trusting companion

i have two friends who i was talking to this week. the conversations where completely separate, and on the surface had nothing to do with each other, but deeper down there is much in common. this happens to me a lot, i have things happen to or around me and i somehow connect the dots. i think of this as a gift, its one of the reasons i was good at my job when i was a hired gun, i could see one thing happening and remember something completely different and intuit a connection no one else saw.

this is not always seen as a positive thing by those around me. i have been told i spend too much time and effort analyzing things that i should just allow things to happen and accept that “shit happens”. but this is not really something new that i just started doing. i remember my pediatrician trying to remove a piece of seashell from my foot when i was about 6. i would not let him touch me until i completely understood what was happening. years later, he needed to give me a physical for school, we were standing in a locker room there was a long queue of pensive teenagers waiting to “turn your head and cough”, but he picked me out of the crowd and said “oh no, not you” when he saw i was next in line.

one of my friends is in hospital, she is having a procedure that she has spent a year worrying about and avoiding at all costs. most of her other friends and family do not know where she is or why she is so disconnected. while talking the other day, she asked me a question, “is companionship worth it?” i asked “worth what?”, but i really knew what she meant, i guess the question was to buy time while i thought about it.

i have another friend who is avoiding another type of painful procedure, she is keeping the world at bay and attempting to stop any risk by hiding herself inside a cocoon she has created. she has found a way to defer life by creating plans that say she can have fun if she accomplishes a list of goals by some arbitrary (and safely distant) timeframe. the trick to the success of this deferred safety appears to be to continue to add goals which are always in the future.

this second friend asked me a different question, “what are you afraid of?”, again i asked a question in response, “what are you afraid of?”. the answer i got was that she was afraid of pain, she did not want to let someone close to her for fear they would hurt her. it was safer if she kept distance and allowed life to pass by. i thought this was interesting because the question about companionship from the first friend was based on the same theme, she is fragile and someone has offered her a hand to hold onto, she is laying in a hospital bed trying to decide if it is more dangerous to take the hand or to try to stand alone; consider that this friend is post-op with surgery and med induced balance issues and the metaphor really does work.

the answer to the second question for me is, “i am afraid of missing out on life”. i do not want to run into a brick wall and realize that’s as far as i can go. i have always felt that there is a future, that life is fun and that if you are willing to work for something you can enjoy having it when you get it. but life requires you to take risks, to make choices and to accept the consequences. sometimes there is pain in a choice, and you just need to realize that if the choice is right, the pain is a requirement of the choice.

the answer for the first question is “yes, companionship is worth all of the pain it may bring.” i have had companionship in my life. i have held my best friend and known that the moments we spent together were worth all the risk and pain they could bring. i have also needed to come to terms with the end of the relationship, and accept that our lives were going to go in different directions. even living half way around the world is not enough to take those previous moments away, those moments, those times together are the good times you look back on when you feel the hole in your life.

the heart of both of these questions is; should you trust someone to come into your life and give you the chance to believe that the moments will last longer than the time it takes for the person to begin to show you the full person beneath the veil. should you reach out and take the hand, should you begin to believe that the person will be there when you need someone. you can only do this if you have trust that the person and their hand will be there.

but you also need trust in yourself, trust that in the event the hand is not there that you will not fall over. even when life has made you dizzy you need to remember that if the hand is gone you can sit for a moment longer and prepare yourself, but that eventually you need to stand up and start moving again.

balance requires trust that your legs will be there when you need to stand. companionship (okay love) requires trust that people who care for you will be there when you need them. without either of these, you are stuck sitting alone and watching the world pass by you.

fear of failure (or pain) is worse than the actual failure. if you do have the moments, at least you can look back and remember that you tried, and how the moments made you feel.