My Friend Stephanie

by Anna

I met Stephanie in an incest recovery group. As soon as we looked at each other, I knew that we would be friends. At the time, I was utterly friendless.

There are no real words that can truly paint the dark and lonely picture of what my life was like years ago. There is no proper hue or color that would help to portray the futility of being so alone. The paintbrush I held to the canvas of my life seemed always to be colorless and dark beyond any gray or black that I had ever seen. It is a world where one can not tell if they are in limbo or if they are to be forever in hell.

I saw this same world in Stephanie's eyes.

As I got to know her, I realized that we were like a mirror to each other. Our childhoods and pasts were a similar, yet different book. The covers revealed the same sad child reaching out yet pulling back, and when we opened each other's books we found that they both started with the same tentative fear of being read.

It's an odd feeling of needing someone so much, yet being so afraid of friendship at the same time. What would she do with what she would come to know about me? What would I do with what I would come to know about her? I had not had a friend in so long that I had forgotten how to be friends. Do I just listen? Do I help her to come up with answers? Would just talking to each other help us to come up with answers on our own?

I spent three years in that incest recovery group. I told my stories, but I was not able to cry or to feel anything other than fear. I knew that I was supposed to feel. I saw some of the other people in the group feeling. One even screamed out loud in the middle of her story. They would have been alright with my feelings, but I just could not allow my self to be that vulnerable. It was on a rare occasion that a tear would form in my eye, or a hidden part of my true self would surface with some faint rage, but I would quickly bury it again.

It was not until years later when I started punching pillows with my present husband that I began to truly feel. But I did get so much from the support group. I heard that I was not alone. I heard that others were facing the same kind of hell that I was facing, and that I was also welcome to tell my story.

I met Stephanie at coffee shops and restaurants and we talked. Stephanie was another person in the support group who was having a hard time feeling. She told me that her counselor was concerned about her inability to feel. For the most part Stephanie and I were friends who related to each other's childhoods and who sometimes felt safe enough to allow a bit of pain to emerge. In some ways I believe that we were helping each other during that time in recovery when just forming one simple tear in your eye is a major breakthrough in emotional release.

I knew everything about Stephanie and she knew everything about me. During the three years that we were friends I found that I could reach out and trust someone. Having to trust another person had always been such a bitter cup of tea for me. With Stephanie, I was able to add some kindness to that cup.

After the three years in the support group was over, she moved away. I never saw or talked to Stephanie again. I know that we should have written each other, but we just didn't. Sometimes people just don't keep in touch.

Now I am painting a picture. It is a picture of my friend. She is smiling in the picture. She eventually learned to feel. She finally began to cry, to rage, to embrace her fear. This is how I want to see her now. I want to see her healed. I want the color of the paint that I use to be all of the colors of nature and the most beautiful rainbow there could ever be.

The following poem I will dedicate to my friendship with Stephanie and to all of the other people who are writing on this blog site. We are all in this support group together.


“TO FEEL”

She started to feel,
slightly at first,
to feel, then turn away,
resting once more in solace
on the cold arm of another day.

She almost cried once.
The human she keeps
tied up to keep it safe,
uttered something too sad to hear,
so she, in deafness smiled,
so that this part of her
embraced no fear.

But it was a moment wasn’t it?
And the walls that guard her grew softer,
with the force of what was real,
and all who thought they knew her,
thought again,
when she began to feel.

Response from Dr. DeFoore

Thank you for this story and poem, Anna. Your words and the feelings they invoke will touch the hearts of everyone who is fortunate enough to read what you have written.

My very best to you,

Dr. DeFoore

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