One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, One Step Sideways, and do the Hokey Pokey
so probably the most interesting thing that has happened this week, prior to what promises to be a fantastically amusing weekend… not… was the cumulating drama of the of late altercation between my friend esau, and i. it sort of got a kick off start last weekend really when andy came back and immediately was bombarded by esau’s attempts to showcase his side of the apple pie drama first (despite saying “we should keep it between us”). anyways, poor andy really had to get from both ends, but i hope i was at the very least less demanding than esau… having not said anything directly to andy until andy came to me. of course, i find it amusing though that andy automatically felt the need to play conciliator but in retrospect, i’m glad he did, otherwise my friendship in esau would have simply just ended, knowing my swift method of dealing with conflict… nullifying it basically.
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however, the crescendo to the moment really was sort of esau’s doing i have to say. i am not sure when it happened but one day he wrote a particularly, i thought, nasty little email to me telling me how childish i have been not speaking to him, and that now he needed to put an end to it, because it was overtly affecting our mutual friends. the wording of his email was quite emotional i thought… phrases like “if i had known our friendship was so weak… i wouldn’t have invested so much time in it” i found somewhat displeasing. the tone of the email was overtly hostile and demanding… things like “the decision to continue our friendship is getting to the point where it is no longer in your hands”. anyways… i didn’t respond to the email immediately but let it simmer in my head. i talked to mei about it later that day and basically shared with her my intention to simply cut it off… since from the email, it was obvious he didn’t want to be friends anymore either. i was about ready to write back a snippy email to the effect of… well, great, “its out of my hands”, thank god… you can be the one to walk away!
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however, i also talked to andy and he told me that i should really try to “talk” it out. to be honest, i wasn’t really convinced until he had said… do you really want to feel like there is someone “out there” really harboring bad will towards you? i dunno, i think i have pissed off enough people, like ex-boyfriends, and stuff that i’m already bearing my fair share of bad karma…. so i don’t really need anymore. haha… i dunno, for some reason that clicked for me… and even though i made it clear that i had no expectation to be “friends” with esau… he at the very least… deserved for me to simply “talk” with him about it. i still respected him enough for that.
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haha… so i wrote an email… very diplomatically i thought thanking him for the “time away”… completely ignoring his angry email… and simply saying we should meet and talk the next night. he wrote back a little later…one word…. “NO”. haha… i’ll be honest again… when i read that, i was actually relieved… thank god, another uncomfortable situation averted! now i can discontinue my friendship and not feel guilty that i didn’t take the “high road” or whatever… i offered to talk, he declined. however, all he said was “No” … he wasn’t able to meet at the place and time i suggested. he later wrote another email saying he wanted to go to another place. whatever i thought… i can talk anywhere.
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a little back and forth later, and andy offering his place as a “neutral ground” (he really is a good little guy), we ended up meeting in a coffee shop. a little before, i was talking to robert for a bit and getting his low-down on it. i’m glad i did as well, because basically it just reminded me to try not to be to confrontational, stick to my own personal emotions, and not to make judging statements about the other, trying to stick to specific “grievances”. so finally esau arrived and we basically got down to the nitty gritty pretty soon.
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the conversation was fairly brisk actually, lasted about an hour, and pretty much half way through we had established already the central idea of the conversation, which was later just repeated in various ways. no raised voices, no broken plates. actually, after it was all over, i just felt a slight tingle of regret and sadness… a sadness you get when something you’d rather not happen does, but you know that you’ve tried your best and it just isn’t gonna work. a sadness from a bit of feelings of unfairness of life i guess? anyways… we shared each other’s grievances and the funny thing i realized, or we realized, is that i think we were both feeling exactly the same thing… we felt we weren’t getting out of the relationship what we put in. from my angle, i feel i try so hard to be a fun friend, good, considerate, etc… and i expect that much as well… and from esau’s end he feels he puts in care and consideration and he expects the same. we realized we both wanted the same thing really…. but through layers of mis-interpretation, not being on the same wave-length, what have you… we were completely misreading each other. however, what was sad about the conversation, was that we also decided that maybe we were just two very different people… and well… we should be OK with that. maybe there was a limit where we as friends could grow and the more we pushed against each other to “grow more”, the more we would just piss each other off.
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i totally bought this idea personally. and i told esau, friendships are always works in progress, not always lineal or incremental, and i felt well… like we had taken a step back. esau agreed but also added that he thought we had gone as far as we had gone. i didn’t argue with it but didn’t really know what to feel about that assertion. in some ways though, after we both expressed that… at least on my end, i felt a weight lifted…. like finally… i don’t “have to” feel bad that i might have pissed off esau or that he could be so disappointed in me because… well, we have come to the conclusion we were so different… and that is… OK. OK… sometimes the best we can do.
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we left on as good of terms as any i guess. that evening though, something in my subconscious made me feel i needed to add one more comment to the mix. esau had mentioned that he was having some health issues and that his main complaint was that he was feeling i was “pulling away” from him as friend, and selectively to him because he felt i was still active in other people’s lives… and maybe in some strange response, his outbursts were odd ways of “forcing” me back into his life. i wanted to address this statement and the next day i wrote a simple email saying that 1)… he could always ask me for assistance and that i would not ever turn him away…. i caveated it though by saying that he probably had a good idea of what type of support i may be better at than others. and 2), i told him that if he felt i was pulling away from him, and him specifically, to please consider the various reasons which i then enumerated that the intention of consciously “not wanting” to be his friend was never there. i spoke about my core personality of being independent, of valuing “me” time with passion and my ever growing busy schedule… all things that take physical tolls on the time i spend with friends… but all things i cannot help. in much the same tone of the previous nights conversation, i spoke these things not to justify his disappointment over my action or un-action… but to “flesh out my character… who i have always been and will always be”… and to ask him to be… OK… with that.
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i concluded my email simply saying that i do value his presence in my life, because i believe that our paths converge, diverge, and cross… all for very good reasons.
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i believe that that email hit a chord in him as he wrote back an equally sincere letter. it was cute. i wouldn’t say we’re the best of friends again (like we ever were haha) but at least the next day when we went to a comedy show together with hector… it didn’t feel weird. it was OK.
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posted by faux chink @ 5:07 PM
1 Comments:
Hey Alex - I think you handled this as best as you possibly could have and that's all you can do. No matter what, i think you did take the high road and you should feel good about it.
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