The Essence of Friendship

After spending a day sick at home I was getting stir crazy. I decided I needed movement, and so I walked to the nearest Barnes and Noble, thirty minutes away. Winter is finally taking over, and it was a particularly cold night. I was trying to walk away from my broken heart, leave it home and get relief from the out of doors. But it followed me all the way to the third floor.

I didn’t really have a purpose at the bookstore, but I thought it would be a great place to take my mind off him. Yes, him. Cody. I can’t seem to stop thinking about him. The questions cycle through my thoughts like an impatient visitor pounding on a door. No matter how I try to subvert them, they keep surfacing in never ending supply. And they usually start with one word.

Why?

Why did I have to fall in love with him? Why did he get so close to me, in a personal, intimate, though non-sexual way? He knew all along what was happening - so why did he allow it? How can I love him and be so mad at him? Why am allowing this one person to have such an effect on me? Why do I feel so worthless because of the way he treats me, or rather, the way he doesn’t treat me?

And perhaps most crushing, why doesn’t he love me? Why can he meet someone, go on a couple of dates (and perhaps not even that long) and then have sex with him? What does he see in these other guys who he doesn’t even know that he doesn’t see in me? Why would he share something so personal with them and not me? Why does he want to be close to them in such an intimate way, and yet awkwardly hugs me goodnight as I leave his home? Am I that undesirable of a person? Is it simply that he isn’t attracted to me?

I realize he has his agency. I knew that before I told him I love him. But back then, I felt so full of love that I could have handled any response, whether affirmative or negative. I felt myself an independent agent, anchored unto itself, unaffected by outside influences. I knew that there was a chance that he would not reciprocate, but wasn’t he the one that was always so flirtatious with me? If I were fabricating it, then why did so many strangers and friends who saw us interact think we were a couple, or should be, or even, as we were told by a guy we both just met, should get married? I was crushed when he told me he couldn’t love me.

I thought I could handle any response, and so we decided to keep things cool and be friends, just like usual. But things weren’t like usual. It ripped me apart to be around him. I began to feel compartmentalized. I was relegated to the role of the reliable one. I was the friend that would always be there for him. But only when he needed me. And when he didn’t, well, then he would just sort of forget me. It was destroying me to be such an integral part of his life while watching him date, kiss and sleep around with other men - all a reminder that somehow I am deficient, sub-par, and undesirable. His capricious behavior is so unattractive in this regard. I certainly want more than that in a future spouse, but even though I understand that mentally, my heart still longs for his affection.

And so, not knowing where I was going but just glad to be going, I stepped off the escalator on the third floor of Barnes and Noble. A bookshelf of their Classical Books greeted me. I picked up an anthology of works by Ralph Waldo Emerson and opened it. This is what I read:

“It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal, he will presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy own shining, and, no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with the gods of the empyrean. It is thought a disgrace to love unrequited. But the great will see that true love cannot be unrequited. True love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the surer. Yet these things may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it may deify both.”

I realize that while it is painful to separate myself from Cody, it is more destructive to me and our friendship to be around him. I’m not sure what it will take before I can be the friend that Ralph is talking about. I certainly don’t think it a disgrace to love unrequited, simply extremely painful to do so.

And what exactly is he trying to say in the last three sentences? Is that the key? “The essence of friendship is entireness...” I need to be more sure of myself in order for this friendship to ever have a chance to be renewed. Does “it” in the last line refer to friendship? Does friendship treat its object as a god? What is the object?

The last line reminds me of the scripture in D&C 50:17-25 about truth and the Spirit: “...he that preacheth and he that receiveth, understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together. That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter...”

Sigh. I was in the bookstore to distract myself. I put the book down and headed to the web programming section where I found a book on blogging...