Who Are Your Friends??

This is a subject I have been meaning to write about for a few weeks now.   It stems from the ending of 5 year friendship.  It reminded me to look at the people in my life and ask, "How do they enhance my life and how do I enhance their's?"  Non of us still know every single person we were friends with from childhood to now.  Even our best of friends.  I really do believe we grow and change and some of those friends also grow and change in a different direction.  Some don't even grow leaving you scratching your head because you no long have anything in common.   That's really ok.  Friends are like gardens, you have to care and nurture the relationship, pick weeds from it and sometimes till it over if its gone bad.

The particular relationship I am talking about just finally fizzled and died due to very different interests and personal morals.   It not only ended the single friendship, but the rest of her family's as well.  I was called a "hateful, nasty bitch" in an email because I chose to share my thought on hateful public posts.  My comment was something along the lines of," Wishing so much hate and harm to someone can do nothing but bring harm and discontent to yourself.   Let the law deal with the situation and focus on being  strong, kind and loving to the person who has been harmed.  Hate only breeds more hate."

A horrible private message was sent to me full of swears and name calling.  Things of the past were brought up an I was told," I stood by you during this and that and the other thing, even though I thought you were wrong! I was a good friend and stood by you"   Those words made me think.   A good friend stands by you when you are doing wrong?  No, they voice their opinion and tell you why they think you are wrong.   If you are doing things so damn immoral why should anyone smile and bare it?   It's your duty to say something.  Period.  Don't watch your friend self destruct.

The bad things she referenced were me divorcing my husband( I left because he decided being gay was the way to go and he told me he ," Let me have my son because he thought it was like a dog who had puppies, they calmed down.  He didn't actually want a baby" ) and she felt that me dating Skip(who is 22 years my senior)was wrong.

I figured last year things were on the brink when we both had miscarriages about 6 weeks apart early last year.   I sat at home silently letting nature work her magic.  She posted every gruesome detail of the ordeal, including the option to have a D&C done.  She included photos of herself at the hospital and then went right back to work with no time for herself to morn the loss.  For the next year she posted about all her girl's nites out. How drunk she was.  She posted nasty things about her husband.   Then at the beginning of this year she got pregnant again and started the play by play starting with a photo of the pregnancy test.  During all this she never returned my calls, my texts or my FB messages.

I gave up and made peace that the friendship had probably run it's course.  At the end her posts and her families were full if hate and discontent.  I made the choice to delete them all.  They were getting nothing from me and I was getting nothing from them.

Everyone in my life now enhances it.  I hope that I still have something to offer to all of them as well.  If your friends make you crazy, if you can't find common ground or you no longer have any reason to tend your garden with them, then it is probably safe to say it's done.   No one should be hurt by it.  It is what it is.  Don't let it be toxic.