A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how I took a scalpel to an old emotional wound, opening it up in hopes of bringing healing.
I took the risk and asked my friend Doug to help bring clarity to a decades' old misunderstanding between the two of us. When his first reply didn't satisfy my curiosity, I pried further. Then waited. The more time passed with no reply, the more my imagination went to dark places, chiding me for being so foolish to have bared my soul.
My note had left off with:
"I don't know if I've ever confessed to you that I was often rather intentionally contrary with you. In a world where people are constantly battling over their differences, it's weird to say that it was our lack of differences that frightened me. I thought that if I were to admit that I liked too many things that you also liked that I would appear like one of those ditsy, game-playing girls who I had so little respect for... and so, when you said you liked something that I adored, I'd often down-play my admiration... and likewise I was perhaps a bit overboard about those things we disagreed on (food, for example).
"In that way, I guess you could say that good came out of the crumbling apart of our friendship, because I did learn that when you care about someone transparency is important--I should have trusted that the over-all complexity of who we are would be enough to prevent any apparent 'overly-compliant' aspects from being interpreted as fake.
"How stupid of me to BE a fake so as to avoid looking like a fake! Talk about feeding confusion. But have I really learned that lesson if I still find it hard to admit the biggest thing that I never dared to be transparent with you about--the thing that I was so certain would make you not want to be my friend any more? Hmm... I can't claim that I was immature then (as if it's any different from now) if I'm still unwilling to admit 20+ year old feelings for fear of ruining a friendship.
"Yep, I'm still an immature, insecure, fraidy-cat. But all that is self-centered. I don't want to be self-centered. I want to be transparent. I say that all the time, and then I draw my curtains... hesitating because I over-think everything. Could transparency itself be selfish??? What if there are truths I long to speak that others don't want to hear? What if speaking such things destroys the environments others have build for themselves and like?
"I'm sorry to bring you into my madness, [Doug]. These are things I probably just have to figure out for myself--things I shouldn't be burdening anyone else with. Rather than explanation or clarification, all I should really be asking for is prayer--prayer that God would strengthen me according to His word. He is able. I really do believe He is able. I just need Him to help my unbelief. And to know that when my heart melts with heaviness it is safe only as it flows into His hands.
"Thank you for tolerating me after all these years. Someday I'd like to tell you more of the things wiped out by the stroke of a back-space key, things regarding one of my dearest friendships that I keep veiled by a curtain of fear. I know that perfect love casts out fear--why must I be so far from perfection?"
Days went by, then weeks . . . and no reply. I started to take it as confirmation that the friendship was a lot more lop-sided than I'd been willing to admit. I even started imagining that I had been little more than a pawn in a plot of folly and mixed messages, the punchline of a cruel joke. That's why life could go on for Doug, smoothy, comfortably, while I was desperately itching at my scabs.
Today, I got a message from Doug. He said he sent the note because we needed to "keep the dialogue alive." Then, he went on to tell me that about 10 days ago, he went to the doctor because of a mole that had obviously changed. The doctor agreed with his concern and excised it. And today, the pathology report came back as a full-blown melanoma. "The good news," he said, was that "the depth of it was less than one cm--about a third of that." He explained that if it had been deeper, "it would have been serious, with more excision and pulling lymph nodes under the arm and all that."
His good news didn't sound good to me. One-third of a centimeter sounded way too deep, so I looked it up online and learned that anything deeper than a millimeter is of great concern because that is when it's deep enough to reach blood vessels and be spread to other parts of the body. It took a while for me to even be able to write a single line in reply. I was reeling. I couldn't stand the thought of the worst case scenario (which I have already seen play out in the lives of several people close to me.) Most of the people I have known with melanoma haven't survived. And now I was faced with the possibility of loosing someone to whom I couldn't even admit my true feelings for fear of them being taken as "inappropriate."
Finally I managed to ask him to please tell me that he meant to say "mm" instead of "cm." I sent the message, but then I had to get away to a quiet place. Todd had just returned from the store, and the boys kept demanding my attention, so I snuck out to the van in the driveway and hid in the back seat where I returned a call to a dear friend. It was helpful talking it out with her, but I was away from the computer, so I didn't check for Doug's reply until about an hour later. Oh, the relief to see that he had indeed made a typo. He meant "mm" not "cm". That still doesn't guarantee that he's in the clear, but the prognosis is A LOT better.
Needless to say, my chest has done some of those crazy contortions today. Like her mother said in reply to Loretta's declaration that she loved Ronny Cammareri something awful, "Oh God, that's too bad!" and "When you love them, they drive you crazy." (Moonstruck, 1987)
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation." (C.S. Lewis - Four Loves)
