Damaged Friendships

I have a lot of stresses crashing down on me right now. From various places. I guess my subconscious has decided to add to this, because last night I had a dream about something that is always on my mind. Something I usually try brushing off, pushing away, burying deep down, but it is always there. Sometimes something brings it right to the front of my mind though, makes me think about it, why it happened, how I can fix it, should I bother.

Back to the dream. I am not sure how the dream started, it was like I turned it on mid-episode or something. But it was a friend of mine telling me how what I did was wrong, how she is so pissed at me and cannot believe I would do something like that. She is standing right there in front of me saying all this. I kind of drop my head down and hold my eyes, like this is making my head hurt, and when I look up suddenly she is another friend of mine, but the speech continues, much in the same way. Now she is comparing what I did to her to other things. Explaining her disappointment. Saying she is not sure she can get past it. Then the dream ended as fast as it started.

OK the history, I had 2 friends I was very close to. They had no connection to each other, just 2 people I was close to at 2 different points in my life, and my friendships with both these people are really damaged. With one of these people, I still talk to her, but it is nothing like it used to be. We share a little bit with each other, and we understand each other a little bit better I think, because we have discussed a little bit of what happened, but it is still not the same. With the other person, I am cordial with her, we do not really share anything with each other, we do not make an effort to see or speak to each other, but when we do see each other things are alright, but there is always that tension there.

I take responsibility for my parts of the damage in these friendships. In the one of them the fact that what happened happened was both our faults. We both let things escalate to the point they did, we both knew things were going the way they were, then we both just exploded at each other. After the fire died down, I went back examined the ruins and repaired what I could, making amends along the way. But as I said it is not the same and probably never will be. Is it better, is it worse, who knows? Only time will tell, but it is certainly not the same.

It is the other friendship that bothers me the most. The one where we are nothing more than cordial to each other. This person was like a sister to me. The damage in our friendship was completely caused by me. There has been a time or two were we briefly touched on the subject, but never the nitty gritty. I do not feel like I have gotten out what I have inside about what happened, why I think it happened and how I feel about it all now. I want to know how she feels, if it is even in her thoughts at all? Geez I sound like a crazy ex or something, but she really was such a close friend to me for a long time, and she is not really a part of my past, she is actually now a part of my extended family through a marriage. There is no completely avoiding the situation. The reason our friendship is so damaged is me and the fact is things I have changed since then I have grown and although I still do not agree with things about her I realize I have no place to judge. What it comes down to was I was playing the morality police. I was wrong.

What will I do about this? Will I try to make amends? Who knows. I have so much going on right now, maybe now is not the time, maybe now is the perfect time. You know what the serenity prayer says. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Oh how many things in life that applies to when we really think about it.