It is a difficult dilemma, deciding how you want to handle a friendship that has times that are good and times that are frustrating. This was a difficult situation, one which I contemplated over for literally months. I hope the end result has a positive outcome. The ultimate deciding factor was based on two areas that came into play….the friend’s emotional needs and my emotional needs.
This friendship is long-term. We were very close for eight years, then completely out of contact for twenty-nine years. In 2009 we connected on Facebook, doing the occasional Instant-Messenger chat, commenting on each other’s posts from time-to-time. Nothing major. Just casual contact. That all changed in 2015.
In 2015 I was making regular trips back to my hometown to work on cleaning out my parent’s home. My friend suggested we go out to dinner, and after about three months I finally agreed. It was like deja vu. 
He picked me up at my parent’s home, which had the same furniture it did when he last set foot in it back in 1980. We had a great time chatting about his marriage and kids, my husband’s battle with cancer and my kids. We talked about our siblings and parents. A connection that went way back. It was a wonderful evening and after dinner we went back to the house, I invited him in and we continued to talk for a couple more hours before he went home.
It was a connection we were glad was re-established. Throughout that summer I was making frequent trips into town hand he would on occasion stop by and visit for a couple hours. It was a nice friendship, familiar, comfortable, but different. We also maintained contact with conversations on Instant Messenger and an occasional telephone call.
We both realized that there was still an attraction there. However we were both married and did not step outside of the boundaries of respective marriages. Then the playing field changed. My husband lost his battle with cancer. We maintained the messenger and telephone contact for about three months, and then it tapered off. He stopped responding to emails or instant messages for extended periods of time.
I found this frustrating as he suffers from depression and I would wonder how he was doing. Then suddenly I would receive an email or message. There were always reasons for his disappearance…busy, kids, grandchildren, sickness, depression…but were they reasons, or excuses? In my opinion there is a fine line between the two, and I wasn’t quite sure on which side it fell. Things would improve for a bit but eventually would fall back into the old pattern.
After a while I decided I wasn’t going to continue to pursue a one-sided friendship in which I always initiated the contact. Instead I would wait and see what happened, and each time I did that I would ultimately receive a message from him usually by email. He would apologize for his lack of contact and say he had been busy, sick, depressed, whatever, always wanting to preserve the friendship. And so the cycle went. This became a roller coaster ride that was irritating. I didn’t like the feeling that I was making the effort and he was responding when it suited him. I want the friendship, but not on those terms. 
March 30th of this year rolled around and I received another email. This one got down to the emotional nitty-gritty, it was honest. The best one I’ve received because it got to the core of the situation. He wants to remain friends, but the line is grey for him right now. There are a lot of factors I am aware of but am not going to elaborate on. Let’s just say that email put everything into perspective. He is trying to get his mind straight and I have to be removed from the picture for now. I’m good with that. He closed with “Hopefully your friend.”
So what did I do? I responded. I don’t know if my response helped or hurt him in his situation, but it helped me in mine. I was honest. I told him we are still friends but that I find the friendship frustrating, that a person’s interest in maintaining a friendship is related to their response or lack thereof. I pointed out that they say ex-lovers can be friends for one of two reasons: either they were never in love or they still are. That is the grey area. I have accepted my grey area and can live with it. A ghost from the past is not the reality of the present. We are both different people than we were in 1980.
Then I tossed the ball in his court. I can handle the give-and-take of being friends, but it is his decision on whether to respond and maintain the friendship. If he decides to respond great. If not I move on and don’t worry about it. This decision was based on my emotional needs, not his, but it also supports his need for distance at this time.
So now I wait. We are still connected on Facebook. He has “liked” a couple of my posts; I have “liked” a couple of his. Do I hope he contacts me at some point in the future? Absolutely. I will always be his friend, that is a given. He is intelligent, funny, challenges the brain. We have a past, a comfort level of true friends, a connection that can not be replaced.
I hope that right now we are just taking a break and that eventually the friendship is re-established on a more personal level. However I will not allow my emotions to feel trampled by the friendship. That is also a given and I have made that clear to him through my actions.
