I read a great article on suicide today (here) and it made me think about how I use this blog. I don’t get a lot of comments. They come in weird spurts then my friends stop responding again. So I’m not throwing these words into the void because I get a direct response.

I’m trying to talk myself into hope. No one else can talk me into hope. Into feeling like there is a point in my life… goodness knows some well paid professionals have spent decades trying. Instead here I am, trying to make my own hope.

My emotions aren’t someone else’s fault. They can’t be. My emotions aren’t things that other people can control. Other people can have influence…. but that’s the limit. For the past year I have been bouncing off my friend and getting more and more distraught… then it hit a fevered pitch and it’s all my fault and now I need to pick up the pieces and keep going.

I did this to myself. I look to my friends to provide a form of stability that is very hard for anyone to maintain for themselves… let alone for a tie that is so distant as friendship. That’s not fair. I mean, there is no fair in this life…. but it wasn’t fair of me to need so much from her. But I will never stop needing that form of consistency so I need to back away from the relationship entirely because consistency is the thing she is least capable of in this life. Keeping promises just isn’t an option.

So what do I do now? Do I get harder and more bitter because I feel let down? Do I turn my grief to other people and hope that other people can be what she could not be?

No.

There will never ever be anyone who touches my heart the way she does. She is special and wonderful and I will love her until I die.

I love my mother, too.

Sometimes, love is not enough.

But I am grown now. I keep saying “When I grow up” and I have to admit to myself…. I am grown up. This is it. I am as grown as I am going to get. I will deepen and mature. I will spread and become more…. but I’m grown.

I am grown up and now I do not need to have other people reflect constantly to me that I should be alive. I know it for myself. I can point at reasons big and small. I know my purpose. I have a few different roles. It’s not that I am just a tool that can be used and discarded. I am special and useful and necessary in a way that is not easy to replace. The things I know, the collection of experiences I have had… cannot be duplicated. My usefulness is not like other peoples. Not because I am better! Because there are a million different niches of need and it’s hard for anyone to be replaced in their usefulness.

Incest. Suicide. These are things I am good at talking about when other people can’t. I have a strong interest and a lot of tools in my tool belt for coping when others can’t. I like troubled children. They don’t bother me with their outbursts.

But even aside from these things, it would be ok if I were just a wife and mother with friends. That would be ok. I don’t owe the world more than that. Not really.

I will have other friendships. I have other friendships. I give in varying amounts. I receive in varying amounts and that’s ok. It becomes a problem when the relationship promises far more than it can deliver on. This is why I am so adamant about not wanting people to promise me anything. I understand that most people won’t deliver. Then I will get upset. Then it will be my own fault that I am upset. And things don’t improve from there.

I feel absolutely overwhelmed with gratitude that I get to have the relationships I’m having with my kids. Are there hard parts? Yes. Oh goodness…. yes. But hard is ok.

How I let people treat me teaches my children how the world should work. When I am deciding what is good enough for me… I am modeling relationships.

That stops me in my tracks.