I don't think I have ever known real friendship. Wait, let me see if I can put that a little better. I have friends - good friends - and I don't know how I would have survived my adult life without them. But I honestly don't think that I have ever REALLY known what real friendship means. The kind of friendship that survives the horrible experience of looking yourself in the mirror and seeing WRONG. The kind of friendship that makes you want to choke your friend, but simultaneously realize that you never would have reached such a moment of clarity without them. I spoke to a girlfriend tonight who did those things for me. She pointed out the truth to me... a truth so horrible and hidden that I never would have come to it on my own. I look at mysef every day when I wake up and every night before I go to sleep. I like to think that I know myself better than anyone else ever could But after having known this insightful, honest, concerned woman for a little less than a year, she saw it. The one thing that has given rise to all of the things that have been bothering me for the last I don't know how long. My response to all of that was a stunned silence. At first I was mad. How dare her known something about me that I never realized? Then I was in denial. That can't possibly be right. Now I'm just thankful. Thankful that I have someone in my life who has the ability to see what I need to help me make a change and the nerve to show it to me without fear of jeopardizing our friendship. She doesn't care that I might be mad at her because she knows it isn't personal. She knows my pain because she has felt it too. She doesn't want to hear my excuses and explanations because she recognizes them for what they are: simple tools of incompetence that build monuments of nothingness (sound familiar to some of you?). So God bless Robin. I am not fixed, I only know how to start the process. But without her, I wouldn't even be on the right road.
