A New Kind of Friendship

In the last few months I have made some amazing friendships with people I never would have thought would give me a second glance.  People who see me and who treat me as an equal. 

It's a great feeling.  It's a new feeling.  I like it.

Some of my former friendships were with people who called me friend but treated me like an inferior.  People who either took pity on me or used me as a tool to stroke their own egos.  Out of their own brokenness, which expressed itself in domineering and ridicule, they walked all over my walk-all-overability. I felt abused, bullied, and trapped in these relationships because nobody else would give me the time of day.  

Only after I began my process of recovery did I understand why.  I didn't feel comfortable in my own skin and I was constantly seeking the approval of others.  It's like I painted a great big "Kick Me" sign on my back.  And people obliged.  They'd lead me around by the nose - and I followed even though I didn't want to - unable to understand or even conceive that there might be something more to friendship than what I had known.  

I guess that when I was in my early years, I had only known TWO friends who treated me as an equal.  I met one when I was 16.  He became my best friend, still is, and is now my husband of 29 and a half years.  The other friend I met when I was 18 and far from home.  She's still my friend today. Through the years since then, God has led me to various people whose friendships I have treasured.  But I always thought that friendship was such a rare commodity.  I had known so little of it.

Once I was in recovery, I realized how insane it was to continue to allow people that professed to care about me, treat me like I was something they scraped off the bottom of their shoe.  It began with an argument I had with one of these people.  I had told her something about which she had an opinion - and without regard to the personal boundaries her opinion would cross, she proceeded to give it to me.  It was an assault on my personhood, my choices, my love for someone very close to me - and she trampled on it.  It wasn't just a one-time thing.  She'd been doing this for 35 years.  Finally something in me snapped.  I'd only barely begun to look after myself and I didn't have the emotional maturity to deal with it the way I should have - but I got my point across.  And whenever I thought about the inevitable apology she would craft, expecting me to forgive her ... yet again ... so that she could go right back there and do it to me all over again, that's when the friendship died for me.  If it was ever a friendship.

Now, things are different.  The relationships I have formed are with people who are not towering above me or miles beneath me (as if that could ever happen) - but on a par with me.  Equals.  I can look them in the eye.  I can trust them with my feelings.  I can tell them what I need from them.  

And they can do the same with me.  It's like we're walking side by side instead of one leading the other.


God has led me through some amazing paths to get to the place where I can have this new kind of friendship with people, real people from all walks of life, people who are genuine, who accept me for who I am and whom I accept for who they are.  I can't begin to fathom how I missed it all these years.  All I know is that God has put them in my path, and they have so enriched my life and brought meaning to the messy, sometimes horrible parts of my life because it's those things that have enabled me to reach out to help them climb out of their brokenness, as they have helped me climb out of mine.


That's such a trip for me.  I like this new kind of friendship.