stung

Thought my days of feeling the sting of regret were long past.  Apparently not.

At Bounty this a.m., was delighted to nab a gab with a classmate who's a longtime friend.  Didn't tag up in high school, but years later, after she became a friend of Mim's.  Not sure what drew them together, possibly Laurel Summer Camp.  In any case, Barb stayed with us a couple times, including over Christmas.  (Remember how we'd include sun block in her stocking presents, since she came down from frozen Canada.)  As I recall, Mom was down in Australia during those stays.

Barb was the first person I ever heard take Mim to task, although she did it with a laugh.  It must have been over a Christmas stay, at least 30 years ago.  She wondered aloud to Mim why my older sis never helped with the dishes & snorted with disbelieving laughter when Mim explained she didn't know where the dishes went.  

I'd never heard anyone say anything remotely critical to Mim, so it was quite the moment for me.  And it made sense - to NOT know where the dishes belonged would seem to require an incredible concentration of will.  But someone noticing it, finding it ludicrous & commenting on it - without damaging their core relationship - was downright wonderful.  Bravo, Barb!

For me, Barb has always been a truth teller.  No drama, just the facts m'am.  When she asked today about Mim, was able to fill her in on the little bit I know (way more than this time last year, but basically nada).  Barb mentioned that Mim hadn't touched base with her in about two years.  She talked about getting a letter from her, a group letter, but nothing after that.  She reckoned the last time she got a photo was back in 2009.

After all these years, after putting things in perspective, using ancient emotional ouches as precious lessons learned rather than painful memories,  took me by surprise to feel the sharp sting of regret.  Mim sent group letters - but not to me.  The last pic Barb has is from 2009;  the last one I've seen is from 2000, at Whitney & Chad's wedding.

Reminded myself that it's a sorry use of energy, feeling woeful over the lack of any there there.  It's not like this is where our once apparently close relationship has degenerated - this is where it actually was all those years.  It stung because I care about & for Mim, as I have all my life.  And, in the ways I long hoped for, I don't seem to register on her personal radar, not even getting a copy of a group letter.  Except that makes sense, since I've never really been part of her group, including her family group.

Bravo, me!  Not long ago, the fresh reminder would have been devastating, leaving me wiped out by heartbreak & personal recrimination for days,  grieving for something that never even existed.  

It's not that the relationship has tattered, but that it never existed in the first place.  

Instead of beating myself up for over half a lifetime of trying to heal a relationship that couldn't because it wasn't, felt a detached interest in the sting, in the fact that having my outsideness brought home still stung.  And once again, as she did so many years ago, it was Barb revealing the truth, in her grounded, sensible way.

Just realizing that Barb & John share an important trait that I wish was mine - the ability to see the difficult in another without forming a judgement around it.  To experience it just as a fact or event, without a smidgen of editorializing or embellishing.

Was surprised this morning by the unexpected sting of being outside of Mim's circle of compatriots, at the reminder that I was never really inside it.  Where once I would have felt woeful, I was swept with gratitude for having all the remarkable things that came & come my way because of & through Mim.  

The sting hurt, but the gratitude for all Mim was & is in my life - however distant & challenging - is like aloe on the teensy wound.