A few weeks after the event, Liz sent me an email saying she thought we should try friendship. She sent along this poem:
I honor your gods,
I drink at your well,
I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place.
I have no cherished outcomes,
I will not negotiate by withholding,
I am not subject to disappointment.
She offered a new friendship memo: that for us there would be no arbitrary rules, obligations, or expectations. We would not owe each other anything other than admiration, respect, love—and that was all done already. We became friends.
A while later, I invited Liz to come stay with me. It was shortly after I’d met Abby, and I was walking through my days stunned. I was deeply in love for the first time in my life, and I had told no one except my sister about any of it. Liz and I stayed up late that first night, talking about everything but my desperate heart and aching body and muddled mind.
The next morning, my alarm rang at 5:30, which didn’t matter because I didn’t sleep anymore. I rolled over and tiptoed to the kitchen so I wouldn’t wake Liz upstairs. I took my coffee outside and stood in my backyard. It was still dark and cold, but the pink-tinged horizon hinted at the coming sun. I stood there, stared at the sky, and, as I’d done each day since I’d met Abby, I thought: Help, please.
In that moment, I was reminded of a story about a woman who had become stranded on top of an icy mountain. She frantically prayed that God would rescue her before she froze to death. She called to the heavens, “If you exist, God, send help!”
A little while later, a helicopter circled above and dropped a ladder.
“No,” the woman said. “Go away! I’m waiting for God!”
Then a park ranger walked by and asked, “Need some help, sister?”
“No! Go away! I’m waiting for God!”
The woman froze to death. She showed up at the gates of heaven—pissed—and demanded, “WHY, GOD? Why did you let me die?”
God said, “Honey. I sent a helicopter. I sent a park ranger. What the hell were you waiting for?”
I thought: I am freezing to death while Liz Freakin’ Gilbert, a friend I admire, trust, and love—who happens to also be a world-renowned spiritual teacher—is asleep upstairs. Maybe Liz is my park ranger.
When she woke up, Liz found me at the bottom of the stairs in my pajamas, teary, desperate, humbled.
I said, “I need you.”
She said, “Okay, Honeyhead.”
We sat down on my couch, and I spilled it all. I told her about how Abby and I had met, how we’d spent the past weeks falling deeper in love through emails, how our letters felt like blood transfusions. Each one I read and wrote pumped fresh life through my veins. I told her how ridiculous and impossible it all was. It was thrilling and terrifying to hear the words fall out of my mouth, like I was crossing some point of no return. I was expecting her to be shocked. She was not shocked. Her eyes were sparkly, lovingly amused, soft, smiling. She looked relieved somehow.
I said, “It will never work out.”
She said, “Maybe not. Maybe she’s just an Abby-shaped door inviting you to leave what’s not true enough anymore.”
I said, “It will ruin Craig.”
She said, “There is no such thing as one-way liberation, honey.”
I said, “Can you imagine the havoc this would wreak on my parents, on my friends, on my career?”
She said, “Yes, everyone you love would be uncomfortable for a long while, maybe. What is better: uncomfortable truth or comfortable lies? Every truth is a kindness, even if it makes others uncomfortable. Every untruth is an unkindness, even if it makes others comfortable.”
I said, “I barely know her.”
She said, “But you do know yourself.”
I said, “What if I leave for her and this isn’t even real?”
She looked at me. She did not say anything.
We sat together in the quiet. She held my hand, lightly, lovingly.
I said, “I am real. What I feel and want and know. That’s all real.”
“Yes,” Liz said. “You are real.”
It is a blessing to know a free woman. Sometimes she will stop by and hold up a mirror for you. She will help you remember who you are.
Recently, my friend Erika called my cell phone. I will never understand why people insist upon calling my cell phone. It’s such an aggressive action to take: calling someone. Each time my phone rings, I have a heart attack like my pocket’s on fire and a tiny siren is going off.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to address texting. Texting = Better Than Calling. Unless.
Unless you are one of those people who doles out texts like IOUs. Unless you believe that whenever you feel like it, you can just poke at me, ping me, jump into my day like Hiiiiii and feel so entitled to a response that the next time I see you, you will arrange your face in an injured manner and say quietly, “Hey. You doing okay? I just never heard back…” At this moment, I have 183 unread texts. Texts are not the boss of me, and neither is anybody who texts me. I have decided, once and for all, that just because someone texts me does not obligate me to respond. If I believed differently, I’d walk around all day feeling anxious and indebted, responding instead of creating. Now that we’ve established why I have no friends, let’s return to Erika.
Erika and I went to college together. She was a born artist, but studied business because her mother was a corporate executive and wanted Erika to become one, too. Erika resented every minute she spent in those business classes. It’s nearly impossible to blaze one’s own path while following in someone else’s footsteps.
Erika returned to our dorm each day and recovered from her business boredom by painting. She graduated with a business degree, then fell in love with a fantastic guy and worked in a corporate office to put him through medical school. Next, the babies came, and she quit her job to stay home and care for them. All the while, she heard a voice nagging her to start painting again. One day, she told me she planned to honor that longing—to honor herself—by enrolling in art school. I heard fizz and fire in her voice for the first time in a decade.
So I answered the phone in celebration of Erika’s commitment and I said, “Hey! How is school going?”
She was quiet for a moment and then said, “Oh that. That was silly. Brett is so busy, and the kids need me. Art school just seemed so selfish after a while.”
Why do women find it honorable to dismiss ourselves?
Why do we decide that denying our longing is the responsible thing to do?
Why do we believe that what will thrill and fulfill us will hurt our people?
Why do we mistrust ourselves so completely?
Here’s why: Because our culture was built upon and benefits from the control of women. The way power justifies controlling a group is by conditioning the masses to believe that the group cannot be trusted. So the campaign to convince us to mistrust women begins early and comes from everywhere.