oh my dear, what shall i say?

listening to: Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes
reading: J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
I'm trying to decide how confessional I want this blog to be. How much of my life to I want to parade before strangers? I guess I'll give it a trial run and throw myself on the mercy of the editing feature.

I have this friend. Not my oldest friend by any means, but definitely the friend I am able to be the most honest with. Someone that I rarely feel the need to hide anything from. And there is some emotional confusion (on my part) mixed up in our friendship. He's been very patient about it. I cycle in and out of this confusion every few weeks. It isn't anything that threatens my marriage (or my husband, who has full knowledge in this). The only things it really affects are the friendship itself and my self-image, which tends to spiral downward pretty quickly when I am feeling this confusion. I can't really say *how* it affects the friendship itself- on his end- because we've never discussed it. His choice. But it means that I spend more time than I should saying things that aren't precisely wise, then coming to my senses and asking forgiveness for putting him in an *extremely* awkward position. Then I completely ruin things by doing it again a month later.

So I ask you...why in God's dear name do I continue to torture someone I care about as deeply as I care about anyone? I don't have a good answer for that. I can't even make up an answer that justifies my actions. Maybe the unconditional acceptance that this person has always shown me is too intoxicating for me to voluntarily let go. Maybe I really do believe that severing a relationship for the other person's "own good" is presumptuous. How can anyone but God know what is good for someone? And maybe- just maybe- I am serving some blessed purpose in this. I know that my life is richly blessed by this friendship. Maybe his is. Although I don't think it is likely. I think that he is just more kind and tolerant in this than most would be. And so I try to be the same in return, and to be fair, it isn't easy having a best friend who doesn't like writing email and is fairly incapable of self-disclosure. "To be fair"- that's BS, pure and simple. Nothing about this is fair, and that bit smells like me trying to shift blame. None of the blame for this rests with him. That is fair.

So for now, I am spending my spare time (ha! what's that?) contemplating this. I don't have any answers. And I'm afraid that these questions are just going to continue to go unanswered.