This is me caught in the head scissors of a good friend from just outside Washington, DC.
I just had a birthday, one of those -9 birthdays. The day was quiet and more-or-less comfortable--no fireworks and no meltdowns. So, it was just fine.
I was thinking about friends during the day. A couple of them contacted me electronically to wish me well. But both of them are from out of town, and only on rare occasions are they physically with me. Those friends actually present in my life are colleagues at work and siblings at church. While a couple of these friendships are rich, none are that soul-deep friendship that I long for.
I wonder sometimes if it isn't this wrestling obsession that prevents local friendships from developing into the true friendships that are so sought after. I imagine a friendship in which I can tell my friend everything about me, but I can't do that--not yet, at least--with any of the people who are with me or somehow in contact with me on a daily or weekly basis. And so I walk around with this secret hidden, desiring to share it with somebody but unable to do so. I hold back a part of me, and I wonder if they sense it. Perhaps one or two of them would be close friends but feel some mystery in me that they can't quite ignore or accept.
A few of my online friends, wrestlers like me who feel, I think, a similar longing for friendship, are truly good friends. But our physical absence one from another is the stumbling block we face. We share our secret interest, our secret desire, but we're unable to shake hands or hug or to break bread or go to a movie together. And so these friendships necessarily fall short of what I want--and probably short of what they want as well.
I've said this before: maybe the kind of friendship I long for isn't possible in an adult life filled with family and work and bills to pay. I don't want to believe that. I don't believe that. But at this point, I have no proof to suggest otherwise, only theories and intuitions.
And so I wrestle with growing older, with the absence of friendship (or with the presence of friendship that isn't all that I believe it can be), with my interest in wrestling and all the baggage that entails. And I hold onto the hope that someday some barrier will be removed--be that barrier an internal wall that prevents a friend from knowing me fully or an external geography that separates--and suddenly friendship, rich and rewarding, will be mine and my friend's.
1 comment:
I think we need to have friends who know the deepest parts of us, and I'm not sure that friendship can always be limited to those who are in physical proximity to us. Life's circumstances have set me physically apart from many of my dearest and most intimate friends, but still we can come together and be renewed in our intimacy at a moment's notice, as if time and distance have not existed at all. It hurts to be separated again, time after time, but eventually the pain settles into the dull ache of longing and finally into that vague feeling of something missing.
We MUST believe that we can find the friend we are looking for nearby, that we can find, either among our current acquaintances or in someone in our community not yet met, a person with whom we can develop the relationship we seek. If we give up on that hope, life will surely become duller and grayer than it was ever intended to be. Keep looking, my friend. What we're seeking is someone we can TRUST, and that is indeed a rare find these days...
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