An open door

Hello.

I received your email of 26th April 2021, and your message has been received. You need not worry that I am going to make any comment on what you have done. Of course I have many thoughts and feelings on the topic, but they are for me alone to know about and to deal with. To subject you to any details of what I'm thinking and feeling would, I know, be unhelpful, futile and not welcome, and I have no wish to risk hurting you any further than you have been hurt already within the context of our association. 

Please know that I continue to wish you peace and healing. I genuinely and sincerely hope that sending me the email, and saying to me what you did, has helped you and given you some relief. 

There's just one thing, though: the issue of where "we" stand, which you mentioned in that parting email to me.

Where you stand has been made very clear, and is entirely of your own choosing. 

Where I stand is not for anyone to decide but me.

I hope that doesn't sound argumentative or aggressive. It is not intended to. It is a simple statement of fact - and not only that, writing the statement down also helps me to make clear and accurate sense of the reality of this situation in the aftermath of our severed contact.

I realise it is highly unlikely that you will ever read this post. You made your intentions very clear in your email, and I know you meant them in the moment you wrote them. Sometimes, though, people change their minds and therefore their intentions. That happened to me following a particular decision, familiar to us both, that I made in 2003. It is impossible for any person to know with absolute certainty whether or not they will ever change their minds and think differently about - or regret - a decision they've made in the past. I have written this post in case you do ever change your mind and revisit this blog as a result. And for as long as this post is left up and kept available for you to read, you can be sure that I continue to mean what I've said here. 

(This is not to say that I maintain any hope or expectation whatsoever that you will indeed change your mind and want to reverse the decision you have made. I have spent six months consciously becoming accustomed to, and accepting, the likelihood that you would sever contact with me eventually, and now that you have done so, I am working hard to find as much peace with that situation as I can.)

This message is not written in any hope of manipulating you into changing your mind (not that I believe myself capable of doing so anyway). I want and intend to behave with more dignity, integrity, empathy and understanding than that, and to grant you what you've asked for. However, I still have something I want to say (even if I'm saying it to no one but myself, which is in itself cathartic). In the event of you revisiting this blog, what I've written today will be here for you to read in case it's ever of interest to you - in one year, five years or twenty years. What you do (or don't do) with this message is, of course, entirely up to you. 

What I want to say is this: if you ever change your mind about wanting to be in contact with me, my door remains open to you. I expect you've purged yourself of my contact details by now - why wouldn't you? But I don't suppose my email address will leave your mind quickly. Even if it does: tea with a friend. I've made sure comments are now enabled on this blog, which would allow you to contact me in that way even if you did forget my email address. My inbox is open to you, and will remain open. 

I am not going to pursue you or try to contact you, because you've asked me not to and have made it absolutely clear that you don't want me to. I respect that and will comply with your request for your sake, irrespective of my own thoughts and feelings about our association. But in the unlikely event of you changing your mind, you'll remain welcome in my life. One day one of us will die, and the opportunity for forgiveness and reconciliation will disappear, and - as I have emphasised to you since we reconnected in 2015 - I intend to keep my door unlocked to you for as long as I am alive to do so. 

I've changed the name of this blog (its previous name felt inappropriate, under the circumstances) but kept the address the same. I've made it publicly available, simply because I want to remove all possibility of my being able to check whether or not you've viewed it. (As the previous sole reader, the number of times you'd read each post was logged on the dashboard and thrust in my face every time I accessed it, and I expect you can understand why I don't want to know whether or not you've read this letter unless it facilitates some positive communication between us. This is for my own self-preservation.) But I've unpublished all my previous letters to you. No one except me can read anything else I've written to you on this blog. There is nothing here that can identify you. It is now simply an open channel of communication between us, should you ever want such a thing. 

If this channel remains forever unused, that is your choice and I will respect it. If, however, it ever reunites us, I think I will be glad to have kept it in place. Sometimes we have regrets about the bridges we've burned (although, of course, sometimes we really don't). Building new bridges is vastly easier when the tools to do so are thrown to us by the person on the other side of the river and we're met by them in the middle. If you ever want to do so, I'm willing - eager, in fact - to join you in an act of bridge-building. I know and accept that at the time of writing, you are no longer my friend, and that you have the right to withdraw your friendship. I haven't withdrawn mine. My friendship remains unconditionally available to you. Do with that offer what you wish. (Of course, you will anyway!)

I realise that a one-sided friendship is an odd and unfulfilling thing, and there can be no tangible outlet for any efforts I might have made or time I might have spent on making demonstrations of friendship in your direction. For obvious reasons, I won't be making any such demonstrations unless you tell me that they'd be welcome. I know that mine will now be a friendship in name only unless you indicate that you want or need to avail yourself of it, and that it may remain static forever - or, at least, a great many years. It is perfectly possible to care about someone without being allowed the opportunity to care for them, and that sums up the situation in which I now find myself. I have done an enormous amount of thinking over the past few years about how I might react if you ended our friendship. My thoughts and decisions haven't changed during that time, and I still want and intend to remain open to reconciliation with you in the future, should you change your own thoughts and decisions one day.

I know where you stood when you wrote that email on 26th April 2021. If you're ever interested in where I stood then and continue to stand now, and wonder whether revisiting this blog might provide an answer, I have stated it for you here, candidly and honestly. My door's open to you. If where you have stood with regard to our association ever changes, or you need me, or want to be in touch with me, I won't reject you. I am, of course, now going to get on with my life without you in it, and focus on my own peace and healing, and do what I can to bring good out of this experience and situation. 

You are stepping out of my life with my blessing and best wishes - but should you ever find yourself wanting to re-enter it, you'll always be welcomed.