Yesterday’s Friend
Yesterday I met a friend up the street. I hadn’t seen her nor heard a word from her since October last year when I was in hospital in Melbourne having the first secondary melanoma removed from my leg.
D was as friendly as ever and as enthusiastic as ever about the venture we had started way back the year before last.
D had hired a nice sized building up the street where we were going to set up our co-operative healing and life coaching centre. We invited four others with similar businesses to go in with us to share the rent.
I did all the advertising, publishing, graphic designing of stationery, etc. We all put a lot of time and effort into our space and things were going along really well. The building was a bit run down so we all put in heaps of effort making it look the way we wanted. We painted, decorated, scrounged office equipment and whatever else we needed, all at our own expense.
Then I ended up in hospital for ten days. When I got home there was an email from D. I opened it, happy to be hearing from her at last. It read along the lines of: “...the other girls and I don’t think you’re putting enough effort into your part of the business so we’ve asked someone else to take your place...”
That was it. I was out. I tried to call her on the phone, but she never returned my calls, and didn’t answer my emails.
I felt betrayed. Sad. Alone. I was angry that I’d put so much effort, time and money into something I’d never be able to be a part of. I was angry at D and wondered if she’d had this in mind all along and had only used me to get certain things done. I was devastated that she’d used my misfortune as an opportunity to get rid of me. I thought that was really low. She could have at least waited until I had recovered, or ousted me before it happened. It seemed to me that she’d waited until I was out of town – it didn’t matter what the reason was – to kick me out.
However, I didn’t allow myself to dwell on this for too long. I was getting more involved in YOU University at the time and enjoying my lessons and the work I was doing through that, so I let the incident go. I put it down to D’s fickleness and forgave myself for being such a fool and not seeing that coming. D had a history of doing this to me, and I had a history of allowing it to happen. An old pattern of behavior I’d been trying to stamp out.
Then I ran into her yesterday. And guess what? She asked how I was going with my life coaching course and asked if I’d be interested in renting a space in their building!
I think I was speechless for a full minute or two. I told her that for the moment I was too busy. I told her that I was almost through YOU Uni and was still studying, I had just started my five weeks of radiation, and I was involved in a play for the next month in Beechworth, so I would be far too busy to think about her offer. I thanked her for thinking of me and hurried on my way.
When I thought about it later on, I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry. Had she forgotten how she treated me? Obviously what she did had not bothered her one bit. It bothered me. It bothered me for the rest of the day. Why? After analysing the situation, I decided it was the trust issue that rankled the most. I had trusted her and she betrayed me - again.
These feelings took me back to my childhood. That feeling of building up to something I was promised, only to have my hopes dashed cruelly. It happened over and over, and built within me an inherent mistrust of all people.
It has taken me a long time to get over this instant mistrust. I thought I was over it a couple of years ago. When D came to me and outlined what she intended to do with her business, and asked me to be a part of it, I squashed my feelings of mistrust and became involved. I was really enjoying being involved. Then I had my hopes dashed by her again.
Only, something had changed within me by that time. Although I was devastated and felt sick at the way she’d dumped me, I didn’t take it all deep within myself and let it fester there as I once would have.
I grieved for the loss of my friend and for the loss of the opportunity of the building from which to start my life coaching business. I treated what I’d already given as a donation that I gave freely from my heart. I let go of the material things.
I’d just learned about Love Letters at that stage. I wrote some to D and to myself over it, and I eventually came out the other side of my sadness with a spirit of gratitude for what I’d learned from this incident.
D has always been the same. I knew that. She was like this right back in school. She is not likely to change now. I had hoped that she’d learned as much from life as I had, but clearly she either hasn’t learned her lessons deeply, or she just doesn’t care about how she treats people. Either way, that is her path. This is mine.
I continued with YOU University, and now, I’m enjoying being very close to the end of the formal part of the learning. Not that you ever stop learning from life – but I’m looking forward to new beginnings. D closed a door on me last year, but I opened another one. I walked through that door, and now I’m going in a new direction.
I was determined not to allow that experience to taint my trust of everybody else. I did not internalize those feelings or use them as a means of self-torture. Once, I would have mentally flailed myself for months over something like that.
The big lesson I learned from all that, was that I needed to be more careful of whom I trusted. I needed, and still need, to listen carefully to my inner voice about people and not blindly trust them because I’ve known them all my life. The opposite is also true. I should not blindly mistrust people just because I’ve known them for years either. Sometimes people change. Sometimes they don’t.
It’s a big effort for me, but I have to allow people to earn my trust. I have to take that leap of faith and extend the offer of trust. If it is not taken with the spirit with which it is given, then it will not be through my own past conditioning that things fall apart. But I have to be wise about where I offer that trust. D showed me that.
There is no use in kicking myself up the bum about it now. It all happened a year ago. I will not allow all the hard work I’ve done through YOU Uni to be undone because seeing D brought back all those memories. Like I said, I knew what D was like. We grew up together. I didn’t listen to my inner voice. I wanted to believe she had grown up and was a different person. I wanted to move beyond our childhood relationship and have an adult relationship.
That is the key to the whole situation: I WANTED to believe in my friend, so I closed my eyes to the truth.
Whatever her real reasons for kicking me out of her building were, they matter not. She did me a favor. She freed me so I could go on doing what I truly loved, in the way I enjoyed it, in the time frame that suited me.
Seeing D again also reminded me that Yesterday’s Friends are not Today’s Friends for a reason.
From now on, I will trust in myself first and listen to my inner wisdom.
