best friends

[MakersDozn]

We identify with a lot of what you wrote. And we hope you still don't regret writing/sending the letter to your friends. Even if people didn't respond, we think that it's a good example of self-care that you wrote it.

Back in high school we learned a hard lesson about "best friends." We were bullied a lot in school and found it difficult to make friends at all. But after our family moved when we were in the middle of seventh grade, we started to befriend one girl in school. Inexperienced as we were, we assumed that she was now our "best friend."

Four years later, we had a small handful of casual acquaintances in school, but that was it. We still thought of that one girl as our "best friend," even though we only saw her in school and didn't hang out with her or do anything together outside of class.

Imagine how we felt when we heard that she had organized a birthday party for a classmate that she considered *her* best friend, and that we/MDs were not invited to the party. It's not that she deliberately excluded us. Rather, it never occurred to her to invite us in the first place.

What we took out of that incident, aside from years of painful feelings, is the lesson that in any relationship, no matter how superficial or deep, the people involved never see the relationship in the same way. They may have similar perspectives, but those perspectives will never be exactly the same. This is because no two people are exactly the same--they have different selves, thoughts, feelings, consciousness.

And a related lesson, which was even harder for us to accept, is that no relationship can ever be considered an exclusive claim on the other person. Spouses, close friends, whatever....they each have a part of their own lives that is separate from the other person in the relationship. No matter how close they are.

Anyway....thanks for giving us the opportunity to reflect on this. It helps us put a piece of our own life in perspective. And we hope that you find some peace about choosing to reach out to people.

MDs