Relief

Last night I had dinner with a friend. I haven’t seen her since last summer but she sent me a lovely email shortly after I split up with D to say that she knew there was more to the story than Valley gossip was letting on and that I was not to doubt her continued support and friendship. We haven’t seen each other mainly because she’s had family troubles so she had more important matters to deal with.



Despite the fact of her email and that I’ve always liked her, I was nervous. She is someone who I have only known as part of a couple, me and D, her and her partner, X and Y, A and B…. So to rebuild a friendship on a different level is a bit scary. I also have to take into account the gossip that has been circulating and wonder what she’s heard and what she thinks about it. We’d been meant to meet with another friend who kept on cancelling so in the end decided to meet up anyway and I’m so pleased we did.



She didn’t let me settle into the normal bland platitudes about how it’s sad but at least we can move on, blah blah blah but challenged me to open up a bit. Told me about her relationship before her current one – how it had amounted to mental bullying but how it took her a long time to extract herself. How she couldn’t imagine that someone as strong minded and feisty as her could have become so browbeaten and subjugated. It was such a relief to know that someone in my circle of friends REALLY understands what I was going through. We spoke about it. It was pretty balanced and not at all a slagging match but I could be honest because I knew she knew what I was talking about and didn’t judge me or think that I was making it up to justify myself.



She might not have known it at the time but after I left she had put 2 and 2 together and guessed what had been happening.



We only spoke about it for a little while and rest of the evening chatted about all the normal stuff but I feel as though a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. This morning I found myself crying in the shower and had to wake Rich up for a cuddle. He was understandably bewildered – he’s used to comforting me when required but it’s not normally needed at 6.25am!! I explained that it was the relief of knowing that, other than him, at least one other person “knows”.



It makes me ashamed about the times I may have taken the surface picture at face value and not offered the true hand of friendship to someone in need because now I know how much that hand matters.