Having to chose between friends

Sometimes life plays tricks on you. It’s never an easy task to have to chose between friends, but what if you really have to?

The very idea might seem appalling, and believe me, I don’t like it either. But I sometimes have been placed in that spot, and when you feel there is no way out, everything must turn practical or it’s your heart on a stick.

This really isn’t easy to explain. In the end someone always gets hurt. And selfish as it might seem, if you face life’s responsibilities towards yourself and the ones you love, no matter how much it pains you, the answer is right before you.

To get in a little deeper on the subject, this one is about people that you hold close to your heart and that disappoint you. With or without guilt, on purpose or not, those people eventually make you suffer and the shit is, you are always the common factor.

Now, some years ago I devised a strategy to prevent people from hurting me. It’s really very simple. Expect nothing from them, that way they cant disappoint you. No disappointment, no pain. This is the part you can control.

What you can’t control is when you look into someone’s eyes and Kaboom… you’ve surrendered. There is no way out, no turning back, you are there.

If that person doesn’t feel the same, you will hurt and she wont even know it. If she is bright enough, she can tell. Being friends, the last thing she will want is to hurt you. But that’s beyond her control.

So, you find yourself in an emotional crisis. What do you do? Keep in touch with that person, which is what you want the most, and see her get on with her life elsewhere? Or do you step aside and drift away, drunk with feelings that you don’t want to understand, and get on with your own life?

Now this is the part where you need to chose between friends. At that point, keep being friends with her is not compatible with being friend to yourself. Just thinking of her hurts you, not to mention talking or seeing.

Decisions like these never come easy. You reach deep into your gut, and rip out the answer. And your self-esteem came thru. Being your own friend was the way to survive. You just couldn’t bare hurting anymore and life had to go on. To many things going on, a family crisis, keeping functional at your job, deciding about what direction you want your life to head… and you plunge into work. Die to the world, find a nice cave, get in and lick your wounds until you hibernate.

Working has a mild healing effect. It’s not an all healing balm, it can’t fix some of the scars. And if you don’t stop in time, it can get addictive. But when your life seems like a deck of cards that was pushed off the table, it’s an easy solution. At least you are making some sense out of chaos and feeling that at least a part of your life is being successful.

Radical changes can really give you some sort of redemption. The advantage of a new start is that you can be as bold as you like and screw everyone else’s opinion. This was when robots came into my life. And this was when I worked the most, for the smallest pay in my life too. But you know what? It was worth it. I lost that sense of insecurity that was holding me back, and managed to look up into the sky again. And this time, there was no need for rain to hide the tears.

Volkswagen was a huge project. One that in spite of all the flaws that occurred, taught me a lot about coordination, security, team work, and I was able to see what it was like to really apply quality and management tools in a crisis situation were everyone panics. Keeping cool under pressure is nothing less than fabulous. After leaving it, more robots followed. And amazingly, they still do.

Robots are a demanding mistress. They fuck you up, drain all your energies, keep you from family and friends, but also get you to heaven in ecstasy. It’s easy to forget the rest of the world when they get under your skin. I usually forget to eat, so it shouldn’t be too hard to understand the kind of fascination. When you get bitten by the industry bug, you will know what I’m talking about.

During this period I was put to a test that I nearly didn’t came out of. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger right? That’s only partly true, because every battle leaves it’s scars. Anyway, I’m glad about the joint effort that this family has put into getting out of the hole. Finally, honesty, truth, hard work, tolerance and especially, a lot of love made what wasn’t there for 30 years. A family unit.

Before all this, that required me to be my friend, and keeping friend with someone that had no chance to avoid hurting me (it was out of her hands), I had to make the only possible choice. Guilt was never an issue. And if guilt existed, it was mine. But the damage was done and I needed to keep walking. So you see, sometimes when friends don’t walk the same track for some time, that doesn’t mean that they have turned their back on each other. Sometimes you just need to make it on your own.