And that, my friends, is how you deal with a frustrating friendship.
Boy, does this sound like a major pity-party or what! The fact of it is, I am alone. I have to figure out how to juggle the yard work and get it done. I have to eat alone, plan my own weekends, get out and be active by myself. When I’m sick and have chills, that’s the way it goes. I’m alone and I have to deal with it. That is life. That is reality. Pity-Party over.
After several nights with no sleep I finally realized what the problem was. I wasn’t used to making these decisions. I had always left them to my husband, but now with him gone I had to handle these things myself. Once I realized that my mind was playing tricks on me and keeping me awake needlessly over decisions that were reasonable to make I was able to once again resume normal sleep.
Murphy’s Law #8: It has been a crazy couple of weeks at work. Friday was like a triple Monday. Throughout the week things had come up that took priority and pushed other things back. I ended the week feeling burned out and more buried then when the week began.
When you are born a lover of the written word it never goes away, it just transitions over time. Writing and literature go hand-in-hand. My high school classes were filled with literature…classes in modern short stories, mysteries, American literature, Advanced Grammar and Composition, and more. When I went back to college in 2010 one of my favorite classes was public speaking because I was writing whatever I chose to talk about. It was fun!
I write in many formats. I titled this blog Life is a Melting Pot because my life is a jumble of various activities and I like to write about whatever strikes me at the moment. This blog is not the only regular writing I do. For the past eight years I have held the position of newsletter editor of Bluewater Family Backgrounds, a publication of the St. Clair County Family History Group. As the editor I gather content and put together the entire newsletter, writing some articles that go into it. I have been writing a column called “Who AM I?” for the past five and one-half years for The Lakeshore Guardian, and local free publication. The column is on genealogy. I am in my fourth year as an opinion columnist for our local newspaper, The Times Herald. I select my topics and how often I write a column, frequently selecting topics that can be a bit controversial. Finally, my daytime job is that of Paralegal in which I spend my days doing legal writing. All of the areas in which I write are slightly different and I enjoy each one.
I belong to a Freelance Writer’s Group and at the meetings I see a variety of people with a wide range of interests. The group includes people who write children’s stories, adult novels, travel columns, science fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and more. We all have one thing in common…we love to write! Writers are like any other type of artist, they are imaginative, creative, passionate about their art, well-read, self-promoters and self-starters. Writing is something you do solo; you have to be motivated to write or you will never succeed. Writers love words, language, and people watching. Everything is a potential story or scene. If you spend much time with a writer you may find yourself popping up in their stories, blogs, or columns. You may not be there in name, but you will likely recognize a scene in which you have lived.
Your own personal attitude has a great impact on how you feel throughout the day and your overall outlook on life. If you feel that life has thrown you the scrungy bone and you must gnaw away at it, you will likely make very little progress and will feel depressed, over burdened and uninspired about life. Not only will your attitude leave you feeling low, but it will be portrayed in your dealings with others, and may leave them feeling oppressed by emotions as well.
struggling economically with consideration, kindness, and as an equal. This is a person of great integrity. They recognize that they have obtained wealth, but they do not fault those around them that have been unable to achieve that goal.
way you are right.” That is how strongly attitude affects your ability to succeed in whatever you set out to accomplish.
After he left I looked at my rescuer and said “I was holding my own okay” and he agreed that I was, but didn’t like the fact that the man was standing in the lobby yelling at me. He also felt threatened by the abuser’s body language, and wasn’t sure whether it would escalate into something more.
What I learned in a quick internet search is that every nine seconds in the United States a woman is assaulted or beaten; and around the world at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Children often witness the abuse, which can lead to a revolving cycle, both as men becoming abusers because they believe it to be “normal” and women being abused, because they believe that is the way all women are treated.
If you research racial injustice for the 1940’s you will find that the treatment of “Bigger” portrayed in the novel is a very accurate representation of the mindset during that era. Lynchings were common for anything and everything considered inappropriate. NAACP members campaigning to get those of African American decent the vote where removed from their homes and lynched. A 26-year old man was lynched for failing to address a police officer as “Mr.” If a white woman was attacked it was assumed that a black man had committed the crime and the “suspect” would often be captured and lynched. Justice did not prevail.
