I have always lived my life with complete mastery of burning bridges. There's too many for me to even count how many connections I've left smoldering. I don't mind it - it goes hand in hand with a philosophy on relationships that I haven't been able to avoid in my life:
The people the come into my life do so for a purpose.
Sometimes for my benefit, and sometimes for theirs, but it is almost never fated to be for a lifetime. No one likes to think of it that way, but not everyone is meant to be in our lives forever. For example, a suicidal friend turned his life around because I was there at the right time to convince him to get help, and we weren't friends for long after that. Another friend came into my life just long enough to influence my career decisions before we fell out of touch. Other people have shown up as friends just in time to challenge my thoughts on the way people are.
And those that ARE meant to be with me forever have been made abundantly clear - that's why I've never been afraid of the smoking bridges.
But there is always the possibility that some people are meant to come into our lives and then out, and then back in again.
Though I'm not sure that's the case, I've recently been in touch with someone I used to know almost 20 years ago. My husband asked how I felt about talking to him again and I responded that it was nice to talk to an old friend...unless I had scorched that bridge and forgotten, at which point I would question my choices in reconnecting.
So far he hasn't shown any signs that our friendship went down in flames but people are funny and secretive sometimes, though also surprising and forgiving too. The bottom line I guess is that this bridge-burning MO is so strong that I just have to wait and see.
It led me to wonder though if there is redemption for the bridge burners. Sometimes I run into friends from high school - if you wanna see flames, check out the unraveling of friendships between high-school aged girls - and while my first instinct is to hide behind the closest and most durable barricade, my husband tries to convince me that it was a long time ago, and people change and after all, would it be fair to say that I'm the same person as I was that long ago?
I always just assume that my relationships with people retain the same status over the years as when that relationship ended. It seems to me that if our last status was friends off then we'd still be friends off 10 years later too.
My husband is right though, I don't personally think that it's written in stone. There's redemption for others in my eyes, so it's logical that someone might feel the same way about me. Say I WAS a total bitch to this guy 20 years ago - it's entirely possible that he has since moved on and remembers our friendship before our friendship was pillaged.
Unfortunately it's also equally as possible that he hasn't. I'm still not convinced that there's redemption for those of us that don't mind a little smoke, but at least there's always hope.
12:08 p.m. - 2015-02-11
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