I shrunk myself even in my friendship

October 5, 2024, two weeks after I moved into my own apartment out of the one we had shared, there was a water lantern festival at the park in my neighborhood.  For context, I had signed off on all the divorce papers including the marital settlement agreement by this time and we were just waiting the 30 days until the Court could grant the divorce.

As soon as I registered for the lantern festival, I started working on the Hiaku poems I wanted write on the lantern I released.  I wrote a brief post about the event here.  

I invited my friend (the half of the couple's friend who has been mostly missing in action).  This was one of the very rare times she showed up for me. The day of the event she texted and asked if she could bring her two girls along. I didn't know how to say no so I agreed.  They were pretty out of control most of the event which really took away from any chance to seriously talk to my friend despite this being the first chance we had together since before he had asked for a divorce.

And you want to know what I wasted my precious moments of conversation on?  I didn't focus on what I was feeling or what I needed.  Instead, I asked her to encourage her husband to keep in contact with my ex-husband and check in on him.  I told her that I was worried he had no one close.  I didn't want him to lose the one local friendship he had.  Even in the moments after he treated me so horribly in how he discarded me, I was more concerned about him than I was about myself.  

Even after we separated I was still shrinking my needs for his.

And now I'm the one sitting at a table for one grieving the distance from this friend, wondering if that is distance I created from the beginning in the way I shrunk myself.