Things we lose along the way

and the ways we find our way back

I lost a friend recently. A person who was like family to me. A friend I never thought I could lose. But I did. Life is nothing if not surprising. The thing about losing a friend is that you don’t just lose the person. They take a part of you with them. It’s happened a few times in my life. Sometimes they just fade away. Sometimes I snip the connection with giant rusty garden shears. Others, a door quietly closes. The worst are the ones you don’t see coming, and they leave a bloody mess.

There was the friend I said goodbye to who had taught me, ironically, how to cut toxic people out of your life: unequivocally, irrevocably and without lengthy explanation.

The friend who I exchanged lengthy letters with over many years until one day I noticed we had both stopped. And I no longer got those beautiful, honest glimpses into that life. No longer shared mine.

The friends who were wonderful and necessary and entwined in my life — until I moved away or changed jobs. I wonder how their kids are doing now. If that marriage lasted.

You lose friends and you have to find new friends to share frustrations and sweet stories with. You lose friends and have to go to that new dance class alone, hoping someone that speaks your language will also be there looking for a friend.

L.M. Montgomery called these close friends “kindred spirits”. They are the people whom we meet and immediately know we want to know better. When we see them or hear their voices our whole body relaxes. They just “get it.” They always want to hear about your day and they will always cuss out your ex (or your current) right along with you. In their eyes you are definitely right — unless you really aren’t, and they will kindly, honestly tell you that, too. And you will listen. Because they are your people. You never laugh at them. They never laugh at you. But you laugh at yourselves together.

There is so much good in these friendships. Losing them is such a blow. When I lost this friendship recently, I lost with it a thing that I didn’t realize I had given: my photography. And that made it a double blow.

I made pictures for them. Every day. When I didn’t feel like making pictures for myself I still made pictures for them. And they did the same for me. It was a ritual, a flex, a communion, all wrapped in one. And when that connection was severed, I couldn’t find my reason for making pictures any more. I wanted to but I would see something perhaps interesting and just shrug. Who for?

This isn’t the first time I’ve lost my photography. After my divorce I couldn’t even look at the photographs I had made during that relationship. I felt betrayed by them. I had used my life as my art for such a long time and now my life was not the story I thought I was telling. This friendship, for which I made photographs as a means of communication, was my way out of that. It had saved me.

I’m a poet, but poems don’t always come. I’m a photographer, but I gave away my eyes. I know this is a problem. So today, I went for a walk in the icy forest, to make some peace with myself.

My feet wide, my knees bent slightly, scooting, saying to the ice, “I respect you. Please don’t wipe me out. I respect you, ice.”

The sun was low and the wind had died down. The landscape was harsh, bare, full of the stark contrast of dead trees against white snow. Exactly what I needed. I needed sharp edges to push back at my own. I needed numb. I needed to pour all of my angst into the view finder and forget everything except light and shadow and the hurt itself. These were for me. These made sense.

When my toes and fingertips went numb and I ran out of film, I trudged back to my car, content. I’m keeping photography for myself this time. I hope you like it. I hope it speaks to you. But it’s for me. It’s a friend I’m not willing to lose again.

Thank you for reading Falling Down and Getting Up. Knowing you’re there means the world to me.