| "The more I know, the less I understand/and the things I thought I'd figured out, I'm learning them again" -- Don Henley, via India.Arie, "The Heart Of The Matter" Last month marked the 2nd Year Anniversary of my grandmother's final transition in life. Just one-and-a-half months shy of her 73rd birthday, Ms. Lydia L. Qualls stepped our from her apartment shower, took a seat on her bedroom floor and simply decided that she'd had enough of this world, opting instead to accept the wings she'd worked her whole life to receive. That my heart was broken by her journey is an understatement. Tears could not drain from my eyes fast enough to match the grief I felt, and simultaneously I never thought my body could produce such massive amounts of water without needing to replenish itself. While others in my family mourned the loss of a mother/grandmother/aunt/sister/cousin/etc. I mourned in the way I suspect Stony mourned for all her sisters lost through the violence of their transgressions in Set It Off -- on Monday, September 13, 2004, I'd lost my absolute, and only, best friend. I spent most of my adolescent years under the direct and daily influence of my grandmother and my grandmother alone. As a result, she ended up being the one positive constant in my life at the times I needed to understand positivity most -- even beyond my own mother. My grandmother was the only person who knew and enjoyed every single part of who I was, and because of that, she was the only person on Earth that I never once lied to -- never once held back any morsel of my personality from. She wasn't someone I had to work to please; she never made me feel like I had to earn anything from her, because her love and affection was automatically "built-in" to our relationship. When she died, I realized that I had absolutely no one else like that in my life to take her place. In essence, I had no real friends and no clue how to get any. Surely I'm exaggerating, you might argue; how a 24-year-old (at the time) extrovert could have only one best friend in the ENTIRE WORLD and no social skills to save her soul is probably what you're asking yourself, especially if you''ve had any chance to 'be around me for longer than five minutes. Well, I tell you now that it was an easier task to accomplish than one might think: spend all your after-school time at home or in places that couldn't care less about your friendship, surrounding yourself with lots of at-a-distance acquaintances, being just enough of whatever they are comfortable with you being that they never question your integrity, and as much of who you really are in the space that remains to keep you from at least maintaining a modicum of sanity. Yeah, that sounds crazy -- but it's an act I've become a master at without even consciously working at it. It wasn't that I'd ever wanted to be anti-social; as I said earlier, I'm a natural extrovert. My experiences with people in life have made me very insecure though; living divided like that was simply the best way I'd learned to survive all the ways I was different (i.e., unacceptable), from my peers. It's not an ideal life I would have chosen; however, it's the price I've always felt I had to pay to be safe, to be worry-free when it came to social condemnation. What's funny though is that while I've been doing all this, I never once thought that acting this way wasn't normal; in fact, my see-through cocoon had grown quite large over the years, becoming more recognizable, insulated, and unapologetic with each new relationship I'd encountered. But then, my grandmother died -- and panic set in; my soul's truest needs emerged, and the two-sided life started becoming harder and harder to bear. If you're the type of person that does so, be very careful what you pray for, because God really just might answer you, and then you have no choice but to accept what He chooses to bless you with. The end of this past weekend showed me just that, as I found myself kneeling on the side of the interstate, crying new rivers of sadness while two women prayed over me. I did about 30 minutes of what I've always thought was the unthinkable out there on that roadside -- crying publicly outside of church for one, and admitting to these two individuals that I, of all people on this earth, had no idea how to be what they'd want me most to be. It's more than a little jarring: they seriously want to be my friend. More importantly, they know I don't yet know how to be that in return, and yet they still love me anyway. They're not the first and only people who've ever loved me; this is the first time though that I find myself seriously wanting to love back, in the best way that I know how. I'm not sure what to do with their commitment; I don't know if I'll succeed or fail at this new challenge in my life. I do want to try though, and I hope that this week's column might convince you to consider doing some of the same. To the two angels God chose to begin tearing apart that delicate structure I'd worked so hard to create for myself, I thank you. |
| Random Order/ Tracie Gilbert The power of friendship ... or lack thereof |
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