When is a rose not a rose?
Suspend your disbelief momentarily. Close your eyes. Imagine, if you can, that you’re a flower…a rose perhaps. You can sense what’s around you. You can feel, hear, and smell, but can’t see. All your life, you’ve been a rose. You went to sleep when the sunset, as a rose. In the morning when the sun began to peek over the horizon you woke up that day, also a rose. In your mind it was inconceivable that any other flower in the world could be different. You were a rose. Therefore, everyone else must be a rose too. And if everyone else was a rose, even though you could imagine they looked different from you, they must also think and act like roses, too.
Then one day, you hear a voice beside you. “Hello,” they say. For a while you converse with them, never once knowing that the flower beside you is, in fact, a tulip, and not a rose at all. You’re blissfully ignorant until you’re told. And even once they do disclose that they’re unlike you, you still cannot fathom it. All you’ve ever known is what you are, and all you’ve ever believed is that all other flowers are like you. However, now you know they’re not. Your world is now a lot bigger than you thought it was before. You are shattered.
Growing up, I was a blind rose. For me making and keeping friends has never been easy. I’ve written in the past that as a child I had significant trouble connecting with my peers. Whether it was because of my atypical nature, or my OCD, or my social anxiety, I always found it challenging to communicate with people. For a long time, I didn’t know why, either. The trick to navigating social interactions seemed to elude me. I wanted to be the prototype for what a good friend was. I wanted to be liked and admired. Reflection now causes me to understand, though, that my “unique” way of seeing the world was the thing that held me back the most. To simplify…I lacked empathy.
Self-reflection is difficult.
I was not then, nor am I now, an easy person to be friends with. The trains in my mind are often traveling through the station faster than other peoples. To others I appear as impatient, fast to connect, sometimes blunt, and always overly egotistical. People believe I am set in my ways (likely because I am), and they see me as being rigid. I seem always to believe I’m right. I still have trouble making and keeping close friendships now because I’m a lot to take. Not many people want to put in the effort to see past my abrasive attitude.
Recently I had the unfortunate opportunity of cutting off ties with someone I considered a dear friend. That’s, actually, what got me thinking about this. We had had a conversation about how I view the world, and how much my standpoint has changed over the last several years. When we first started to talk, we’d discuss everything. Relationships, friendships, worldview. She was someone I could confide in. Things changed, though. She could never get over how different my mind worked from hers. There were times where she was enthralled by it. She’d ask questions and pose hypothetical situations, probing me for insight into how I interpreted the world. Her way of thinking was slower than mine (most people’s ways of thinking are more time-consuming than mine), and from time to time I think it would bother her.
Eventually, our personalities would clash. There would be days, weeks, where we wouldn’t talk. I’d be thinking too quickly for her tastes. If we got into an argument, I’d get over it quicker, where she would hold a grudge. Bit by bit the bridge that our friendship was built on was breaking. As I am wont to do, I would grow impatient with her, telling her that she needed to get over some of the stupid things I said quicker. She would snap back that her mind didn’t work the same.
The end of a beginning
So, this week our friendship hit a breaking point. It became apparent that no amount of respect between friends was going to be enough for us to continue. I am always going to be me, and she is always going to be her. Try as I might, I am always going to get over things quickly. Like all other things in my life, I process my emotions faster than some. At least…faster than she. Ultimately, I came to understand this weekend that although she’s a beautiful person, and although I am too, we’re not wonderful friends together. A hard choice was made, and we blocked each other on our various social media’s.
I’m grateful for what she taught me about myself. I’m thankful that she took the time to be my friend. Losing a friend is hard, and even for someone who thinks at 100km/hour it’s going to take a while for me to get over.