Cleaning out the Friends Closet

Believe What They Show You and Because "I've Got Me"

Photo by Becca McHaffie on Unsplash

I heard this phrase today during my Pilates workout and I paused.

I like it.

A friend recently compared it to logs floating down a stream. The stream represents life, whereas logs floating are friends. Because of the current, sometimes you drift away, as life takes you in other directions. Perhaps you’ll catch up with them later on in life and down the stream, though perhaps you won’t.

And that is just fine.

Part of being co-dependent and as someone who was traumatized, I accepted a lot in relationships that I never should have.

I also accepted a lot of trauma-bonded friendships and ignored some strong warning signs about people’s characters.

I think about both the quotes that states that people don’t really change and when people show you who they are, you ought to believe them.

I didn’t do that, for a long time, all growing up.

I recall telling my mother when I was a younger, in middle school, ‘If they talk about others with me, I’m sure they’re talking about me to others’.

I forgot that somehow along the way.

Some people find it much easier to talk about people to other people, than to be direct with them. You can delude yourself into thinking they mean well and it’s for their own benefit, but the truth is - it lacks honesty and integrity.

I understood ‘bonding’ with some people to be like this - gossiping, venting, complaining about others, laughing at them, and making them small to try to feel bigger.

I look back on it now and it just feels icky.

I did it, I participated in it, absolutely, especially at certain ages and about certain people.

I wasn’t above believing it ‘bonded’ me to certain friends. And yet, over time, as I have gotten sober and tended more and more to my mental health, as I’ve shifted places and circles, I realize - this doesn’t have to be the default mode of friendship. I don’t want to thrive or bond over talking derogatorily about others, especially when it’s things that the person won’t share with their spouse, parent, sibling, or other friend.

I want to talk about ideas and encourage each other. I don’t want to be one of the small minds that talks negatively about people behind their backs, things they never do or could tell them to their face.

And I’m happier with a cleaned out closet.

I spent a lot of time trying not to be alone. But the healthier I get, and the more I’ve healed through therapy and sobriety, the more I realize, I am happy alone and sometimes we are better off without certain people in our lives. Sometimes we grow more and become better versions of ourselves.

I am learning to pay attention to the people who can be/will be genuinely happy for me when I get something or do something, that they do not have or cannot do, and how they attend to their own self-development.

On a similar though slightly different hand, I recently read in Mel Robbins’ recent book, the Let Them Theory, that we can use one another’s’ success or ‘that thing they did that we wanted to do’ to either inspire us and to help us, to use as blueprint, or, we can fester in judgment and jealousy.

I am not immune to feeling bothered when someone has accomplished/done something I want, an author or scholar or influencer, etc, but as Mel Robbins states, it can also teach us where our work lies, where we need to focus on. They can become our teachers.

She was brutal and incredibly accurate about why it bugs us, because it can reveal the things we have been holding ourselves back from and where we need to go forth and do work.

She was so right in my areas of jealousy: publishing, travel, pursue of graduate work in areas I want to explore, etc.

I’d rather do that and focus on that, then expend countless energy on venting, gossiping, and criticizing.

When you have people who encourage you, who want the best for you, and who are honest with you, in give-and take, and who are not two-faced, they are gems. I am thankful to have so many in my life; my circle has shifted greatly in the last few years, but sometimes we need to do pruning and do cleaning.

If we evolve, it’s likely that paths will diverge.

I center the most important thing that was been huge in my evolution over the last few years as well.

After undergoing a tremendous amount of healing, something that I heard the author, Ashley C. Ford said once:

I realize that even if they all disappear, my husband, my mother, my friends -

I will still be okay. Because I’ve got me.

It took a long time. I’ve been tested and stretched and let go of and let others go, but I realize now that

Yes, I do.

I’ve finally got me.