Making amends

This is an usually candid post for me, but it has been on my heart so I thought I'd share.

In May of 2010 Jackson and I went to San Francisco to visit on my best friends in the world at that time, Cali Kate. Things got a little difficult on that trip and Kate and I had not spoken since. This broke my heart each time I thought about it. Technology today allows one to somewhat "keep up" with what is going on with people so I knew bits and pieces of what was going on with her, but no news directly from her. I'd sent her Facebook messages from time to time that I was thinking of her and got nothing in return. I remembered that February 15th was her birthday so I decided to reach out to her one final time to wish her a happy day, tell her I was sorry again for how things went down on our last visit and that I'd leave her alone now as she obviously did not want to hear from me.

I was completely shocked when she wrote me back and said she never knew if I wanted her to respond to my messages after our big blow up fight nearly two years ago. I was pretty surprised by the response at first, but I quickly realized that feelings were probably much more hurt than I ever realized. I could not believe that someone who had been one of my very best friends since 2002 did not know if I wanted to hear from them. I felt awful. While I cannot recall all that happened afterwards with apology notes and the such, it was obvious to me that I did not do enough to make my friend aware of how sorry I was for how things went.

I promised myself that after my brother Brian passed away I would not let relationships that mattered take a backseat to the artificial busyness of life. While I did have a relationship with Brian, it was not enough. I will regret that for the rest of my life. I'm not letting that happen again. He mattered to me. I loved him and was so proud of him, but I can only hope now that he knew that while he was alive because I can no longer tell him. It is heart-wrenching.

I have no idea how things will turn out with Kate, but I do now have some hope that maybe we'll speak again. I wrote her back to tell her that of course I wanted to hear from her and that I have missed her terribly for the past almost two years- because that is all true. I think I took for granted a friendship that I thought would always be there and that was a mistake. People are the most important things in our lives, in my opinion. I'm working on making sure that my friends and family know how much they mean to me.

I know that life is the longest thing we will ever do, but that does not make it any less short. Do you have someone that you need to swallow your pride and let them know that you're sorry and that you care? I encourage you to do so because even if nothing comes out it at least they know where you stand. I think that is really important. All of this may seem a little dramatic, but I have really missed my friend and felt bad about how things went- it was silly of me to take this long to really confront the issue.

As Christina Rossetti said, "Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun." I encourage you to put yourself out there. Maybe, just maybe, things will work out.