Two punches
Home Affairs: Botox, dentist's anxiety, my son's blood, the perfect blend, Curb Your Enthusiasm, a neon light, and punching my trainer.
There’s one thing that breaks my heart more than unrequited love. An unreciprocated friendship. The right balance of giving and taking seems almost impossible to achieve when it comes to human relationships, especially when it comes to friends. There’s no specific unwritten contract, you find the right flow of calling/texting/meeting with each person as you go. Someone is always giving more than they receive. I’m talking about love and attention. I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum. I’ve been the neglecting party and I’ve experienced the heartbrokenness of being neglected. Neither is easy to navigate.
This has been yet another week of sickness in our household. So I’ve had time, between imperative work deadlines and boogers at 4 am, to ponder about a sadness I’ve tried to ignore. I often feel like I give more in some of my friendships and it’s not like I give because I expect something in return, it comes from a selfless, genuine place. But when you pause and take a look at your subterranean grief, it pops out in neon lights. I wish this friendship felt more balanced.
So here comes an unpopular opinion. My husband has never made me feel like this. Since before we were even a couple, I’ve felt I was always a priority for him. For a few years now, I’ve been his number one priority, which, for his entire life, had been music and music only. This serves as a testament to my (accurate) decision to marry him. But here’s what bothers me. The almost unanimous conviction that friends shouldn’t go second in one’s life. They shouldn’t. But there’s a caveat to consider. It should only apply to friendships who show up, stay present, and correspond your attention and time. The ones that don’t and pop up every once in a while, often late -and short on quality- are far off my radar and I’m not saying this as a punishment. I’m writing this out of pure love for the ones who put up with the effort it takes to choose a human as a priority and make sure they know they are.
I never thought I would lie down at a dentist’s practice, waiting for the cleaning to be over, and have a nurse approach me to offer a little bit of Botox. It sounds insane, but after three years of living in the USA, I wasn’t that surprised, if I’m being totally honest. The thing that baffled me was that she expected me to answer while I had a sucking tube -and another horrible device- in my mouth. I tried to gesticulate something that wasn’t a yes or a no, it was more complex than that.