Turns Out, You Can Choose Your Friends.

My dear friend Katz who wrote this week’s blog started out as my assistant. I think that’s why she still lets me call her Katz, even though she makes everyone else call her Emily. She’ll always be tough-on-the-outside-tender-on-the-inside, hardest-worker-in-the-room, does-the-right-thing-because-it’s-the-right-thing, hero-of-an-assistant, best-writer-of-cards, and most-faithful-of-friends-Katz to me. I’m so proud to introduce you to her.

This is a sensitive topic, one that I’m still deeply involved in, though I make conscious choices on a daily basis to move forward.

She and I were friends for many years; both loved attention, both social butterflies, both competitive with each other, and both deeply insecure, even though people would define us as confident. We knew how to make each other laugh- so hard we would make a gagging noise because we couldn’t breathe, and we knew how to make each other cry- the exact words to say that cut so deep.

Then there was this moment in our friendship, the details don’t really matter now, but I said “please don’t” and she did. She asked “why not?” and I responded with a combination of not telling the Whole Truth because I was afraid but also because I didn’t know the Whole Truth at the time. And she went forth and I blamed her.

The way I saw it, I had no responsibility in the matter because “she didn’t listen to me and she doesn’t care about me.”

And then came That Email, the one that named my every flaw and made me bawl my eyes out when I read it. The one that blamed me for everything.

In that moment, I envisioned three options. I could:

(A) blame her back and keep the dialogue of You Suck going.

(B) “put it all behind us” and pretend that I wasn’t hurt and continue lying to myself.

(C) take responsibility for my own actions and think about what I really needed for myself; I could face my fears that maybe she and I weren’t meant to be Forever Friends.

Looking back, I had no idea it was my self leadership moxy coming to the forefront, but for some reason, when I responded, I chose Option C.

It did not come naturally. At all. It was the hardest and longest growing process I’ve experienced to date; it took every ounce of energy to choose Option C.

The combination of choosing C and realizing that she and I were ending led to a long year of grief. It might’ve been the lies lied or the half-truths told, or it could have just been the traumatic loss I was facing; the reality is that I’ve never grieved as much as I did about this one loss. There were so many times in the year that I thought of her and wanted to call; there were times when she contacted me and I had to make conscious choices to respond in a new way, working hard to not indulge my (sometimes immature) impulses.

Over the year, I talked and wrote and talked and wrote to three friends who consistently listened. Their response was never “get over it” or “I’m sick of hearing about this.” Instead they responded with empathy when I said, “I’m so lost, I don’t even know how to care for myself right now.” And they loved and cared for me along the way.

And that’s when it hit me- like a ton of bricks, as the phrase goes. The three people I had surrounded myself with were, indeed, loving me in the exact way she and I never loved each other. These three people made me feel heard and valued, they invested in me and appreciated me for my whole person.

Suddenly, all of the ways I didn’t love her showed up in my mind, clear as day: I saw it so clearly now!

I was not a good friend to her!

Either!

I wallowed in my self pity for a few weeks; I beat myself up and I cried some more. And then I took some deep breaths, blew on a pin wheel (it works great for 6 year old kids with ADHD and PTSD, why not me?) and counted to ten. And I had to make yet another choice: settle for continuing my ways as a bad friend or own it, let it go, move on and do better.

The tipping point was my realization that I needed more from my friendships. And in this grieving time, I discovered what I do and don’t want to put into friendships, and equally important, what I want to get out of my friendships.

The reality of this particular situation is this: though the impetus for my “please don’t” started our many conversations, the allostatic load of who we were becoming and who we didn’t give each other freedom to be, was what actually broke our bridge.

With a lot of therapy and discussions about forgiveness, I began to finally determine what I wanted and needed in a friendship- not out of convenience or for the sake of history, but because I get to choose for myself the path I will take. Because I don’t have to live in fear of being consistently hurt or wondering if I can trust her. Instead, I get to choose freedom and courage and authenticity. I chose, and choose each day, to lead myself out of obligation and history and into true relational intimacy.

Lead Your Life.

Emily Katz is the best employee Michele has ever supervised. Her favorite color is chartreuse, and she recently ran her first marathon. She loves the foster and probation youth she works with; they’re teaching her everything she needs to know about resilience, connectedness and how to make it in this world. You can read her random thoughts at emilykatz.blogspot.com . Emily wrote this bio herself.