Please Forgive Me For Calling You a Liar...

...is not at all what she said.

Hello Beautifuls,

Welcome back to everyone who’s been here before and welcome to everyone who is new here this week. ❤️ I am grateful for your presence and humbled by your generosity and love. Thank you, thank you.

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Me and one of my best friends in high school, Michelle. I loved that young woman. We lost touch after graduation.

My Loves,

It’s been a strange couple of weeks. For the US, and also personally. For those of you over in

Elizabeth Gilbert

’s Letters from Love, you already know a bit of my story this week.

If you’re human and paying even the slightest bit of attention, you know the bigger story unfolding here in the US.

That’s part of the strangeness: as things fall apart, as a star CNN White House correspondent gets slotted to late night (and then resigns and comes to Substack) because the president doesn’t like him, our personal lives still go on. I find this remarkable and devastating. Maybe tomorrow I can find it magical, but today, hope is somewhere down between the couch cushions and I don’t have the energy to fish it out.

I was going to go light this week, talk about my struggle to buy a pair of regular old jeans. Remember those Levi’s 501s from back in the day that were stiff and uncomfortable for the first few weeks, and then for the next three years were the only pair you wanted to put on? That’s what I’m looking for, folks, and I think it’s gone the way of the rotary phone. I’m also looking for one of those, but that’s another story.

But then, the strangeness of these times continued to hammer on into my life and I wanted to talk instead about friendship.

Amy Brown

wrote a lovely piece on friendship a couple of weeks ago, but this is different.

This is about friendships that end, and the message I’m getting that seems awfully hard to bear, whether on a tiny me-scale or a global scale: Breathe, remain calm, go out and love on someone. Read things that matter. Hold people up who are falling down—especially yourself. Put on warm socks. Try to eat something good for you, but not broccoli if you don’t like it.

I lost a friend this weekend. That in itself wasn’t so surprising. We’d drifted apart, for no singular reason I could discern other than her financial circumstances upshifted dramatically, and all the ways in which we were different became even more obvious.

A friendship can withstand a lot of opposite opinions, ways of doing things, likes and dislikes. What it can’t withstand is a dissonance of values. And in her closing text, this friend made it very clear that what we believe a friendship to be, how to move in the world and care for people, how to communicate, is very, very different.

I had been asking the universe for help on this relationship for months. I felt excluded from her life and even if we were different, I missed her. I’d been driving and wondering what to do, asking my husband in the passenger seat next to me for his thoughts, and then finally, I just shouted at God (Source, Universe, Whatever You Want to Name It) and said, please, I’m tired, just give me something to go on.

And within a handful of minutes, I got a text from the friend in reply to my request to have lunch or a coffee soon—I’d been trying for months to get her alone so we could talk, she was always too busy. The text said a bunch of things, but the ones that replayed in my head all weekend were, “You lied to my face and I’m honestly not interested in having a friendship with you.”

It makes my heart beat in shame and embarrassment to read those words again. I feel unseen, unheard, misunderstood, with no way to defend myself. I’m quite sure she blocked me after that, though who knows. I did respond with what I hoped was kindness, but then I blocked her, deleted her number, removed her from my digital footprint.

But she still lives all over my house and my life. The purse she gave me last year, though only because it wasn’t designer enough for her anymore. The original piece of art that was a birthday gift several years ago. The housewarming gift, the cake stand I left at her house a few weeks ago, the list goes on and on.

It’s easy to erase someone’s email from our contacts, less easy to remove the traces, seen and unseen, of them from our skin.

What lingers for me beyond all of those things, is how we both didn’t start the uncomfortable conversation about where our friendship stood and how we were, or were not, being supported by the other. That was as much my responsibility as it was hers.

I am, however, surprised at her anger and the finality of her text. I had just seen this woman the Saturday before and she said nothing, acted normal. Then again, I didn’t say anything either. But I did not feel wronged or lied to. I wasn’t angry, just confused.

This is a microcosm of where we are as a country right now. A lot of us are confused as to how and why what is happening is happening. Many others are righteously angry and full of blame. And it is nearly impossible to win an argument with someone who thinks they are 100% right and someone else is the cause of all their suffering, all their anger, hurt and frustration.

This ending, I am sure, is better for me. The Universe gave me a very clear, hard, “No,” as an answer to my pleading. And when that happens, I feel like it’s a good idea to try and listen, even when I don’t understand, maybe especially when I don’t understand.

Perhaps it is a lesson in speaking up, instead of staying quiet when I know something is wrong.

This speaks to me on levels that go beyond friendships, and out into the larger world. The questions I am asking myself right now are ones of resistance: how and where.

For the first time in my life, I am afraid to Google a question that asks where I can gather with others to stand up against tyranny. But if I don’t ask, I will be lost to myself, because unlike watching this friendship slowly fade, I cannot sit by and watch all the things I believe in wither under the cowardly mis-stewardship of those afraid of our new Brotocracy.

The thing I will mourn the most about the loss of this friend is the missed opportunity to tell her how much I appreciated her, how I did love her, and how, even though I no longer have any interest in being in a friendship with her either, I hope she finds what she is looking for. I hope, someday, she allows herself to experience true friendship, allows herself to love herself and someone else enough to tell them she is hurt and angry and wants something different.

It’s a bit more, right now, than I can hope for this country. But hope is a wonderful thing, it can sprout up at the most unpredictable times.

So maybe I’ll hope for a little hope.

In case you’re needing a cheer-up, or just some peace,

Lisa Saffell

posted this on Substack Notes a while back. I saved the link to watch when I’m feeling sad or out of sorts. Which means it’s on repeat right now.

It brings me solace and joy. Every. Single. Time. I hope it does for you too.

With so much love, and maybe just a tiny bit of hope,

xoxo

j

Like every other social platform, Hello Beautifuls will get put in front of more people if you ❤️ this post I’d be grateful if you do.