The Ides of March is most commonly associated with Julius Caesar, being that he was killed on this day. (It has a history before this but most do not focus on that.) In 44 BC, on this day, a group of 60 co-conspirators led by Marcus Junius Brutus stabbed Caesar to death. It is said that the number of conspirators was so vast that in attacking Caesar, they actually wounded each other. According to legend or history, even Brutus wounded his hand and legs.
Today is the Ides of March.
Today, I remembered something some of you may not know about me. I once played Julius Caesar in college. It was a part of a modern, experimental project based off an advanced class called, “Acting Shakespeare ” that I took my senior year of college. We performed for two nights before live audiences and I was Caesar. It is one of my favorite moments on stage.
Today is the Ides of March.
Someone Caesar trusted, perhaps even called a friend, conspired, betrayed and then killed him.
Let’s talk about friendship and conflict.
I don’t do so well when my friends piss me the fuck off. I supposed this is because it takes a lot for me to truly become pissed off. A LOT! Most of my friends have never seen me truly angry. They may have seen me vent, frustrated or annoyed but I could count on one hand the number of people who have seen me ANGRY. It takes a lot for a friend to do something that leads to me being angry because it also takes a concerted effort on my part to trust people enough to let me into my inner circle. Its also because I have high expectations and I simply expect people not to do stupid things…especially directly to me. I’m just being honest. Call me an asshole, if need be. Friends doing things that led to me being angry is different that people I don’t give a flying fuck about. I mean, yes we’re all special people but if you’re not important to my life and you do something stupid, I don’t register it. It doesn’t have a lasting affect on my life so I’m not going to waste my emotions or time. But my friends, lord help me.
I used to do even worse though when it came to my anger or negative emotions towards friends. I would severe beautiful friendships because I expected people not to fuck with me. I felt since there were over 6 billion people in the entire world, if one person had the balls to hurt me, it was more than ok to strike them from my life indefinitely.
Le sigh. (It’s an immature but sometimes needed approach to my life.)
My friendship with Lola, I mention her often in this space, was almost a permanent casualty to my past dismissive actions. A string of silly but unfortunate and untimely things happened between us our sophomore year of college and I pretty much wrote her off. Lola’s kind enough to take some of the blame for what happened between us and what led to two years of silence but really, I can honestly say what happened did not merit my reaction nor the two years of silence. Our divide is my blame to take. My immaturity. Luckily, we found our way back together and now the world would have to implode taking all the energy completely away before anything could tear us apart. I don’t care what Lola does. My relationship with her reminds me of Meredith and Christina from Grey’s Anatomy except ours is better and real. I’d do anything for her, with her and I won’t let you do anything to her.
I remember around the time Lola and I stopped speaking, I was sharing what happened with a family member. I was grieving the loss of my best friend and they said, “That’s just life. People do dumb shit. It’s gonna keep happening.” Oh my. It was just the worse thing to hear at the time for me. I was struggling with depression and the only thing I could think was, “If that is life, an endless cycle of COMPLETE BULLSHIT, I want no part. I want to DIE!” I was so serious. Luckily, my depressive personality did not have detrimental affects.
A year later at a theater retreat I heard another quote that stuck with me. “People will hurt you. It’s a given. It’s what you do with the hurt that determines the rest,” Lisa McMinn. She was a Sociology professor at Wheaton College that I highly respected. I recall taking Social Change and Sociology of Sexuality with her and she always pushed the envelope with grace, dignity and thought. I don’t know if Lisa knows this but that simple phrase was so profound to me and was one of the many things that helped me deal with my depression. It put the choice back on me. It gave me the responsibility and taking responsibility for myself has always been a turn on.
Years later, I found a book called, “The Myth of You and Me” by Leah Stewart and I immediately thought of Lola. They marketed that book by always writing on advertisement, “If you’ve ever googled an old friend’s name, you need to read this book.” The truth was, I had looked Lola up so many times and yet I didn’t have the courage to call her. This book, except for one part of it, just stole my heart. It reminded me that I needed to forgive. Sometimes something else or someone else is worth more than your pride and your hurt. I bought another copy for Lola and for a few other friends I had dismissed, whether it was my fault or theirs. I wanted them each to have a copy with my letter of apology. For Lola’s, I wrote directly in the book but even after we had reconciled our differences, I still forgot to give her book.
Months later, Lola was visiting my apartment and saw the book. I forgot that it was actually intended for her anyway and I told her to borrow the book because it was a good read. Later that night Lola called me asking if I had done that on purpose…done that…being that I told her to borrow a book that had a handwritten note on the inside directed to her. I told her I had forgotten about that and we both laughed.
As the years have gone on, I’ve learned the distinction between people you need to let go of..such as toxic friendships, or friendships that have grown apart versus releasing the anger, working through it and maintaining friendships that mean more than the bullshit that happened. I’ve learned my lessons and I continue to learn.
Even recently, I had what I thought was a friend lash out at me in an unexpected manner. They had been harboring so much anger and resentment towards me that it finally reached a boiling point. I couldn’t tell if they were having a bad day, hated my guts or had simply gone bat shit crazy. I know the distinction between working through things, conflicts and hardships versus letting go of not only toxic friendships but the bat shit crazy people that will try to take you down with them. Lord knows, I’ve learned my lesson!
The one that I’m still working my way through is when the friends that you love and don’t want to loose hurt you. I’m unclear what one does when they hurt something so important, when the trust is broken and when its all just so tender.
