A diary entry: female friendship
a bad day turned into an introspection on friendship
I’m in my favorite pj set (okay my only pj set) covered by my favorite blanket. I just ate the leftover chocolate cake I baked for friends last night and my husband and I watched a comfort movie (walle), I had a little cry to my husband about the state of my brain today. I thought it might be just something to talk through, but writing has been such a good way for me to process things lately and I wanted to share it here. I hope someone feels seen by this.
Oh, the complexities of the female friendship.
It’s a big part of a girl’s life, her friends, and the health of those relationships is vital. This is a somewhat diary entry on how I feel in this current moment of friendship and a bit of the road I have been down before. The lovely MILF described it best as the girl who was my best friend to the girl who is my best friend now and every girl in between. Read her post about making mom friends here, I loved it and felt so understood.
It began with a dream. I had a terribly realistic dream. You know the kind where you wake up crying because it feels like real life, you feel so raw after dreams like those. I had to start my day right away too. We overslept so I hurried to the shower eyes half open in a tizzy since my daughter was already awake waiting for me patiently in her crib. I don’t get slow mornings anymore. I could wake up earlier to have that time but I value sleep too much and a tired me is a grumpy mom so those extra minutes count to me. It goes without saying, it was not the time to process the feelings the dream brought up for me, so I went about my morning.
Then one thing led to another and I was bawling on my drive to work after I dropped my daughter off. In the dream, a friend that was the girl that was my best friend was in it and I don’t remember all of the details. She said “I’m done” when I asked if she wanted to be in my life because I was getting the vibe she didn’t. I asked why and she said she couldn’t tell me why and then I woke up distraught. Dreams are a bit mystical in nature but what we do know about them is that “they provide a platform for processing and integrating information, memories, and emotions that we may not be fully aware of in our waking life.” (according to google lol) Which is to say sometimes how we process things or feel things come through in our dreams like it’s real.
I have a deep insecurity, I think it’s not a new idea or thought I think a lot of humans feel it. The often irrational, but sometimes very rational fear of being abandoned. I feel it often in my relationships because I have experienced various losses of friendship in my life, which feeds that insecurity and inner narrative that I am not worth sticking around for. Either something dramatic happened to split a friendship apart or someone lost interest in me and moved on. I have had a slow kind of drifting relationship, like ships passing in the night kind of loss. I have been through a lot of girl drama, most of it not caused by me (some of it I will say I began but we aren’t getting into that right now.) I have had the whole gambit really when it comes to female friendships.
We put a different weight on our relationships as females, generalizing here but I think there is codependency that males don’t tend to put on their friends to give them. I don’t think it is always unhealthy, but I think the lines can get blurry and before you know it it’s hard to tell if you are stifling your bud or to tell them they are stifling you, for example. The level of depth and vulnerability is often so much, so fast or so deep for so long, that sometimes those friends know more than your partner might about you. It just hits different when your gal friend of two years ghosts you, out of nowhere without explanation and then resurfaces a year later like nothing happened. It hits different when a friendship breakup feels like a real break-up, mourning period and all. According to my husband’s experience anyway, this is not how he and his friends operate. They “say what they mean” and “mean what they say” and “don’t take it personally” when a friend moves on. Wow, must be nice.
All of this to say, I have been a bit spiral-brained today. My body felt all of this anxiety of abandonment and past hurts pushed way down. I had like a psycho-somatic response to everything, feeling sick to my stomach all day feeling all the losses of my whole life it felt in the moments I thought about losing my friends or the dread over the inevitable loss of friends in my life now. It sucks. Thankfully I have a new therapist to talk to about all of this as well. I will be working through moving past those bags I carry around and the narratives I agree with about my value as a friend that are untrue.
Also proof of truth is sometimes all you need, to get un-isolated. I have a few really close mom friends in the area that I get to see every now and then, and my best friend and I send voice texts every week since she lives across the country from me. I have a couple of specific mom friends in my niche right now, with very similar personalities to me. They love to craft and eat desserts and talk about everything under the sun. I had a gal night with a couple of them for their birthdays and I fully sent it on telling them I love them and want to celebrate them. Even though my subconscious mind tells me to calm the hell down and retreat before they can hurt me. I pushed past it, and I am proud of myself.
Shout out to Kristen Garaffo who totally understands what it feels like to push past friendship fears and embrace a small gathering wholeheartedly. Her post on hosting a girly brunch helped me so much to embrace my friends and treat them special, even if I was feeling down about myself.
Thank you for reading, I hope this finds you in a place full of loving friends that validate you but if it doesn’t just know there are other people that feel like you do sometimes too. Maybe we can be friends?