Loss of a Dear Friend

How do you handle losing a friendship?

It can be a lot like ending a relationship. Sometimes it feels very much like a breakup. Sometimes it happens slowly, and quietly. Sometimes it goes out with a bang that leaves hurting hearts. Actually, either way, I think it leaves hurting hearts. It hearts to lose a friend.

When someone passes away, you miss the hole. Whether it's a relative, a friend, or even a pet, the part that you mourn and where you miss them is the hole. If you did something together every Wednesday, you're going to miss them every Wednesday. If they greeted you at the door every time you arrived home, you'll mourn them every time you go home.

The same goes for the loss of a relationship. Whether a friendship blows up or fades away, you're going to miss the hole.

In my case, I find myself staring down this giant, gaping hole at least once a week, sometimes every day. My heart hurts every time.

When I tell stories, look through old photos, drive past restaurants, walk past stores or plan coffee dates. When I think about foreign travel, or put on my favourite necklace. When I do anything that makes me think of that friendship, my heart aches. Right to my very core, right in the middle of my chest. It makes me think the hole is in my own ribcage.

And I don't know how to mend the hole. In fact, I don't think it can be mended.

Perhaps, over time, the hole will slowly close up on its own. As I make new memories, take new photos and build new friendships, I will find myself staring into that hole less and less often. I will probably never forget about all the old things, but I will probably find them in my head less often. Which is okay, I think.


But how else does one deal with losing a friendship?

Especially one that disappeared so suddenly.

Hoop Earrings

As I sort of mentioned in my last post, my father has a lot of really messed up opinions, especially when it comes to women. Over the last few years, with the help of my loving husband, I have been working through these opinions, one by one, and sorting truth from straight-up BS.

One of his "catch phrases" will pop into my head and I'll tell my husband about it. Sometimes he'll just laugh at me, and sometimes he sits there and lovingly tells me that's not true, depending on what it is, obviously. Then we talk about it, and I form my own opinion on the subject, and discard whatever crazy thought was in my head. I try to explain these to people sometimes, but I honestly can't remember any of them because I've just completely let it go.

The most recent one of these happened without my husband, but I did just fine on my own. I was getting ready for a swing dance with a friend, and I put on some earrings, but they didn't quite match my shirt, so I looked through my collection again. I was away from home for a couple days, so I'd only brought a couple pairs with me. One of those was a pair of silver hoops, a couple inches in diameter, that I had never worn. I popped them in, and my friend said they looked great with my curly hair and I wore them.

Halfway through the dance this conversation happened:

Me: "Do these earrings look okay?"

My other friend: "Yeah, they're really cute!"

Me: "I don't look too slutty?"

Friend: "What?"

Me: "My dad always says only sluts and hookers wear hoop earrings." My friend looked at me like I was crazy, so of course I went on. "Yeah, only sluts have short hair and only hookers wear hoop earrings, and the shorter your hair and the bigger the hoop earrings the sluttier you are. Hoop earrings make girls look loose and like a prostitute."

At about this point, I realized how crazy I sounded. How on earth can hoop earrings make you look slutty? Girls look slutty when they're showing a lot of skin. Earrings don't show or cover any skin, so how can a certain type of earring make you look slutty? It doesn't make any sense at all.

My friends assured me this was crazy, and I carried on wearing my super cute hoop earrings.

When I told my husband, he said we should go buy the biggest hoop earrings we can find and wear them around my father, because that's just that crazy. He said he has never looked at a girl wearing hoop earrings and thought she looked slutty.

Honestly, though, I have. I've also looked at hoop earrings in stores and thought "Only sluts wear those" and when I worked at a jewelry store, I judged every girl who bought hoop earrings. How crazy is that?

So here's the thing, I guess. Women can wear whatever earring they want, and as many as they want. Women's ears will never make a woman look more or less likely to have sex.

#YesAllWomen

I was raised by a male-dominant, chauvinistic, pseudo-feminist father.

He'd talk like he was concerned about women's rights, but he was much more concerned with suppressing all women from succeeding, from speaking out and from being considered equals. It was very confusing for me after I moved out, because I believed that he was a feminist, or at least believed in equal rights, but as I sorted out his thoughts and beliefs, I began to see that he saw women as lesser and unworthy.

Not to divulge into my very complicated childhood and upbringing, but I needed to explain why his views had so much power for so long.

My father used to tell a story about a friend of his who would wear low cut blouses and short pencil skirts to work, and faced a lot of sexual harassment in the workplace. When she approached the boss about it, he told her that "If it's not for sale, don't advertise."

This was the mantra of sorts that I grew up with in mind when it came to dressing myself, especially for work. I would dress modestly because I didn't want men to think I was loose, or a prostitute. I would wear pants or long skirts because I didn't want to get raped.

Wait.

Let's let that sink in for a minute.

I wore certain clothes because I didn't want someone else to make a choice to abuse me, take away my rights and force me into sex. I didn't wear V-neck shirts because I was afraid that someone would rape me.

This is a concept reinforced over and over in society, but one that is highly wrong.

Here's the thing. My body is not for sale. In fact, my body is not something that can be bought. Ever. I am not an item. My personal space is not something that can be purchased.

Therefore, my body is not something that can be advertised. No matter how short my skirt or how low-cut my shirt, I am not advertising anything. No matter how much skin I am showing, I am not inviting any man to buy my body.

I will never tell any of my children this poisonous sentence. Instead, I will teach them that humans are not something to be purchased.

