Friendship Envy

True friendship multiplies the good in life and divides its evils. Strive to have friends, for life without friends is like life on a desert island…to find one real friend in a lifetime is good fortune; to keep him is a blessing. — Baltasar Gracian

“Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.”
— Buddha

“Envy is destroyed by true friendship, flirtation by true love.”
— François de la Rochefoucauld

“Where in this wide world can man find nobility without pride, friendship without envy, or beauty without vanity?”
— Ronald Duncan

“When you are feeling depreciated, angry, or drained, it is a sign that other people are not open to your energy.” — Sanaya Roman

Ah, damn it all, just when you think you are over something… you get hit in the face with it again. This is a difficult post for me to write, since it involves past experiences and brings up unpleasant memories. Going to an artist friend’s gallery showing last night, I was hit with envy – not of the art, or the showing, but of the friendship of these women who all met in an artist’s way group and all support each other. I felt a surge of envy at not being included in their little clique.
The artist way group they all met in was led by an artist I know whose other classes I had participated in. She and I had a falling out when she questioned me over some things that had happened as a result of my having an undiagnosed bipolar disorder, which is now controlled and under treatment. She seemed to discourage me from participating in her future groups, even though my illness is now under control.

Sure, there is something that comes from working with a particular group of people. I guess for me, all that work I do in a group becomes internal. I enjoy the support and enthusiasm of other people for something that I do, but in the end, I know I have to be complete in myself, not dependent on what others think of my work or how great a time I have hanging out with them or how “cool” it is to have my art in a show. If my family and friends enjoy what I do, that is probably enough for me.

The artist child in me wants to have a good time painting or drawing or whatever, not to sell my work for x amount of dollars or have all my friends tell me how neat it is. If I had a good time doing it, or worked out some issue I was feeling, or just got to express how intensely I feel about sunflowers or poppies or the desert I grew up in or whatever, that is enough for me.

And yet… there it is. That envious feeling and that abandonment I fought so hard to get over for a full year when friendships collapsed and there was no one left but my wonderful husband. When everyone I thought might help pick up the pieces of my shattered life stepped aside and let me fall, even that art therapist who was supposed to support me, even those friends I thought understood me and would be there for me. Yes, I know all that is healed within me, but it doesn’t mean that deep well of feelings is forgotten, or that it can ever fully be cast aside. If I go to that deep well, I know those feelings, I know that little girl who cried in her bed alone at night, that woman who shrieked in frustration at the feeling she will never, ever really be understood, that one who loved others so, so deeply, and so rarely had it returned. Oh yes, I know her. And she knows that her art is not about these happy little gallery showings, she knows it is about pain and suffering and deep loves and traumatic losses and the world as it really is and the world as we imagine it might be.

I admire the art of these women, and appreciate its beauty and what it has to say. And yet…I want to be appreciated for what I have to say. I didn’t want to be told by someone who calls themself an art therapist that I had to support her process. Her job was supposed to be to support me, to help me, not be afraid of my bipolar disorder and let her lack of understanding get in the way. I didn’t want to be shut out of her groups because she thought I was disruptive to her process. That’s the whole frickin’ point of art sometimes, to disrupt people’s processes and make them go “ah” or “ah-hah!” or “wow” or “damn it! Guernica was terrible!”.

So what is it I haven’t forgiven or moved on from, what am I still clinging to that limits my friendships with women, that limits my art work, that limits my life, why can’t I get past it and trust myself completely again, instead of always holding back, always keeping myself in reserve, always being afraid people will be shocked or outraged or upset with me for holding up that mirror and showing them something about themselves or about me that they might not like?

What is it? It is that of course I want to be liked, to have the little clique, to live in the nice safe art world that has fun little gallery showings and pretends they are doing great things, that pretends everyone is normal and nice and oh, maybe has some body issues but nothing that might be actually – disruptive. It is that I want to have these friends, these people to support me.Wouldn’t that be swell? Sure it would.

But it wouldn’t be art, not for me. I have to acknowledge that my life was disrupted, that my world still includes two disabled people, my sister and nephew, who are devastated by this illness. That it is a part of me, not something I can cast aside simply because in my case it’s controlled now by medication, that in my case it wasn’t all that bad, that I only suffered for a year and not ten or twenty or my whole life. And if that means I need to get over my envy of those who live in nice, safe worlds that are never disrupted by life-changing illness, then so be it.