Unresolved: That Uncomfortable In-Between Place

 I’m unresolved. Much like anger or elation, unresolved is an emotional state. It takes energy. It distracts me from being present. It is a niggling, uncomfortable state. It’s not there all the time, but when it shows up it is strong and clear.

Almost a year ago I lost a friend. She didn’t die or move away. She just became lost to me. We were friends for thirty years and then one day we weren’t. It’s like she went on a boat and never returned. She’s okay. She’s still friends with our other friends, but she’s lost to me. I don’t understand why she decided to stop being my friend and this confusion eats away at me. I have so many questions.

I am unresolved. What do I mean by unresolved? There is a sense of loss, the feeling of longing. And confusion. Because of the way our friendship so nebulously ended I have no clarity. Maybe I would feel resolved if I knew she was really gone. But she’s still here, just a few miles from my house. There’s a term in psychology — ambiguous loss. I think that’s what I’m experiencing here. I am in a confused, delayed state of grieving. There was no closure with this friend, no clarity and so I am unresolved.

Several times a week I think about calling my friend but I know she won’t respond. I’ve tried reaching out numerous times and she hasn’t reciprocated. So I don’t call or text. The impulse just sits there reminding me that I am unresolved. I haven’t let this friend go.

My unresolved feelings are like an in-between place, a bookmark between the comfort of our friendship and the sadness of its definite end. I’m frustrated because this lack of resolution is lasting a long time. It’s been months and I still dream regularly about seeing my friend. I still have her phone number in my head. I have so much anger about how she dropped me like a rotten banana in the compost. I’m unresolved.

Part of being unresolved is focusing on the other person. I wonder so many things: Is she happy?; Does she miss me too?; Is she unresolved? In focusing on what my former friend is thinking I am prolonging this state that I am in. I am wrapped up in my ego — worried about how she and other people see me —  instead of my own experience with the loss. 

To come to a resolution with this friendship, to actually grieve the loss, I have to throw all that other stuff out the window. I have to let go of what my former friend thinks about me, what she is telling our other friends about me. That’s the hard part. Once I let go of all that other stuff I will have to enter the true grief state of this loss and that makes me too sad.

Strangely, it helps to just have a name for this state that I’m in. I’m unresolved. I’m not happy, not sad, just somewhere in between. It feels comforting to define that. At least I know where I am. And it helps to remember the good things about our friendship. Too often I just feel anger when I think of my friend. Maybe that’s why she comes to me in my dreams. Maybe that is a subconscious invitation to remember the good things about our history. 

Being unresolved is uncomfortable. It’s like wearing shoes that rub your heel or a bra that rides up one armpit. But it’s also a form of self-preservation, a way of staving off the painful feelings of truly grieving. Ambiguous loss is often the experience people have when they lose their relationship with a parent because of dementia or a spouse because of addiction. The person is still there but not in the way you want them to be, not in the way you knew them to be. There’s a sense of waiting for a moment when things might change — when your mother recognizes you or your spouse finally enters treatment.

That’s where I am. Waiting for the moment when I’ll know for sure. I’m waiting for my friend to write me an email explaining why she ended the friendship. I’m waiting to know something for sure. I’m waiting for some kind of sign that there really is no hope, that our friendship is truly over. For whatever reason, I just can't face the loss yet. I'm unresolved.

95 Friends and Counting: What Does it All Add Up To?

 

On Friday night I decided to make a list of all the friends in my life I could remember. I started in nursery school and logged up to the present day. I came up with 95 names. After I listed them I went back and wrote the approximate year that I started being friends with each person. A few people had multiple years. I cycled in and out of friendship with them. They entered my life first in childhood, again in high school or college, and again in adulthood but most of the friendships occupied just a short period, maybe 5–10 years, and they have not resurfaced.

Since making that list a few nights ago I’ve had flashes of other friends that I hadn’t put on the list but by the time I get to my list to write down their names I’ve already forgotten the name. I wonder if it’s possible to actually come up with a truly exhaustive list. Can my brain possibly remember every single person? Just now I remembered Lily Chang who I was good friends with in fourth grade. Does it count if we were only friends for one year? Who qualifies as a friend? And what about a friend who is no longer a friend? What do you call that person? 

I’m fifty-two years old and I have a current group of very good friends. I think they will be my friends into old age. They are my present friends, my front-on-mind, everyday friends. But people live long lives these days and maybe some of these people will fade into the distance, taking on different friendship positions as we age. 

Thinking about these different friendship levels, I decided that I needed some kind of system to classify my friendships. I created a letter code to organize my list. There are four categories:

A: All-Time Friends

A is the list of people who come in and out throughout your life. They are there all the time, even if only as a shadow for some years. They have been with you at at least a few milestone moments of your life — graduations, break-ups, childbirth, deaths, marriages, divorces. They know some of your deep secrets and probably know your parents. Even if the A friend disappears for a year or two, at some point they come back and it’s like no time has passed.

