I'm sitting outside as I am writing this and my attempt to see the screen of my laptop with complete clarity is skewed by my own reflection. I can barely see the words that I'm writing as they appear on the screen and coincidentally across my face. Very symbolic considering what has prompted me to write this.
I fly home tomorrow, to Oregon. My first stop is Vancouver, WA, where my best friend lives. When she and I first met I didn't like her and then it took less then a week to "fall in love" with her (so to speak). They say that love (usually referring to the falling 'in' and 'out' kind, but I think it can apply to any type of relationship) is blind. I have always disagreed with this statement. Our minds and hearts are perceptive to almost everything, even if only at a subconscious level. There is very little that we miss no matter how insignificant it may seem. We see it, we feel it, and we catalog it for safe keeping. Sometimes we call upon those things at a later moment and others are simply taking up space and collecting dust for the remainder of our lives. Love isn't blind, not by accident. Love is very aware and sometimes acts as a completely individual counterpart, doing things without our permission or without our knowledge to protect the thing most valuable to it; our heart. The words 'best friend', when using them to talk about my own, mean something very different to me now then they did five years ago. And up until almost a year ago my love was blind because that was the easiest way to protect myself without disrupting the life I had. The life that I didn't know how to live without.
Now almost a year has gone by (since our friendship came to a complete halt at the edge of the ravine) and two things in particular are very clear to me: I am not the same girl I was five years ago AND neither is she. I don't think that I am in any sort of position to judge whether or not that is a good thing in her case but I know that I have changed for the better. I have allowed my mistakes to teach me something about myself and the person that I want to be. I have cried buckets of tears, wrestled with thoughts of revenge, and had dangerous affairs with bitterness and resentment only to quietly slip from their beds never to return (by the grace of God) again. But now, here I am, standing at the only door left open to my past...hesitant to leave it open, hesitant to close it.
I made a lot of promises to my best friend. Promises to never leave, always love, always rescue, and that was the problem. I carried out my promises to the letter, even when all the signs were telling me with crystal clarity not to. I don't want to be that best friend anymore, because while I was, she never learned how to stand on her own to feet. I was the over-protective mother that refuses to let her child learn to walk too afraid her child is going to fall...but that's how they learn. She didn't need me to carry her, and initially didn't ask for it, but once she got used to it, if I behaved differently then things got messy.
My best friend is most at risk from her own heart. I know it, and that statement holds true for everyone. The difference between her and I is that I will admit it (about myself), and she either can't because she doesn't see it or won't.
I am going home because I miss her and I love her. However things will be different this time when I leave. When I leave I am going to close that half open door, indefinitely. Instead of being the one standing between her and the bullet, instead of working against the force that is hell bent on pulling the trigger I will be off to the side and out of the way. I will be within her line of sight, but out of her reach. I won't rush to push her from harms way and I won't scream for her to duck. I will simply watch...and pray.
I want to be best friends with the girl I "fell in love" with, and as long as I risk my heart to save hers she will never be that girl again. She has no idea it's coming, and probably won't even notice it's happened. She closed her heart to me a long time ago. I left mine open hoping that things would change, but as long as I'm still fighting, there will never be a reason for her to.
This isn't a test, and whatever happens happens. It's just time for me to let go, to do it differently. Not for her, but for myself.
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