This all is not to say that I don't believe in dressing modestly. I like my skirts a little longer, shirts a little higher, and I love wearing boleros over anything strapless. Not because I don't want to be for sale, but because I am more confident with a little more skin covered, and I am aware that people judge everyone for anything, and the quickest way to judge someone is to look at what they're wearing. When I am with people who know me and I am comfortable with, I'll bare plenty of skin, but I work in customer service, dealing with people who don't know me all day. I want them to look at me and see my personality, which I display every day in my clothes (bright colors, happy coordination and quirky accessories).

So anyways, there's my feminist rant, and my contribution to #yesallwomen. Yes, all women are taught to fear rape. Yes, all women are told they're bodies are for sale.

Johanna 2

Having made up her mind, Johanna reached for her computer and turned it on. She spun her chair around a few times while it booted up, and took a moment to dry her eyes. When it was ready, she reached for the mouse and clicked a few times, opening a new email. As she typed in her boss's address, she realized she had been holding her breath, and slowly let it out between her teeth.

She started and erased an email several times, renaming the subject line four or five times as well. Finally she settled on a simple approach.

Harry, I have something you may be interested to hear. When is a good time for a private meeting? 

Vague, unassuming, and most importantly, wouldn't tip him off to her intentions. Once she had her email open, she tried to push everything out of her mind and actually get some work done. There were a dozen unread emails waiting for her, each and every one of them adding something to her to-do list.

In less time than she expected, an email from Harry popped up, saying that he would be free for a little while around one. She could come by his office then. Johanna checked the clock. 9:36. That left just under three and a half hours for her to finish up what she could.

Just before one, Johanna found herself standing in front of Harry's secretary, telling her that she had a meeting scheduled with him. Before the little blonde could pick up the phone to tell Harry, the older man came out of his office.

"Johanna! There you are. Come, come. I have to get somewhere, but we can talk on the way." Harry didn't give Johanna any time to protest, taking her by the elbow and directing her towards the elevator.

She was dumbstruck until they were in the elevator going down. She really would have liked to sit down and tell him one on one, not in a car, or in an elevator, or wherever he was going. She had to get her bearings, figure out where he was going, and plan how to approach this again. She needed to do this today, no putting it off.

The elevator dinged at the main floor, and Harry led Johanna out of the building and into a waiting town car. The chauffeur must have been expecting him, because Harry didn't have to tell him where to go. This only increased Johanna's confusion. She needed to know where they were headed. Should she tell him on the way, or there? Maybe on the way back? Without knowing what to expect, she had no idea how to do this.

It didn't really matter though, because Harry didn't let her get a word in edgewise. "You know, Johanna, I inherited almost everything I have. My grandfather worked very hard to build a company from the ground up, and my father worked very hard to turn it into an empire. The hardest decision I ever had to make was what I wanted to major in at college. That was my father's rule, you know. He had four sons, so he required that each of us go to college and get a degree and then decide what we wanted to do. I don't know if you know this, but only two of my brothers are part of the group. David is a doctor, you know. He wanted nothing to do something else altogether. Anyways, I was the youngest, so by the time I graduated, my other brothers had already taken over some part of the company. I didn't have to do anything to get to where I am now." He paused and looked at Johanna, as if expecting some sort of response. Johanna smiled as if to say Go on, still desperately trying to figure out what was going on.

Sunrise

They say history repeats itself. I guess that's true. I mean, I watch the sun rise every morning, and yet the next morning, it rises once again. Every day, bright red and pink slowly spread their way across the far edge of the horizon, and the sun slowly pokes up behind them, as if he's afraid we've already forgotten how beautiful he is. One full day later, it all happens again. Granted, the colours, the patterns and the immense beauty change day to day, but history still repeats itself.

I wouldn't change it if I could, though. There is something so comforting in the sight of an expanse of blue-grey clouds, dappled in hot pink. The colour splashes across the bottom sides of the clouds, as if it is in a rush to get somewhere. It doesn't seem to be in a rush, but when you look back a minute later, the colour has spread so much farther, you're sure that its late for something.

Eventually, the pink starts to fade and all of the sudden, the sun is up and it is day.

Scientifically, I know that the Earth I stand on is round, the sunrise is a result of the Earth turning, and the colours are just rays of light that have been lengthened from having to come all the way around the edge of the round planet.

And yet, I can see how people believed they stood on a flat surface, and the sun revolved around them. That's the way we're trained to think, isn't it? We're taught to believe we are the center of everything.

We aren't though, the center of everything. We are each just a speck of matter floating in a never-ending rotation, surrounded by other specks of matter who think they are the center of everything.

Countdown

I can't breathe.

Ten.

I can't see, either. Everything feels a million miles away and is all fuzzy.

Nine.

Okay, for real now, I can't breathe. I feel like my stomach is in my throat and no air can get past it.

Eight.

I can now hear the blood pumping through my brain, so I force a ragged breath in through my lips.

Seven.

Let the breath back out again, listening to the air hiss between my teeth.

Six.

Halfway there, right? Or does five count as halfway there? I've never really been--

Five.

Crap, crap, crap. My heart is racing.

Four.

I can feel a huge grin working its way across my face.

Three.

One more deep breath, all the way in...

Two.

And all the way back out. A slow calm is working its way through my bloodstream.

One.

This. Is. It.

Jump.

Everything falls away from me, which is ironic, because I'm falling. I'm surrounded by nothing and no one, just me and the air. I can feel and hear the air, she's yelling in my ears how crazy I am. I focus and count, remembering how long they said to wait. When I pull on the cord, my body jerks up. Everything slows down and I right myself. Now I can focus on the ground, and see how far away it really is. It gets closer constantly, but it still seems like forever away.

Pure ecstasy is pumping through my veins. This is so awesome. The stunning beauty of the landscape, the sheer thrill of the fall, the pounding adrenaline. I have never felt more alive. I want time to freeze right here and now. I never want to feel anything else, because nothing else will ever compare to way I feel right now.