Kaelan + Ecstatic Self
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My little video last night inspired this...
🕑 Added 2023-12-07 22:06:11 +0000 UTCHey guys. My talk with you last night made me think I should turn it into a YouTube video. What do you think? Here's a script I drafted up.
Big hugs!! Kaelan
I just returned home from a long weekend in Mexico, and while I was there, some uncomfortable emotions came up,. You see, we returned to the place where hubby and I got married. The reflections about our time there celebrating the wedding were beautiful: going through old photos, recounting stories, etc. But there was one aspect that wasp particularly challenging for me: all these old memories brought up someone I’ve tried very hard over the past two and a half years year to forget. My best friend of 20-years who unceremoniously ghosted me the day after her wedding. She was in most of the photos, many of the memories. From putting flower arrangements together to filling gift bags for the other guests, she and one of my other high school friends were with me over the course of the wedding week, sharing many happy moments and memories together. So… I guess it should be no surprise that after several days of dwelling on the departure of this once intimate and critical relationship that I should end up getting sick. I mean, really sick. I mean…purging more fluids from my body than I thought was even possible. And despite the discomfort of this, I still kept working to say “Thank you” to the universe. Let’s talk about why.
[intro]
Hey y’all. I am Kaelan and this is Ecstatic Self.
So, a little backstory. Sarah and I met the spring before our freshman year of high school—we were both accepted into the same gifted program, and it was an orientation day where the newly accepted class could shadow a current freshman over the course of a whole school day. It was not instant friendship—in fact, I remember her coming across as rude and abrasive. We had a rocky four years — sometimes friends, sometimes battling like cats. End of senior year, we opened up to each other about sex and sexuality, and it bonded us very deeply. We became super close friends for the duration of that summer. But by the end of the first year of university, I apparently did something that made her ghost me. We didn’t talk for a year or thereabouts. Eventually, we got back together, and in our mid-twenties, became very close friends.
You know those friends who make you laugh so hard that your ab muscles hurt and you can barely breathe? Yeah, she was that kind of friend. Practically every time we connected via text message or video, it would results in paralytic laughter where I could barely move. When it came time for me to get married, she was of course an integral part of my wedding week in Mexico, in step with me every step of the way. She was in no way a perfect friend; she would refuse to answer a voice audio call, for example. No matter how dire the situation, she’d refuse to pick up her phone. Despite these eccentricities, I cherished her friendship.
She eventually found a guy, got engaged, and it turns out that this guy didn’t care for me very much. Sure, I got too aggressive when playing competitive board games and might have been a bit insulting, I totally own that. But, more likely, I think this straight man was threatened with the intimacy she and I shared. There was tension between us on the day of their wedding — and I was hurt that I wasn’t invited to give a toast at her wedding, when she had been so integral to mine. But in the succeeding days, I could sense an energetic distance growing between us. You ever have the experience where you can almost feel a loved one thinking about you, and then, sure enough, you get a call from them the next day? Yeah, well, it was the opposite of that.
Over the succeeding few years (this was June 2021), I made almost two dozen attempts to talk with her and hear first hand what was going on. It never manifested. I started to feel like I was cray—did I make this all up? Did I not mean as much to her as she meant to me? Was I deluding myself? How could someone throw you aside after 20 years of friendship?
It’s been a long and drawn out process of grieving, learning to surrender this relationship. I’ve cried, I’ve raged, I’ve — in brief glimpses — even wanted to cause physical harm. I felt so crushed.
I thought I had processed it well. But going back to this place where she served such an integral role, brought a lot of old feelings up.
Coincidently… actually, not coincidently. Serendipitously, while we were there, I got notification from an old video chatting app that she and I used to use that all of our recorded videos would be deleted if I didn’t download the app again within the next few days. I really never used this app with anyone else. So I downloaded it again, and there they were. Dozens of video clips that we had exchanged over a two year period.
In one of the first one’s I downloaded, she said: “I think of you every day. I can’t wait for you to come home and visit. You need to visit more often. I am so grateful for our 20 years of friendship. We will never not be friends—we will be together forever.” Wow. That felt affirming. I did matter to her after all.
Another video wasn’t so comforting. In it, she said, “Sometimes I worry that I am a psychopath. I can be warm, but I am also a very cold person. I cut people out of my life heartlessly.” Wow. When someone tells you who they are, believe them!
Watching these old videos (and, actually, I edited some of them into a montage), I was flooded with old feelings. In some ways, it felt like I had her back. In other ways, it just underscored the loss.
It’s not coincidental that our fourth night there, I came down with virulent food poisoning. I purged and purged and purged. I am confident that I am still in a state of severe dehydration because of it. And flying home while experiencing that… let’s just say: not fun.
But one of the things I really aspire toward in life is the ability to see everything that happens to me as being a blessing. To say, “Thank you, universe/god, for this gift.” Even the uncomfortable things. And so, as I sat on the toilet, purging, I tried to say “thank you.” And I tried to ask my body: Why. Why is this happening? What is the lesson for me to learn? Is there a lesson, even?
What I heard back is this: You are flushing this out of your system. You are being purged of your grief. Go and be free and lovely wholly again.
Because, here’s the thing… bad things happen to us. People scorn us, betray us, disappoint us, harm us. We can either hate them and let that rage burn us from the inside—or we can bemoan our state and feel like a victim—OR we can choose a third path and bless them. Thank them for the hardship they’ve brought…because they are being our teacher. They are teaching us who to treat other people better. To do unto others as we wished they had done onto us. It’s not easy, and it’s not fun. But it’s an important lesson.
When we can see everything that happens in our life as being a blessing, we will have reached a profound state in our own evolution. It’s the sort of state that saints and bodhisattvas have achieved.
And here’s the final thing I want to add: the love never goes away. Whether someone removes themselves from your life or dies or disappears in some other way… the love can always still be felt. I can still feel the love bond she and I share, even though we are no longer together. And I know there will come a point — either in this life or in the hereafter — where we will connect over everything that transpired and laugh about it. None of this is real; it is all just a game. The only thing that really matters is the love. And I can always hold onto that, even if she never speaks to me directly again…at least in this lifetime.
Pay attention to the love. Let go of what’s no longer serving you. See everything as a blessing. These are my lessons for this week.
I hope this is helpful for you on your journey. Namaste.
Comments
Brian Jones
What a visceral story! Thank you for sharing this.
