Life has been excruciatingly painful the last few weeks. I almost don’t have the words to describe what I’m feeling. It feels like my protective blanky was ripped away from me; the shock of the loss filled me with feelings of abandonment, grief, and numbing depression.

A plan I made with a friend to travel didn’t pan out. It’s not so much the what than the how it happened, which left me absolutely crushed. I learned truths about this friend & mentor of mine whom I love and trust dearly, that flew squarely in the face of what he taught me. My heart shattered as I realized that the progressive and strong views he held about agency, choice, power, and empowerment are the values that are disregarded when it came to him, in his own home – a shocking realization that left him in a tizzy, too.

If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I love rules. I’ve been the “good” child all my life and have prided myself on doing things the “right” way – just like I did for this trip. Then why did things end the way that they did?

There is pain and hurt all around. This experience has created a distance between my friend and I that I know is temporary; as I see him working hard to restore our friendship to what it was before. But the pain, embarrassment and overall sourness remains. Now that things have come to an end and the trip’s been officially canceled, I find myself settling into my old pattern – of tending to myself after all has been resolved. 

Throughout all of this I have been a steady, non-judgemental, wisdom-sharer and listener. Even though some of it has been painful to hear. How does one react when she sees her mentor fall prey to a selfish and baseless accusation-slinging spouse? What does one do when you remember advice that your mentor gave you; things he would have done to solve this problem if it were someone else’s –  had not emotions blinded him? What do you do when you’re disappointed with your mentor/friend’s decisions?

People are always a bag of surprises. We never truly know them, even if we’ve lived with them and known them for a long time. 

Now, with the dust settling, I’ve realized that this dark phase in my life has taught me a lifetime’s worth of lessons.

It taught me about agency, about choice – that I always have it. That I can always make a choice. And even when we have 2 options that aren’t perfect scenarios, the fact that I made a choice on which path to follow means I am exercising agency. Though it’s never easy making a choice that one doesn’t particularly want to make, this moment reaffirmed the importance of standing up for your values, even when between a rock and hard place. 

It was I who made the decision to cancel the trip because at that point, things had gotten too murky. I am proud of standing up for myself, prioritizing my self respect and making a tough decision. 

Needless to say, this situation stirred up many deeply-rooted, childhood feelings for me which came to the surface. This whole situation put me face-to-face with my wounded inner child. I realized her issues with trust and vulnerability stem from intense fear of abandonment and rejection. This is why I had closed off my heart from connection in the first place. 

But that’s not the way to live life. Life has a way of putting us in situations that will surface old hurts, so that we can learn from them and re-parent our inner child. This was that moment for me. Hot tears streaming down my face, I realized cancellation didn’t bother me as much as the connection I’ve recently lost with my friend. And it was that loss of connection that zapped the life out of me. 

Now that I’ve had some time to think about it though, our friendship has not died. It is evolving; into what? Who knows. But we continue to hold on to each other, even if the frequency and content of what we talk about has changed temporarily. The effort he’s putting into rekindling our friendship shows me that he is invested in the connection too; so maybe what I’m calling a “loss” of connection is merely a shedding of the Old, creating space for the New.

That being said, there is still much to repair. The connection has changed, trust has lessened for me, and we aren’t exactly on the same healing timeline. In all honesty, I do find myself getting miffed, now that I’m ready to allow my pain to surface. Just the other day, my friend referred to the canceled trip with hopes that I’d confide in him, perhaps grieve the loss of the opportunity. 

Do we have the right to grieve choices we’ve made? I wondered. 

I felt my body stiffen, my mind shut off to the possibility of sharing that vulnerability with him. My defensive walls pulled up, I reasoned he and I made choices that got us to this point. And we humans respond based on our surroundings, how safe we feel and how strong our connection is with the other person. Things have been different and unpredictable for a while now. If someone feels like being vulnerable or sharing their grief today, maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I’ve been grieving various aspects of this situation, our loss of connection, and my new understanding of people – for a while now. I’m cried out, my spirit tender and hollow – I choose to no longer give this situation my energy. 

All’s to say, we all experience the world and heal from wounds differently, no matter how similar we are. If a connection is meant to sustain itself, it will.

At the end of the day, it’s all a journey back to oneself. Signing off with a poem I recently read, that alludes to that journey: