional energy worrying about it.
One of the joys of this friendship circle was the lack of judgement I felt in that set of friends. There was a freedom available that I never knew I had missed. It was particularly powerful to have this experience as I recovered from my first non-marriage. Most importantly, I felt like my children were a welcome part of my friendships and my parenting style was accepted and supported in a way that I rarely felt in the rest of the world. I thrived in their company and I felt like my kids developed great relationships outside the family unit too.
Then I had a baby. A baby who I looked forward to bringing up within the friendship circle. A baby who could give a parenting experience to these people who for various reasons weren't having babies of their own. I had what I recognise as unrealistic expectations about what it would be like to have a child grow up in this circle. Because it didn't work exactly as I imagined. It might have worked if the girl was as easy and pleasant a companion to my friends as my older children had been [2], but she was different and I was struggling to work out how to change my parenting style to meet her needs. It meant that sometimes her needs weren't met and being around her was unpleasant and difficult for other people.
In about 2014, we were still regularly hanging out and doing a bunch of the things that we always had. I had a feeling of unease in their presence but we could keep things light and still work together on SCA stuff. I still thought I had a friend that had relationship issues that could be resolved. Then I found out that they were regularly hanging out with a group of SCA people who spent time critiquing my parenting of the girl. AND THEY WEREN'T ACTIVELY DEFENDING ME!!!!! (Woah, based on my emotional response to this, this is the thing that made remaining a part of stuff untenable). Not only had my "best friend" broken my trust, but my SCA expectations of acceptance had also been broken. AND, to be candid if awful, at emotionally weak moments it makes me feel like my daughter's disability caused the loss of my friendship circle.
Not long after this, I announced that I would not be participating in our regular camping experience. I was still telling myself that this was a set of relationships that I could talk through the issues and just needed to hang around with for long enough and then things could go back to how they were. I now understand that I blew up that prospect when I forced them to rename our campsite.
The feelings I have about losing these friends are awful but I also know that I chose them. It was very uncomfortable feeling these feelings while trying to rebuild the friendships. I just couldn't do it even though I tried for 3 years.
Yesterday, I found out that my older child has been invited to a party with that old friendship group. It's OK and reasonable that I wasn't invited, with the pandemic and my unease in the SCA, I haven't even maintained a surface friendship with that mob, but today I'm sad.
I'm sad that I've lost that inner circle of friends. I'm sad that I don't trust that group of SCA people, and I'm sad that my child's support needs got in the way of one of the best friendship circles I've ever had in my life. I'm also sad that I can't currently see how I could develop a new set of the friendship relationships that would be as good as what I had.
This is grief. It comes and goes and I will be OK.
[1] The thing you call your inlaws, but when you're not married.
[2] No, they weren't always great, but they were mostly pretty good
Losing friends has only recently been described as a grieving process to me and it makes sense of a whole lot of feelings that I have about moving away from a very important friendship group. It makes sense of sitting in bed for 2 winters, unable to do anything but watch another episode of Glee or Outlander and it makes sense of these times when I just have to sit and cry about it for a bit. Today I've written about the end of my friendships and the associated grieving because it's a great way to understand it better and to keep integrating the feelings into my actions.
When I was a child, my father was a part of a couple of friendship circles that were very intimate. We ate together regularly and went on holidays together for weeks at a time. The group worked on projects at each other's houses too. And then as I describe it, someone slept with the wrong person and the whole thing blew up. I watched it happen twice and, as an adult was aware that my friendship circle was in the same danger as those friendship circles of my childhood. In fact, my friendship circle lasted longer than some of those groups from my childhood and I'm very grateful for that. I still grieve for the loss of that circle in my life.
It started when she was unwell for 6 months in about 2012. 6 months of regular headaches, queasiness and inabilty to work. I worried about my friend every time I heard about another bout of her being unwell, as well as in between when I wondered what could be wrong with her and if it was something that needed a full medical investigation. I suffer from a bit of medical anxiety and I invested my medical anxiety brain space on her. Unfortunately, my feelings didn't get better when I discovered that she'd been suffering from anxiety due to the secret she'd been keeping. Then I just moved on to a sense of betrayal that the person who I told all my inner most thoughts, and who I thought told me hers, had been keeping this really big thing a secret from me. And that I had expended so much of my emotional energy worrying about it.
One of the joys of this friendship circle was the lack of judgement I felt in that set of friends. There was a freedom available that I never knew I had missed. It was particularly powerful to have this experience as I recovered from my first non-marriage. Most importantly, I felt like my children were a welcome part of my friendships and my parenting style was accepted and supported in a way that I rarely felt in the rest of the world. I thrived in their company and I felt like my kids developed great relationships outside the family unit too.
Then I had a baby. A baby who I looked forward to bringing up within the friendship circle. A baby who could give a parenting experience to these people who for various reasons weren't having babies of their own. I had what I recognise as unrealistic expectations about what it would be like to have a child grow up in this circle. Because it didn't work exactly as I imagined. It might have worked if the girl was as easy and pleasant a companion to my friends as my older children had been [2], but she was different and I was struggling to work out how to change my parenting style to meet her needs. It meant that sometimes her needs weren't met and being around her was unpleasant and difficult for other people.
In about 2014, we were still regularly hanging out and doing a bunch of the things that we always had. I had a feeling of unease in their presence but we could keep things light and still work together on SCA stuff. I still thought I had a friend that had relationship issues that could be resolved. Then I found out that they were regularly hanging out with a group of SCA people who spent time critiquing my parenting of the girl. AND THEY WEREN'T ACTIVELY DEFENDING ME!!!!! (Woah, based on my emotional response to this, this is the thing that made remaining a part of stuff untenable). Not only had my "best friend" broken my trust, but my SCA expectations of acceptance had also been broken. AND, to be candid if awful, at emotionally weak moments it makes me feel like my daughter's disability caused the loss of my friendship circle.
Not long after this, I announced that I would not be participating in our regular camping experience. I was still telling myself that this was a set of relationships that I could talk through the issues and just needed to hang around with for long enough and then things could go back to how they were. I now understand that I blew up that prospect when I forced them to rename our campsite.
The feelings I have about losing these friends are awful but I also know that I chose them. It was very uncomfortable feeling these feelings while trying to rebuild the friendships. I just couldn't do it even though I tried for 3 years.
Yesterday, I found out that my older child has been invited to a party with that old friendship group. It's OK and reasonable that I wasn't invited, with the pandemic and my unease in the SCA, I haven't even maintained a surface friendship with that mob, but today I'm sad.
I'm sad that I've lost that inner circle of friends. I'm sad that I don't trust that group of SCA people, and I'm sad that my child's support needs got in the way of one of the best friendship circles I've ever had in my life. I'm also sad that I can't currently see how I could develop a new set of the friendship relationships that would be as good as what I had.
This is grief. It comes and goes and I will be OK.
[1] The thing you call your inlaws, but when you're not married.
[2] No, they weren't always great, but they were mostly pretty good
