coming home again

I have a friend, who I won't name, in case she doesn't want the inner workings of our relationship (and, in part, her life) to be known to the k8-blog-reading public. I will call her Kate, just so it's confusing.

Kate and I have been friends forever. (Ok, ten years.) She is the oldest active friend I have (I have friends from high school who I see once or twice a year, but I don't really think they count at this point... they're more Acquaintances I Have Loved for a Long Time). Kate and I have been really close for the last six months or so, since she moved to a far-flung corner of the world and from there back to so-called civilization.

We've both been through a lot lately, with breakups and dating and general soul searching ("why am I an actor?" "gosh, I don't know, why am I?"), and we had evolved (or devolved, depending on how you look at it) into a pattern, where Kate would come to me with a problem, I would try to fix it (even though I wasn't asked to do so) and then I would get frustrated that Kate wasn't listening to my advice and then Kate would get angry because I was judging her. We'd exchange a few snarky emails and each go off into our separate corners to lick our wounds for a day or two.

But last time it was bad. And when Kate went off into her corner, I was afraid I might never see her again. And I looked at my own behavior, the judgements, the positions I held about Kate and her life and what she was doing with it, and I felt awful. I felt like a bad person, let alone a bad friend. But I didn't know how to stop loving her the way I was loving her. So I felt like I had to let her go.

Kate was the third girlfriend I had broken up with in the last a year and a half. While I knew that neither of the other two were good for me anymore, this was the first time I felt that I wasn't good for her.

I asked around -- how do you love someone, who from your perspective is hurting herself, without judging her for doing just that? I got a lot of "you just don't," but no clear answers.

Time passed. I missed Kate so much that I was worried about myself. Was I caving in on my principles just because I was lonely? If I called her, would I go back to just judging her? Would I enable her? Would I disable her? Could we find a way to be good for each other?

Friday night I sat crying on the couch of Sean, the guy I'm dating, about how much I missed Kate (which may or may not have been the sexiest thing I could do... but that's another story) and he just turned to me and said, "Call her. Just call her. You love her, you're hurting, you'll find a way to make it work. Just. Call. Her."

So I did, and it was like coming home again.

We talked about everything that had gone on while we were apart -- she told me she's dumping the guy she's dating, I told her about Sean and Lear and work (and all the nothing), and she told me she was in therapy, and committed to it. And just talking to her made such a difference. She sounds like the burden of seeing through the muck that was her depression has finally lifted, and she can see things more clearly. She's not perfectly happy (I'd be scared if she was), but she doesn't sound as miserable as she did before, and I see the pathway to a new kind of friendship.

I no longer feel responsible for her safety or sanity, and no longer see a place where judgment is useful, let alone necessary. I feel more like equals, partners, real friends.

Thank you for coming back to me, Kate. I've missed you so!