Blurred Lines
When the lines of friendship get mixed up.
Here I am giving my pillow a hot bath after the most painful yet popular announcement. Painful for some yet tasty for others.
We were friends, more like what the world would refer to as ‘besties’. We were so close we could pass for siblings; we hurt each other, we held each other’s hands in leap and trip, and each gave a shoulder to lean on in merry and pain. We would chat for hours on end, about everything and nothing in particular, and the time was well spent in my opinion. We connected in a different way on a whole ‘solid cloud special’ level, at least, so I thought. Inseparable conjured its definition from our relationship.
We had boundaries. Boundaries we defined personally and didn’t directly talk about. Boundaries we each carved in our minds and hoped they were identical; after all, we were alike in so many ways. Even when we periodically broke those boundaries, we mended them in silence or carelessly or intentionally disregarded the loopholes, eventually mending them whenever or never.
It was all cake and ice cream until I had to force my lips to extend horizontally and squeeze air out of my jaws to create a dimple effect, at the picture that was handed to me moments ago; It was my ‘bestie’ with another woman. I’m not sure why I felt a lump in my throat, but somehow I managed to respond ‘yeah, they look cute together’ while gasping for air. Perhaps I was over-thinking. Why should this even bother me at all?
I found myself at my ‘bestie’s’ door, maybe I’ll play around in a conversation and get him to talk about this woman, or I was probably over-reacting. I had barely knocked on the door when it swung open. There was my ‘bestie’ with the woman on the picture, smiling from teeth to eyelids, staring at me like they each wanted to squash me in the tightest bear hug you ever heard of. They almost simultaneously said they were about to reach me and let me be the first to know they were getting married.
My jaws dropped, all I needed was an 18th-century dagger in my heart, red liquid in and around my chest and Micheal Angelo to properly illustrate how deeply my heart was sliced open into tiny bits by a single phrase. They thought it was excitement so I guess my physical and emotional where probably not in sync. I’m not sure when I uttered the words congratulations. How did I not see this coming? I didn’t shed a tear; my eyes were already saving up tears for later.
It was only then that I realized I didn’t fix the loopholes in my boundaries. I figured the loopholes had turned into large gaps and the boundaries eventually disappeared. Had I fallen in Love? Maybe it was genuine, maybe it was carelessness or perhaps just the sheer thought that we would no longer be who we used to be. I only dared to listen to my dying heart whisper: ‘Love one way is enough to last a moment, however long a moment is’.
Dear pillow, my eyes and I are just getting started on the tears, hang on because you are gonna have a long hot bath.
Define boundaries for your relationships. You might just save a heart and a pillow or two, the nightmare of a hot bath.
More from me:
