I was talking with a friend yesterday about how much it hurts to feel left out, even at this stage of life. We were trading stories about moments of feeling like the odd one out. About how it happens at our kids’ soccer and baseball games and on Facebook much as it used to when we were younger – when the “cool girls” would gather and we would be left on the outside looking in.
We laughed at ourselves and with each other about where our brains go when that happens – about the crazy things we make up about why we aren’t included in the circle of heads bowed in together.
We make up that it’s because we didn’t grow up here or we’re not Catholic or our kid hasn’t been playing well. We’re not wearing the right workout clothes or we don’t drink anymore, maybe they think we’re not fun or interesting? Or those other moms think we’re too broken or too goody goody or too preachy or too old. We talked and we swapped tales and we started to cry a little bit and then laugh.
We talked about how our husbands really didn’t get it, even though we tried to tell them, even though they wanted to (a good husband’s response to mean girls is almost always something like “Fuck them! It’s their loss” which is so loving but somehow misses the mark).
We talked and we talked and we laughed and we laughed. Our spirits got lighter and we left each other better, more healed, better able to face the day and our children and ourselves.
Empathy does that. Letting ourselves be seen by people we trust does that. Sharing our stories with people who have earned the right to hear them – who don’t try to fix or judge or give advice. Who listen and say: I hate when that happens.
Or: I don’t know exactly what that feels like, but I might have an inkling because this other thing happened to me.
Me, too. Me, too. Me, too.
There is no greater currency to heal a hurting heart.