I might not write this post if my blog were still public, but writing is how I untangle and figure out what I'm feeling so please bear with me. I have friend who does the same work as me. We used to be so close, never measuring words. We could be emotionally naked with each other and felt safe in that baring. This woman is extraordinarily talented and she's is at the top of the field. She has written collaborations with big names, people you definitely know, books you have probably read, and it was she who actually opened the door to this work for me. She gave my name to an agent for a project that came to her that didn't feel like it was in her wheelhouse, but she knew it would be in mine. She knew I enjoyed engaging with social justice themes, stories of people surviving against the odds, finding purpose in their challenges, that sort of thing. We met when we worked together at a magazine back in the day. I was forty with school kids, she was single and dating in her twenties. Somehow, the difference in our ages and life stages did not matter. She was always a star, and she didn't stay long at the magazine. She left to help found a major lifestyle publication, working with an American icon, which had been her dream since she was a teen. It was she who later introduced me to her agent when I landed my first mainstream book collaboration, and needed representation.
Sadly, our friendship has become strained. Our agent happened to put us both up for a particular book, along with six other writers, and I was the one chosen. It wasn't even a book that my friend was interested in—until she found out she'd been on the list of potential writers and didn't get the nod. She learned this from a careless email chain our agent sent, in which she neglected to delete earlier threads, and also because I blabbed happily about getting the book—which I definitely did want. Until then, we'd had no secrets. But now, my friend was reeling. Her reaction crushed me. Had she got the book, I would have been so happy for her, and I couldn't square that it seemed she could only be happy for me in return if she hadn't been in the mix, too. I know her profile is way bigger than mine, that she is way bolder than I am in the world at large, but we both work hard at what we do, and this book was definitely more in my social justice niche than her celebrity memoir lane, so I couldn't understand why she seemed to respond as if I had taken the book away from her. As if the news that I got the project was a punch in her gut. A betrayal somehow.
We talked it through, ad nauseam, the way we do. Or did. She insisted her disappointment was not about me, that she was angry that our agent had put us up for the same book, as she had specifically asked her never to do that. What the fuck? I did not know that. Anyway, to cut a long story short, our friendship is no longer effortless. There are whole territories of conversation I now have to avoid. She doesn't want to know what books I might be up for, how my work is going, what weeds I might be trying to hack my way through in the narrative. Being able to support each other through these sorts of passages was the lifeblood of our friendship before. The thing is she still reaches out to talk through her work challenges with me, and doesn't seem to notice that I no longer do the same with her. There were just too many times when she would draw a boundary, say, please don't talk to me about that because it's triggering for me. So now, I just listen when she calls needing to talk through some part of her process, or to dissect a problem she's having and brainstorm solutions, but I don't reach out to her in that way anymore, and the result is we talk less and less, and I wonder if what we have can even be called a friendship anymore.
She is an emotional sort. She feels things deeply, and that serves her in her work. Who am I to tell her that she shouldn't feel what she feels, shouldn't be triggered by what makes her feel insecure, or puts her on unsteady ground. But she is no longer a safe person for me, and I mourn the loss of how we used to be. A part of me just wants to pull away entirely, but I know she's had other close friends pull away from her recently, which tells me she's in a vulnerable place. She's told me the stories, and she's the wronged or misunderstood party in each instance, and I know that for her, this is the whole truth. But in our case, I don't think she fully grasps how much she damaged us when she had such an ongoing negative reaction to something that's now two years in the past, and I can't quite swallow all the things I have been making that mean. Maybe that's the failing on my part.
So we limp along. When I'm feeling less able to deal, and I see her caller ID on my phone, I try to remember an exercise a therapist I used to see once offered me: When you're having difficulty with someone, she said, try to imagine how you would want to be treated if it were your last day on earth, and extend that same grace to the other person. It doesn't mean you become their doormat, she clarified. But it does mean you reach for something deeper inside yourself, and try to be kind.
