Cavities

I wrote a letter to a friend of mine, I kept feeling like I should so today I just started writing. As I looked over the final outcome of what my fingers typed up, I felt that some of it was important to share with everyone. I had a hard time writing this letter and I think it is because my personal heartache is still so very near the surface despite the feeling that I am generally "over it". I don't think I'll ever be "over it" though because it was the first "cavity" (read rest of post to understand) in my heart. While it hurts now, I know that the cavity is what makes it possible for me to find more joy later.

(Background) I was writing to him about a past heartache he had told me about, he didn't get into detail but I know that while it was a few years ago it was his first and is lingering. I see the effects of it and I want to help him, which is probably why I couldn't shake the idea of the letter.

"You mentioned before how you were hurt in the past. I don't know the details really but I do know the feeling that something like that can leave you with. It's a blow to your self confidence, it makes it difficult to really put yourself out there again, and it just really, really hurts/sucks. There is a talk by Elder Maxwell (But for a Small Moment) and he says, "The cavity which suffering carves into our souls will one day also be the receptacle of joy". Sometimes I feel like there are people who can carve out cavities in our souls and in our hearts, and while "carving" doesn't seem like the most pleasant thing (because it's not) they leave that cavity and that cavity becomes a choice for us. We can choose to board it up as best as we can and keep people out, or we can choose to look for someone who will fill it. Because I believe that those people who started carving had intended to fill it but life doesn't always go the way we plan. We get bumped and bruised and carved even, but in the end, we are to have joy. I hope you find someone to fill your cavity, someone to bring joy where once there was pain."

I kept crying while writing this letter and a part of me thinks maybe I wrote it for myself more than for my friend. I ache for PenPal, but it is an ache for the boy I knew two years ago, a boy who really didn't return from Madagascar. He didn't mean to carve out this cavity, he was just trying to make room in my heart for himself, he had never intended to leave it vacant, but life moved forward and we moved apart. It would be so easy to board it up and never let someone else try to come and fill it but I would be denying myself the opportunity to find joy.

I'm gonna learn to love without fear

Yesterday I had a much needed walk with a good friend and mentor. This woman has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember and she has always given me excellent guidance. There are things she told me in high school that I have continued to apply in my life and feel I am a better person for it, she is the one who taught me that leaving your comfort zone is the best way to grow, and now she is working on showing me that I am awesome (her words).

I knew she would want to talk about several different things on our walk and I knew one of them would be Pen Pal. I guess yesterday's post was really all about prepping myself for this walk. I wanted to have a better idea of what and how I was feeling before I tried to open up to her. You see, I'm not usually one to share my feelings, I hate feeling things and more so, I hate feeling things in front of people.

I love talking with Mentor because she helps me to see things rationally. You see, I like to think that maybe I help my friends to see things rationally, but I know that whether or not that is true, I do a horrible job of getting myself to be rational. She helped me work through my emotions, what exactly I was feeling and why was I feeling that. Of course, Mentor is an optimist and kept trying to get me to hold out hope, but honestly, I don't think there is any to be had. But in the end, I can just work on me, on being the type of person who isn't going to try and physically hurt Pen Pal when I see him again, on being the type of person who is going to look beyond myself when he gets back and focus on helping him feel comfortable in a basically new place.

I don't know, I don't feel like anything has changed but I am feeling better, lighter really. It's like on our walk we found what was really at the heart of the issue, what things were lying far deeper than surface feelings.

When you are waiting on the edge of the unknown

How do I know the difference between being pathetic and making an honest effort to be a friend?

Pen Pal is back in the states. He's back on Facebook too, in fact, that is how I learned he was back (you can imagine the rush of negative emotions running through me when I saw that). It was like a punch in the stomach, like the moment when I read in his letter that he wanted to "just be friends" and all the air in my lungs seemed to escape and my throat closed up. I had to live it over again, sitting in front of my computer and I am wondering if I will have to live it all over one more time when he returns here in August, when I have to see him in person. I hope by that point I will be okay.

I waited some more, since waiting for him is a bit of a habit now, but he never wrote. I kept waiting for something, anything really but nothing came. I was left feeling completely discarded and I wondered why I didn't even merit an acknowledgment that I am still alive, that I once meant something to him. I kept warring with myself. Write him, don't write him, delete him from Facebook, don't delete him. I didn't know (and still don't) what the right thing to do was. So I waited a little more.

I know that Pen Pal and I had our rough patches and I can understand why he would not want to be with me anymore, though I don't understand why he didn't tell me sooner. Why did he keep letting me write him? Why did he ask for packages? Why did he write back? In my attempt to "be okay" it is easy for me to look at these questions and grow increasingly angry with him. It's easy for me to think that he has never meant anything he's ever said to me. Because anger seems to ease the pain. Then I have these moments of clarity where I realize that anger is a band aid and a shoddy one at that. The anger gets me thinking about our past, things that maybe I hadn't forgiven him for even though I said I had. I think the anger pulls these thoughts and feelings to the surface because I feel like he is holding our past against me. He is denying me the benefit of change and so I want to deny him of it as well. I almost feel at times like I am being punished, I don't know how else to describe this tightness in my chest.

I am trying, I am thinking about what actions to take to prove to him and to myself that the past is over and forgotten. I want to prove I can be his friend; I have been prepared for this. So, I wrote him an e-mail, something brief and mostly to just say "hello, remember me? I still exist." I mostly did this because I kept playing the "what-if" game. What if the last letter I wrote made it seem like I didn't want him to contact me? What if I sent the wrong message? What if he is waiting for me to contact him? The only way to not think about what would happen is to do it and remove all doubt. What if he doesn't respond? Well - then you have your answer don't you?

He did respond though. It was also very short, kind of to the point, and painfully nonchalant. He didn't ask any questions, he didn't really leave it open for a response. It was something. I don't know what I expected really, I think a part of me hoped he wouldn't respond and I could just hate him, and then the other part of me hoped he would strike up a conversation and I would know that he meant it when he said I was one of his greatest friends and he wanted to rebuild that.

I think the thing that hurts worse is that he seems so distant from me and harder...like a boy trying too hard to be curt so the girl will get the hint. He is a complete stranger to me now and I don't know if I am keenly aware of the situation and am reading it right or if my perception leaves me feeling like he is deliberately trying to remove me from his life. He got his packages and letters for two years so now he is done with me.

In an effort not to be overly dramatic and wash my hands of this, I wrote him back. I am not going to fight for him, friendship or otherwise (I feel I have a snowball's chance in hell in all areas), but I also won't let it be my fault that we can't be friends.

I have to keep telling myself that what the future holds is better, and it's difficult when I look around me at what possibilities there may be and everything seems dimmed, like a light bulb blew out. It's hard to fight the feeling that no one would want me when I'm staring down the barrel at someone who once claimed to have loved me, once told me that the first thing they would do when they got home was to come find me and marry me. How do you go on and try to do this again? How do you believe the next person who says something like that to you?

As I am being buffeted with these thoughts and fears, I also know deep down that things will be better and maybe the problem right now is that I am trying to rush it, I want things to be better now or better yet, yesterday. When really, just as I can't wish away the past with Pen Pal (because it taught me so much), I shouldn't wish away this experience, because there is much to be learned from these emotions and thoughts. I guess I just wish I could learn from them without feeling them and without being so hard myself. But I have made it this far in life recovering from sundry aches and pains, this isn't the end of happiness or anything, just the end of "us", and something tells me that if I just let myself have some more time and really let myself just experience this pain, I'll come out of this a better person than before.