Ask Again Later

I was in the back of a cab the other day running some errands, on the way to the brassiere store, as my grandmother might say, to buy some (can you guess?) new brassieres, when I saw a friend of mine crossing in front of my cab. As you do, I got all excited seeing her, and started to roll down my window to yell out hello across 5th Avenue when all of a sudden I remembered something pretty important:

We're not friends anymore.

Or at least I guess we're not. No one ever told me this. There was no big blowout, no declaration of non-friendship, but she stopped returning my calls and emails a couple of years ago, including a last ditch effort I made a few months ago essentially saying, "If I did something wrong, which is highly possible, let me know and whatever it is, I'm sorry for it."

She's a wonderful person and it's sad to not have her in my life anymore. But I was happy to see her looking well and happy. Smiling and laughing, she seemed to be the same kind, fun-loving person I always remembered -- and not the person I pictured in my mind deleting my texts, emails and voicemails automatically, and yes, a little devilishly.

So, instead of saying anything, my cabbie and I drove on to the land of overpriced brassieres (also known as the Upper East Side) and I pushed it out of my mind.

The next day, exchanging emails with a mutual friend on other topics, I admitted that I had seen her. She let me know she is having the same experience -- for reasons unbeknownst to her, just as they are unbeknownst to me, this friend isn't responding to her either and has seemingly dropped her as a friend too.

Now, I'll admit, this made me feel much, much better. I know that I make mistakes essentially every five minutes and I am sure that it's possible that I did something wrong in this situation, but I really couldn't think of what it could be, and sadly, she wasn't giving me the opportunity to find out and try to right this wrong. Which is wrong.

All of a sudden, I wasn't sad anymore. I was worked up, not so much on my own behalf, but on behalf of my friend. How could she treat her like that? Unacceptable. And it got me thinking again about why things like this happen. What is happening in her life that she has decided to cut people out of it? What's going on in her head?

I know plenty of people who, in times of stress or upset, shut down and stop responding to emails, calls, and texts. On the other side of that it's hard to know what's up -- radio silence is telling but can be misinterpreted.

My, I guess, now "ex-friend" maybe really doesn't know why she cut at least a couple of us out of her life. Heck, if asked, she may not even think she's doing it. Or she may well know exactly what she's doing and have plenty of reasons. I might just never know.

So how do we bridge the gap? How do you know when it's really over? And if you care for someone, how do you know when to stop trying?

I sometimes think it would be very handy to have the ability to read people's minds. You'd know what everyone is thinking, and you wouldn't have to go through as much BS to get to the truth. It would be right there for everyone to see. Is this person happy/sad, etc.? Does that person hate me, or find me fascinating? Does my hair color really look natural? We'd all be each other's Magic 8-Balls, but the answers would be the truth instead of a generic response.

Then again, it could be like that episode of Gilligan's Island where Gilligan discovers those seeds that, if you eat them, you can know what the other person is thinking, and it turns into a big disaster with everyone mad at each other.

I'm not so sure I want to know what people are thinking about me all of the time. Would it be more or less depressing to realize that it's not always about me?

And I'm equally unsure that I want others to know what I'm thinking either. Maybe I'd be a nicer person thinking nicer thoughts if I knew people could read that I think they have no business wearing gold lame jeggings, but probably not. I just don't have that kind of self-control and as a general way of being, I am a control freak, so I don't need anyone all up in my business.

Now each week at acupuncture we sit and go through how I'm feeling -- a laundry list of ailments thankfully improving each time, and a discussion of how I'm sleeping and feeling emotionally.  I had been so focused on what I was trying to fix through our sessions -- i.e. my physical symptoms -- that I had blinders on as to how my emotional health could even come into play so I just gave the appropriate knee-jerk emotional responses -- I'm fine, doing great. When actually, I know intellectually that our mental state plays a huge part in how we deal with any positive or negative situation in life.

More often than not, I think it's just as much about what we're not admitting to ourselves as what we're not telling each other. How did I feel? Pretty good, I think.  Emotionally, great, well, except for the three times I burst into tears uncontrollably. Had I been sleeping well? Yes. Oh wait, you mean all the nights of the week, not just last night, and you mean, sleeping through the whole entire night, oh well, then, no, no, I haven't been sleeping well. At all.

Fortunately or unfortunately, in polite society, we don't often ask those kinds of point blank questions, of others -- or of ourselves. We keep our respectable distance. We wouldn't want to pry. I was talking to two friends this week who hadn't seen me since my concussion and they were both kinda stunned. They really had no idea what had been going on and asked me point blank why I hadn't told them, well, point blank about how I was feeling and what support I needed. I didn't really have a good answer and it made me kinda sad. Why would I create a situation for myself that didn't have to be that way?

Unfortunately, at least in my case, I often think that others have raided Gilligan's stash of mind reading seeds and know what I think and what I need, and not only is that unfair, but it's impossible, since half the time, I don't even know what I want or need nevermind expecting others to.

It's the gap between what we say and what we don't say. And when you add that up with the gap between what we say and what people actually hear, and the gap between what we think we know and what the truth is, it's a wonder that we can communicate at all.

So, what about the my relationship with my friend?

Outlook not so good.

But am I sorry that I've spent time reaching out and trying to make it work?

My reply is no.

I know we were friends for a reason - even if that reason is to teach me something as simple as the hard lesson that you can only know me to the extent that I allow you to know me, and vice versa.

It is decidedly so.

But we can help each other along by staying open and challenging each other.

So concentrate and ask again.

All signs point to yes.