Yesterday I met a friend up the street. I hadn’t seen her nor heard a word from her since October last year when I was in hospital in Melbourne having the first secondary melanoma removed from my leg.
D was as friendly as ever and as enthusiastic as ever about the venture we had started way back the year before last.
D had hired a nice sized building up the street where we were going to set up our co-operative healing and life coaching centre. We invited four others with similar businesses to go in with us to share the rent.
I did all the advertising, publishing, graphic designing of stationery, etc. We all put a lot of time and effort into our space and things were going along really well. The building was a bit run down so we all put in heaps of effort making it look the way we wanted. We painted, decorated, scrounged office equipment and whatever else we needed, all at our own expense.
Then I ended up in hospital for ten days. When I got home there was an email from D. I opened it, happy to be hearing from her at last. It read along the lines of: “...the other girls and I don’t think you’re putting enough effort into your part of the business so we’ve asked someone else to take your place...”
That was it. I was out. I tried to call her on the phone, but she never returned my calls, and didn’t answer my emails.
I felt betrayed. Sad. Alone. I was angry that I’d put so much effort, time and money into something I’d never be able to be a part of. I was angry at D and wondered if she’d had this in mind all along and had only used me to get certain things done. I was devastated that she’d used my misfortune as an opportunity to get rid of me. I thought that was really low. She could have at least waited until I had recovered, or ousted me before it happened. It seemed to me that she’d waited until I was out of town – it didn’t matter what the reason was – to kick me out.
However, I didn’t allow myself to dwell on this for too long. I was getting more involved in YOU University at the time and enjoying my lessons and the work I was doing through that, so I let the incident go. I put it down to D’s fickleness and forgave myself for being such a fool and not seeing that coming. D had a history of doing this to me, and I had a history of allowing it to happen. An old pattern of behavior I’d been trying to stamp out.
Then I ran into her yesterday. And guess what? She asked how I was going with my life coaching course and asked if I’d be interested in renting a space in their building!
I think I was speechless for a full minute or two. I told her that for the moment I was too busy. I told her that I was almost through YOU Uni and was still studying, I had just started my five weeks of radiation, and I was involved in a play for the next month in Beechworth, so I would be far too busy to think about her offer. I thanked her for thinking of me and hurried on my way.
When I thought about it later on, I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry. Had she forgotten how she treated me? Obviously what she did had not bothered her one bit. It bothered me. It bothered me for the rest of the day. Why? After analysing the situation, I decided it was the trust issue that rankled the most. I had trusted her and she betrayed me - again.
These feelings took me back to my childhood. That feeling of building up to something I was promised, only to have my hopes dashed cruelly. It happened over and over, and built within me an inherent mistrust of all people.
It has taken me a long time to get over this instant mistrust. I thought I was over it a couple of years ago. When D came to me and outlined what she intended to do with her business, and asked me to be a part of it, I squashed my feelings of mistrust and became involved. I was really enjoying being involved. Then I had my hopes dashed by her again.
Only, something had changed within me by that time. Although I was devastated and felt sick at the way she’d dumped me, I didn’t take it all deep within myself and let it fester there as I once would have.
I grieved for the loss of my friend and for the loss of the opportunity of the building from which to start my life coaching business. I treated what I’d already given as a donation that I gave freely from my heart. I let go of the material things.
I’d just learned about Love Letters at that stage. I wrote some to D and to myself over it, and I eventually came out the other side of my sadness with a spirit of gratitude for what I’d learned from this incident.
D has always been the same. I knew that. She was like this right back in school. She is not likely to change now. I had hoped that she’d learned as much from life as I had, but clearly she either hasn’t learned her lessons deeply, or she just doesn’t care about how she treats people. Either way, that is her path. This is mine.
I continued with YOU University, and now, I’m enjoying being very close to the end of the formal part of the learning. Not that you ever stop learning from life – but I’m looking forward to new beginnings. D closed a door on me last year, but I opened another one. I walked through that door, and now I’m going in a new direction.
I was determined not to allow that experience to taint my trust of everybody else. I did not internalize those feelings or use them as a means of self-torture. Once, I would have mentally flailed myself for months over something like that.
The big lesson I learned from all that, was that I needed to be more careful of whom I trusted. I needed, and still need, to listen carefully to my inner voice about people and not blindly trust them because I’ve known them all my life. The opposite is also true. I should not blindly mistrust people just because I’ve known them for years either. Sometimes people change. Sometimes they don’t.
It’s a big effort for me, but I have to allow people to earn my trust. I have to take that leap of faith and extend the offer of trust. If it is not taken with the spirit with which it is given, then it will not be through my own past conditioning that things fall apart. But I have to be wise about where I offer that trust. D showed me that.
There is no use in kicking myself up the bum about it now. It all happened a year ago. I will not allow all the hard work I’ve done through YOU Uni to be undone because seeing D brought back all those memories. Like I said, I knew what D was like. We grew up together. I didn’t listen to my inner voice. I wanted to believe she had grown up and was a different person. I wanted to move beyond our childhood relationship and have an adult relationship.
That is the key to the whole situation: I WANTED to believe in my friend, so I closed my eyes to the truth.
Whatever her real reasons for kicking me out of her building were, they matter not. She did me a favor. She freed me so I could go on doing what I truly loved, in the way I enjoyed it, in the time frame that suited me.
Seeing D again also reminded me that Yesterday’s Friends are not Today’s Friends for a reason.
From now on, I will trust in myself first and listen to my inner wisdom.
