You are going to get hurt. No matter how careful you are, your heart is going to be broken so many times and in so many places that it would be wise not to start keeping score.
You are also going to heal. What batters you will ultimately become your strength and you will grow sturdier and more assured each time the bruised fibers of your heart are able to bind together again and reconstruct themselves into a whole.
Scars will remain, of course, but when your memory runs its fingers over their bumpy surface, you will gain compassion both for yourself and for those who have trespassed against you.
As you get older it may surprise you to learn that the anguish of losing a friend will produce an unmatchable sorrow. The midnight loneliness that accompanies a failed marriage will ease with time, but the shrill silence that follows the final, biting words of a shattered friendship endures. Despite the magnitude of our erstwhile benevolences, human beings–especially former friends and lovers–have the capacity to verbally cripple one another with mind-boggling and unrelenting precision. Sometimes this ruination is unavoidable, of course. And sometimes people simply grow apart. But the termination of any meaningful relationship comes with a great emotional toll and it will be best to sidestep this misfortune if at all possible.
I wish I could tell you how to elude these kinds of skirmishes altogether, but I can only warn you of their inescapable advance and assure you that no matter what happens you will be okay. Trust me on this one, because there are hours to come that will feel unendurable once you are inside of them trying to scratch your way out. You will suffer the searing loss of several friends–cherished companions whom you loved and trusted with your whole heart–and in the aftermath of those wars that you didn’t support, you will never, ever understand why the battle was waged in the first place. Regardless, I urge you to carry on.
I remind you to carry on because that’s all that that’s left for you to do after you’ve been jilted. And you must do something.
You will find solace in believing that the impulse for wholeness and continuity is coded into your very cells. It is imperative to recognize that We Get Better.
Allow yourself to discern the disparity between getting scraped and being slaughtered–the former, though it leaves you bloodied and raw–isn’t a fatal blow. Despite all of their evident glory, even the best of friendships can stumble and leave you saddened and wounded and in pain. It is at those times you need to recognize the difference between a break and a sprain. When you get up off the mat you must see that, despite some initial discomfort, wounds heal. Not all injury is as grave as it first might seem.
The path of friendship is long and winding and sometimes you will be hurt by those you love. Learning to forgive your friend is just one of many stops on your journey together.
Despite the potential hazards, always love big. Pursue friendships with unabashed hope and spirit, and give yourself to them until it hurts. Offer yourself with the presumption of endurance, knowing that you have a lifetime to get things right.
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
~Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, 1849
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Letter To My Younger Self: Patti Pangborn
A Letter to My Younger Self: Adrienne Wallace
A Letter To My Younger Self: Annie Spence
