My Greatest Fear, and the Cliché That Gave Me CPR

I've been dumped.

One of my closest friends called me on Friday to tell me that she didn't have the emotional bandwidth to be my friend anymore. It was a short conversation. I didn't know what to say, so I just thanked her for the call and hung up.

I wrote and rewrote several letters to her, then filed them all away into my "Letters I Will Never Send" folder. Then, I sent her a short email explaining that I respected her decision and would quietly bow out of her life.

But there were paragraphs of unspoken words between each line. I felt like someone had punched a hole in my chest, and I was so sad to see the end of a vibrant friendship. 

Here Comes the Cliché

But it also taught me one of life's most important lessons. You can't please everyone, no matter how hard you try. But this is a cliché, right? We all know this.

Even still, you could power a small country with the amount of energy I have invested in trying to prove otherwise. I honestly don't think I really internalized this truth until now. Sure, there is a whole list of people and kinds of people that probably would not want to spend a sober evening chatting it up with me on a Friday night. But that just means they aren't my intended audience anyway, so who cares?

But THIS - this was the first time that someone I loved stopped me on my way to loving them to say, "Enough. I don't want you anymore."

I absolutely crumbled. So it was there, in a pile of tissues and self-pity, that I really came to fully understand that I really cannot please everyone - even the people that I most love, or those that I believe most love me back.

My Greatest Fear

Two weeks earlier, I had sat on the couch of this very friend and confessed to her that I was haunted by a desire to be as invisible as people need me to be - and that THAT is the gaping hole in my wholeness. It's as though I inherently believe that if I can just be small enough and quiet enough, then I will not upset the fragile balance I believe my relationships to be - as if they hinge on my ability not to be too much of anything.

Of course, I know this is just an old, irrational fear, probably stemming from some childhood misinterpretation of love. And in spite of it, it's something I successfully push through in order to maintain healthy, vibrant and authentic relationships in my life. I love people. Some of them even love me back.

But still… there are times that it sneaks up on me and suddenly I'm pressing myself into the shadows before I remember that I didn't mean to.

So when my friend called me this past Friday to tell me that, actually, I wasn't quite invisible enough for her after all, it kinda shook me up.

The Silver Lining

But in that moment, when it seemed that all of my worst fears had come true - that after years of fighting irrational insecurities and beliefs about myself, the very thing I'd been trying to avoid happened - there was a moment of clarity that took my breath away.

It hadn't felt the way I thought it would.

It hurt, yes - the pain was searing - but I didn't feel responsible for it. Even in my pain and disappointment, I absolutely knew that this wasn't my fault or my problem. It was her issue. It was her own fragile balance that had been upset by my beingness. There wasn't anything I could have done to avoid this. It wasn't my fault.

This insight saved me from the guilt and the smallness that could have caved my chest in otherwise. I did not collapse into myself. This experience did not validate and reinforce my life-long fears of rejection.

It erased them.

Now, I do not feel afraid. Having experienced the thing that I most feared, I no longer fear it. It is not an unknown. I know the texture, the flavor, and the smell of it. It will not sneak up on me again, or pull me quietly into the shadows unawares. I will see it coming a mile away, and instead of succumbing to it, I hope to be able to give it a slight nod of recognition, then keep on being fully me - the purest gift I have to offer anyone.

Including myself.