I guess, my point is that, like Marrianne Williamson says, in The Age of Miracles, that when you are working too much, it gets to feel imbalanced, but when you play too much, and get too little work done, you can feel 'dirty.' That was her word for it, but I know the feeling.
Recently, I became acquainted with a woman my age. We talked and talked, and did lots of activities together. She was a single gal too, and I thought a good potential friend, a peer, someone I could go out for a drink with, a meal, go hear music with, sit on her porch and sip wine, or just look at old photographs in my living room.
It was an awkward weekend for me, because I was incredibly broke. Still, I was managing to stay a float. Usually, my money situation is not quite as bad as it was that weekend, memorial day weekend.
I had my concert, which I rarely get to do, or get asked to do, and needed to practice. She wanted to go to the beach, go hear my son's band play some more, etc., make a day of it. I agreed that Monday, we could get together and hang out some more, knowing full well, I needed to work on my songs, for the concert, get everything polished. I also knew that I talk a lot, when I am with people, and that if we hung out, I would wear out my throat, talking too much.
I told her on Monday, that I could come for lunch, like she wanted me to, and that was nice, but I needed to go home after, and work on my concert.
She was nice about it, and we had lunch at her house. The next evening, while I was waiting for a couple, whom I am friends with, to pick me up, to go to the center, she called me.
She said, "I won't be able to come to your concert, because I'm going to do 'such and such,' (not those words of course) and I've heard you sing, anyway, and I'm sure you'll be playing regularly." Actually, the 'regularly' is not the case, and as I said on facebook, it was my first solo music program, since the early nineties, so ego or not, it meant something to me.
I said, "okay, I understand." But, truthfully, my feelings were hurt, and I felt snubbed. Perhaps, she thought I blew her off the day before, but it was not that at all.
So, I started to think that I should not make this a reason for resentment. In A Course in Miracles, nothing really occurred, except in illusion, so this past Monday, after not hearing from her in two weeks, almost, I called her to see if she wanted to go hear the band. I got her voice mail, and left a message. She never called back.
I guess my point is just how fickle people are, how fleeting friendships can be, or brief, how I tell too much, while others guard themselves. I guess I am guileless. I suppose that makes me foolish and vulnerable, because I spill all kinds of truths about myself, to people I do not really know well, and that makes me naive. Also, alcohol is like a truth serum for me, as it is for a lot of people.
I do have long time friendships, which will always be in place, because I have a few friends who are more than just fair weather ones.
I know this is petty of me. I suppose I resented that she told me, that my boyfriend, Alan, who died of cancer, was always saying that he and I were broken up, since he was living near her for a while, like even when we were supposedly together, because it was he that introduced me to her, and we were definitely together at that point.
It was Christmas, after Alan had had Christmas dinner with my family and another close friend of mine, and the first time I had taken him to the Meher Baba Center, and she was there, being somewhat of a 'Baba' person.
I told her that he was probably telling the truth, because it was on again, off again, and the status of our relationship was quick to change. There were complications, politics, his wife and kids in Germany, who would come to town for two week stretches, and I felt that although they had been separated for years, that they were awfully friendly, although he swore he was no longer attracted to her. I do not know what to believe, where men are concerned, sometimes.
I guess I felt that my friend was implying that he was interested in her, even though he was dying of stage four pancreatic cancer. Perhaps, he was, and I had even wondered if he liked her, but hinted at it in round about ways to him, the way we women do, which he had denied. He got mad, saying I was jealous. I said that was preposterous. He said, "English is both our first language, you know." He was Scottish, and yes it was.
As Marianne Williamson says, "if you have a resentment, imagine a sword above their head, coming down on your own head." I think it is on the same lines as, 'resentment is like drinking poison, expecting someone else to die.' And, like I said, in ACIM terms, nothing happened.
I suppose part of me, wanted to think that Alan truly loved me, but women tend to live in too much fantasy, and I truly was not perfect, at all, and had many failings where that relationship was concerned. We both did, but I can only blame myself, or take responsibility for, my own part, which was that I never really loved him, as my song says, as much as I should.
Is it more important to love others, or to be loved? That is the question. I don't really know. It is bad to love too much, to the point of compromising your own well being, and yet you can also become too guarded, where your heart is concerned, lacking the refreshing openness, that young love endures.
Although I speak in tongues of men and angels, I'm just sounding brass and tinkling symbols, without love, love suffers long, love is kind, enduring all things, hoping all things, love has no evil in mind... If I didn't have love, I'd be nothing...
Corinthians 13:1-13 The Holy Bible, New Testimate
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