Nobody's Going To Call. And I'm Learning To Be Okay With That.
On unresolved friendships, the radical act of waiting, and what individuation actually feels like from the inside If you've ever wanted to close a loop that the other person has zero interest in closi
I have a hard time with people being mad at me.
I also struggle when I’m mad at someone. My instinct is to close the loop immediately, either by stepping up and admitting fault, even when I don’t really think it was my fault, or by pushing for a conversation that might allow the other person to apologize.
And then they don’t.
The hardest thing for me to do is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just wait and see what evolves without my interference.
I’ve been trying that lately. It’s brutal.
The Friendships
I have a friendship that quietly fell apart over political differences, mainly around the vaccine debate. It’s a nuanced story with no clean resolution, but honestly I don’t think that’s the real issue. The politics feel more like a symptom of something larger I haven’t quite put my finger on yet. So I’m waiting. Not pursuing. Something inside me just can’t right now, and I’ve learned enough to recognize that as my intuition telling me to stay still.
I have another friendship that ended because the disdain coming from her direction became impossible to ignore. That one feels more concrete. More final. And yet I still feel the pull to reach out, to fix it, to say something. I don’t think I will. But the urge is there every single day.
Here’s the thing I keep coming back to: other people have their own authority. If they wanted to reach out, they could. They haven’t. They won’t. That should be enough for me to simply continue with my life.
But it gnaws at me. It really does.
The Waiting
This is where a daily meditation practice has genuinely helped. Not in a fixed-it-right-up way, but in a quiet, incremental way. It’s given me the ability to stay present with discomfort instead of immediately trying to outrun it. To allow the unease of an unresolved thing to just sit there without me poking at it every five minutes.
Maybe that tolerance for uncertainty is what individuation actually requires. The capacity to sit with incompleteness. To resist the urge to force resolution just because the open loop is making you crazy.
I’m 49 and I am only just now learning this. Make of that what you will.
Here’s what I keep reminding myself: perhaps it takes ten years for the person on the other end to wake up and acknowledge something went wrong. Perhaps I’ll soften over time, as I have before. I’ve been wrong plenty of times and I’ll be wrong again. But for now the most honest thing I can do is stand in my own beliefs and honor the boundaries I’ve finally, finally learned to draw.
This waiting isn’t passive resignation. It’s an active choice. A choice to honor my own process of becoming, separate from the needs and expectations of other people.
In a culture that prizes immediate resolution and constant connection, choosing to wait, choosing to let something be unfinished, feels almost radical.
Maybe it is.
MyCurrent Obsession: A little treat for making it to the end.
📖 Reading: Are You Mad at Me by Meg Josephson
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