I was talking to a dear friend of mine today who was expressing frustration over a current realtionship; I echoed with problems with friends and discovered our mutual predicament. More then failure, more then lonliness, more then scandal, more then almost anything--the one thing I do not want to ever be is an obligation to another person. I don't want to be the relationship that exists because it always has, I don't want to be the friend I hang around with simply beause I'm too tired to meet anyone else. I don't think there are too many people in the world who stand up and say, "Oooh ooh can I be an obligation, PA-LEEZE???" and so I see no overarching need to discuss such a topic ad nauseam; however my inner monologue is bursting forth in such a form that I cannot quell it unless it can be captured elsewhere, and that elsewhere is here. If it's boring, skip to the next one.
ANYWAY---
When a close friendship/relationship gets to that rocky time when it seems that the option to go or stay much be weighed carefully, what makes someone stay when it is clear that they should let go? Is it their own fear, or is it their percieved obligation for that other person? Perceived obligations can rapidly become wellsprings for the ego. Is that other person "too weak" to take the news? "Too broken" to heal from another wound? "Too needy" to be able to let go? "Too angry" to ever take it constructively? Regardless of the reason, it is more damaging to stay and ride it out till its last breath than it is to give up the ghost and walk away with a bit of the empathy still intact. Bitterness is more the jagged pill to swallow then honesty ever will be. But then again, when should one stick it out, tough up and stay? How does one distinguish? Can the problems be talked out, or are they best left unsaid, untouched and unopened, filed into the Archives of What Could Have Been? I don't know, but I do know that clarity brings to light the burdens we so often did not consider ourselves obliged to carry.
