I don't know about you, but I suspect that most of us can remember the genesis of most close friendships in our lives. And most of the time, it's not an earth shattering moment. Just being in the right place, having the same needs... a desire for companionship.
But no matter how innocently a friendship develops, if it's going to last, it always becomes deeper. To thrive, it has to. And that's where friendships start to get tricky...and sticky. I used to think that meeting new friends was a random act and for the most part, life just happened. But, as I matured, it became increasing difficult to account for the randomness of fate as I began to observe certain patterns in my life and in the friendship choices of so many other individuals which were curiously repetitive. How was it possible that uncanny deja vu's were popping up all around these seemingly chance meetings.
I recall one friendship that started over a shared interest in hot chocolate. (Not really, but just about that trivial ~ situation changed to protect the innocent). It took awhile to discover that it really wasn't the interest in hot chocoate that brought me a new friend; rather that was just a cover for a shared need, a wound that needed a sympathetic resonance which over time became the basis for a deep and endearing friendship. But was it healthy?
Ultimately, I discovered that in my case, it couldn't be. There's something about an open wound which draws the wrong type of attention. And it's not just the flies. Wounds attract folks with similar wounds, issues which resonate at a particular level. Often far below the ability of the eye and even the mind to recognize.
Wounds weep, and in this way, they also speak...deep calling to deep. We may find ourselves attracted to certain people and certain issues because of deep needs and unresolved hurts. But, it's not healthy to bond on the basis of a wound, particularly not a weeping one.
Weeping wounds ooze. And that makes them sticky. When individuals with weeping wounds meet, there is often an unnatural bonding. This is true, even when these individuals look normal and put together on the surface. Even when they have wonderful careers and have seemingly made a success of their lives. Because wounds of this nature are not physical, it's often easy to ignore the true nature of the attraction. Attractions which dissolve in destructive, addictive patterns of behavior. Repeated over and over...
All Wounds have a life cycle of their own. Some wounds eventually heal. But, if the healing occurs when the wound is tightly bound to something else, it tends to stick to it. What may occur is the incorporation of that material into the healing process in an unhealthy and sometimes unsanitary way. That's why your mom was right when she told you that sometimes it was best to simply let a sore 'dry out.'
When wounded souls bind together in relationship while the wound is weeping, there is a process of incorporation. The mingling of shared pain and experience can abscess a wound and create a potently powerful glue that eventually binds the friendship with thick, tough scar tissue. The significance of this type of bonding is that in order for the individuals to go their separate ways even after the wound has dried up, they risk re-opening the wound in the place where the scar tissue is the thickest. Very painful...
But, there's a situation which is even more tragic. It's the continually weeping, oozing wound. The wound that remains unhealed. Sometimes, friendships are built on shared pain which continues to ooze together creating more and more pus and toxin over time. We refer to these relationships as toxic, because literally they are. This type of relationship results in a literal poisoning of both participants and can have untold horrendous consequences which spread the grief over wide swaths of people's lives. What's sad, is that the participants are often unable to see how unhealthy the relationship is. The shared dependency feeding off itself in a process of mutual dysfunction and disease. The shared pain literally becomes the food which sustains the cycle of pus.
Healthy relationships don't thrive on wounds. Even when they initially start through them. Nor do they continually create them. Our skin is intended to cover our body for protection and preservation; a process which enables us to live life well. Healthy relationships are based on shared interest, mutual benefit, respect, love and admiration. Healthy friendships thrive on companionship, but for the right reasons. The most important healthy relationship is within oneself.
For so many of us are wounded and frail, not understanding the importance of our own healing as being the vital component for life affirming interactions. The willingness to do the hard work of examining one's spiritual body for breaks and tears and other types of wounds can be emotionally exhausting and is definitely hard work. But, it is the only path through which we build the material which ensures that we become Wound Healers rather than the Wound Makers.
Lola Audu ~ 2011
*Thank you Rocky for encouraging me to write down these thoughts which have roamed through my mind for some time. :)
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