We have come a long way in the acceptance of others since the 1940’s when 
Ahhh you say, isn’t that the same thing as a resolution? Well, sort of, but it is a mind game for motivation. Which do you want to do? Which makes you feel that success is possible? You can only pick one of the following:
If you have been a reader for a while you know that my husband, Ron, passed away December 7, 2015 and since that time I have been adjusting to living on my own. In reflecting on myself now, plans for the future and introspection of the past I have learned a few things.
Although I never paid attention to our finances and had no interest in knowing about them, I am perfectly capable of paying bills, applying for mortgage modifications, listing property for sale, and making decisions on financial assets. I’m not blindly doing what Ron told me to do as he was dying. I’m evaluating my own circumstances and making a decision that I feel comfortable with. My goal for the future is to learn how the stock market and investments work, to understand how to diversify and what everything means so I can make informed choices. Hopefully I will get a grasp on this within the next decade. I’m really walking in uncharted territory here.
What I have discovered is that it wasn’t the cooking I disliked, it was that Ron always had a criticism of some sort and tended to hover, questioning why I did things the way I did, telling me I should do things differently than I did. Nothing was ever quite good enough, there was always a “why didn’t you…” Basically, he thought I should cook just like him. After a while I tired of the negativity and simply walked away and left it to him. He cooked, I cleaned up, and it worked.
One couple and their four children arrived late for my wedding and followed my father and me down the aisle during the processional.
I am generally an on time person to slightly early person depending on what it is I am doing. I work extremely close to home and generally arrive on-the-dot for that. Other activities such as meetings I tend to arrive about 10 minutes in advance. When did I develop this habit? When I was a child. In grade school I was at the building on the playground long before the bell rang to go in. In Junior High (middle school) I was generally at the school about 15-30 minutes in advance, by high school I was there about an hour in advance, hanging with a group of other early arrivals. We had authorization to enter the library through the librarians door prior to it officially being opened. When I went back to college as an adult I was at the school at least 30 minutes prior to the start of class. By arriving at work 10 minutes prior to my work day it was once commented on how early I was. No, not early, on time!
The first time was when we had plans to go to dinner and were meeting at my house. I gave them a time of 6:45 pm, which would allow me to leave work at 6:00, get home and do the normal “arrive home” things of bringing in the mail, putting away my lunch containers, then change my clothes, touch up make-up, etc. So how did this go? When I was approaching my driveway at 6:15 their car was also signaling to turn into my drive. They were 30 minutes early! The greeting was even funnier. They exited their vehicle and said “are you late?” and I responded “No, you’re early.”
landing me in a trauma center for seventeen days, rehab for two months, and then a year of physical therapy and medical follow ups after that. Two of my granddaughters were taken by Child Protective Services and put into foster care. My husband and I applied to foster them and were denied, we later applied to adopt them and again CPS fought us and we lost. Both girls have been adopted by strangers.
I look at the list of things I have handled in the past few years and in my opinion have coped well with everything life has thrown at me. I have often felt that I have strong coping mechanisms but don’t really know why. I am baffled when people have one issue on their plate and are falling apart at the seams. I delved into the article hoping to discover what it is that makes one person successfully juggle a plethora of issues while another crumbles under the slightest amount of pressure.
downs of life and have difficulty coping you may want to read 
So, now that I am over the hill and rolling down it toward 60 I need to keep a positive focus and concentrate on fully utilizing the young gene. My hair can turn gray…there are people that purposely put grey in their hair for accent. I can gradually switch over to glasses if needed, after all young people wear fun and trendy glasses all the time. I will regain mobility after my ankle fusion and should be back to normal by late next spring. Most importantly, I refuse to grow old. Old is a state of mind, and my mind is not going there.
--- LIFE IS A MELTING POT --- Grace Grogan...Writer, Photographer 