B-Best Friends 

B is for the people who were very good friends for a time, the people you thought would be lifelong friends, but somehow you drifted apart and now they are on the periphery. It would be possible to call and catch up but not like with your A Friends. You can’t recreate that deep, rich engagement that you had during the time you thought you’d be lifelong friends. People on this list might be childhood friends. Your parents might still be friends and you might have overlap in that way but time has diluted the intensity of the closeness of your early years. These friends likely know your parents.

C-Cohort Friends

C is the list of people who you hung out with a lot during a specific period of your history; they were part of your regular social scene but you never hung out one-on-one very much. You were friends en masse with other friends— in college or at work or as part of a sports team, maybe as part of a couple. You never had late night existential conversations with these friends. They don’t know your deep dark secrets and probably don’t know your parents.

D-Daily Friends

D is the list of current friends. These are the people that you see on the daily right now. They are the current dinner party friends, family vacation friends, holiday function friends. Some of these friends are also (or will become) A or B friends and some of these people are or will become C friends. We are all now our parents.

I went back through my list and added my letter codes to my list. As I did this I realized that I yearned to see a lot of people on my list. Many of the people on my B list could have become A list friends if I’d only stayed in touch. And I have a feeling that if I reached out maybe we could try to rekindle something, start anew. 

Maybe it’s my age, this middle-life passage, that’s inspiring this friendship inventory project. Maybe I’m more in touch with my own mortality and I want to create a record of the important people in my life. 

I think what I’ve learned from this list is that it’s stupid. Organizing my friends this way doesn’t make sense because friendships aren’t linear and life isn’t static. This list has helped me activate my memories of people in my history. It’s inspired me to reconnect with some of the people I’ve lost along the way. The letter I’ve given them isn’t the end of the story. It’s just the beginning. 

Going Beyond Gossip: Say Goodbye to that Dirty Little Practice

Yesterday I took a walk with a friend and we ended up talking at length about how upset we both were with a mutual friend who’d been checked out, unavailable and unpredictable lately. During the course of our two-hour walk, I felt like my personal complaining digressed into gossip. I wanted to stop, and I tried several times, but I couldn’t. 

When I got home I felt irritated and uncomfortable. I was walking around with a metaphorical layer of dirt on my skin, grimy with guilt. I grew up with a lot of gossip. It was part of our family culture. My parents had a lot to say about pretty much everyone they met. I thought it was normal to assess and judge everyone. I learned that this was how people talked about each other. Naturally, I grew to believe that people talked about me like we talked about other people in our house.

Gossip is everywhere. People do it every day, unconsciously most of the time. I don’t think people who gossip are malevolent. I don’t think most of us even realize that we’re doing it. But why do we gossip? 

As I sat in my soiled skin thinking about why I’d digressed into that form of communication I realized that the regressive gossipy conversation my friend and I had yesterday was serving me by creating a bridge away from my own feelings. 

In finding this common topic and feeding it with tidbits of gossipy details, I was joining my friend on a bridge. We could stand there together and be in this neutral place, neither of us being truly with our feelings.

If I had been able to be with my own emotions of sadness and disappointment about our mutual friend, I wouldn’t have needed to build the bridge away from myself. But it was easier to walk away, meet my friend, and stand on the bridge, biding time away from the pain of my own feelings. 

Gossip is a way to not be alone in whatever emotion we are having about a person. Yesterday when both my friend and I regressed into caddy gossip about our mutual friend we were finding a way not to be alone. Each of us felt hurt in our own ways and it was painful to experience that emotion. So we joined each other on the gossip bridge and kept each other company, neither of us alone in the discomfort of what we were really feeling.

Gossip hurts the people we are talking about, but it hurts those who are gossiping more. Over time, if we manage our feelings using this method, the grime builds up and becomes more difficult to scrub off. When we look in the mirror it becomes harder to see ourselves clearly. We are so covered with the dirt of others that we don’t even remember our true selves.

Not gossiping is as much a practice as gossiping. And it’s a lot harder. Sitting in the discomfort of whatever we are feeling — sadness, discomfort, insecurity — takes a lot more emotional muscle than ranting about someone’s character defects or personal choices. But it’s possible. Most of us know when we’re gossiping. Maybe you feel it like I do — that dirty layer of silt on your skin. Maybe it’s that sinking feeling in your gut or a tingling in your cheeks. 

Notice when you are walking towards the bridge, colluding with someone else, about someone else, and try to turn back towards yourself, to listen to what you have to say, what you are feeling. The conversation might change. Instead of talking about someone else, you’ll have to talk about yourself, about how you feel. And that’s harder work, but it’s also kinder. And it’s a lot cleaner.