I read months ago a simple phrase by Fragos Roua in 100 Ways to Improve Your Life, “Accept your friend’s mistakes.” It was another reminder, like Lisa’s quote and like the heart tug of “The Myth of You and Me.” A reminder that even with my high standards, people still fuck up. Hell, I fuck up. Except, truth be told, I can’t recall hurting my friends. I tend to stay away from that kind of behavior. But hey, we’re all different. Still, still…its a given that people will hurt me. It’s up to me to determine what happens next.
What does one do when you are hurt by a friend and things probably won’t be the same but you don’t want to end the friendship?
1. Remember that the friend who hurt you is a human being. In my mind I turn people into monsters that spew green slime and eat babies, all because they said the wrong thing or did something stupid or really really really hurt me. Perhaps the heart is so tender that the only way to make sense of why someone would treat you so bad is to forget that they are someONE. We turn them and the situation into someTHING. They are not a thing. They are a person with a heart and feelings too. They are human. We’ve got to remember that.
2. Remember that friend who hurt you has a perspective. Even if someone did something ABSOLUTELY, ridiculously, heinously shitty too you, they still have their own story too. They have their prespective of what led to that. They have an inner monologue full of thoughts you probably didn’t even consider. Now when I say heinous, keep in mind I’m not counting criminal or abusive. That doesn’t count. Those people just suck and are toxic and I don’t think toxic people should be in your lives. Aside from the criminals though, your friend who hurt you, they experienced the situation through their eyes, not yours. Remember your lens through which you view the world, is only yours. No one else saw it that way.
3. Remember this was one moment in the entirety of what you’ve known of this person. There’s something to be said about how it can take years to trust a person and it can take a second to lose that trust. I understand that. I get it. I’ve experienced it. But I think when it comes to friends hurting us its about putting it into the perspective of your history. I remember in college one friend hurt me and disrespected me and I was so over her and wanted no part of her life. I should have remembered the four years I’d known her. How her family took me in when I had no where else to go. How I had been with her and her family on vacation when I found out James had died. And it was her family that helped me grieve, held me when I cried and prayed with me. She had spent countless nights in college in my room listening to my issues and my troubles and my thoughts with grace and kindness. And in the same way I had been a friend to her aw well. The history of our friendship was so much bigger than the hurtful but small thing that tore us apart. In the moment, I forgot to consider that. It’s been years and that one woman, to this day, I haven’t talked to her since our conflict. It’s unfortunate.
4. Remember to let go. When someone hurts you, it stings. It’s like when you’re riding your bike and you fall off and scrap your knee. That ish hurts. Sometimes there is blood. You’ve lost a layer of skin. And it STINGS. Perhaps it stings for a day or for two. Or if you fell really bad, it stings and hurts for longer than that. And sometimes replacing the bandages or applying medicine to help the healing stings too. Part of that is just because you remember the hurt so clearly. But eventually the wound heals completely. Most times there isn’t even a scar. And when you go to ride your bike again, you ride it with freedom. You don’t say to your bike, “Remember when you failed me when I was 5 years old and I was hurt.” (God that’s a long ass metaphor.) Point is, once healing has taken place, I personally believe you can’t drag the dirty past and throw it in your friend’s face whenever something comes up. It’s not fair. If you’re going to smear the beauty of your reconciliation in the shit of past pain, you have to let the friendship go. I can’t stand when people throw the past in someone’s face. (BUT this only comes about when true healing takes place. When releasing the anger and hurt has taken place. When responsibility has been accepted. Get it?)
5. Remember to write a shitty letter that you’ll never send. You can do this at any point. But I think there is something to be said about writing angry letters that you’ll never send. More than likely that letter is going to contain the raw emotions of your hurt unedited full of splinters, spikes, daggers and every evil swear word you can think of. That needs to get out of you. But it probably shouldn’t be directed to your friend. Yes they hurt you, but at this point, you’re still calling them your friend, right? So write that shitty letter and then delete it or burn it or use it as a backdrop on an art journal page that you cover with paint and new words. Words of healing and hope.
6. Remember that honesty is the best policy. Often times when dealing with conflict with our friends, I see people glaze over the true grit of the issues. “It wasn’t that big of a deal,” we say because that’s easier than saying, “You really hurt me and I don’t understand where we are right now or how we fix this. I want to fix it but right now I’m just hurt and confused.” God, its so much easier to say, “It wasn’t that big of a deal.” No, be honest…. with compassion, grace and understanding.
7. Remember they’ve been wounded too. This is what I picked up on regarding the whole Caesar, Brutus, 60 people with knives going bat shit crazy thing. They were pissed off about something, whether justified or not, and they attacked Caesar but in attacking him, they attacked each other, hurting themselves in the process. Unless people are psychopaths with no feeling, no heart and no soul, they usually aren’t coming from a place of vindictive, hatefulness even when they hurt you. True friends don’t intend to hurt you. I’d like to think we don’t generally operate from a place of assholery. Something happened and they fucked up. They forgot something. They were careless with their words. They just didn’t think things through. They had a lapse in judgement. They were having a bad day. Who the fuck knows why they ended up hurting you. Whatever the reason I don’t think my friends who hurt me work up that day thinking, “How can I fuck Sheena over today?” Considering that fact and considering that what they did probably led to distance between you two which sucks since before that you both valued your friendship meaning you liked each other and both wanted to be a part of each other’s lives, this new distance between you two…this sticky messy place you both now find yourselves in, not only sucks for you but it sucks for them too. Their carelessness or inaction or lapse of judgement is not only affecting you but its affecting them too. They’ve been wounded too. And I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if it helps you to begin healing but for some reason that sticks with me today.
These are my thoughts today. It’s so easy to end things. At least for me it is. These days though, I’m interested in more than endings. As messy as it may be, I’m interested in the journey of working through things. Besides, truth be told, LOVE is bigger than hurt and it has a way of healing even the most broken things and broken hearts.
