The Curse of Expectations
I’ve never held many close friends. Of these, close ‘girlfriends’ even less. Not for a lack of desire of course. In days gone by I would have adored nothing more than to rally around a tub of ice cream beside my besties, while pondering the complexities of our lives and the uncertainties of our potential futures. For a long time I have deeply resented not having this kind of emotional infrastructure, a scaffolding that seemed so fundamental in the building of girl into woman. I resented the friends I had for not being this kind of framework. I resented myself for not being included into the fold of those who shared this kind of connected strength.
When we had our first child, I had an image in my mind of what the journey that followed would be like. I imagined that it would bring together this collection of women in my life, rallying around and embracing my daughter with love and years of knowledge and guidance to help her grow into a strong woman… and me into a great mother. Romantic as it may have been, I expected a village…but the village never came.
Instead, what followed was what seemed like an eternity of disconnected loneliness. Both my husband and I had, in our mind, a similar picture. When the small network we had around us retreated in aim of ‘giving us space to figure things out…’ an undercurrent of resentment began to flow through our lives that effected our spirit and all our relationships for a long time after. As we began to feel more and more isolated, the resentment we felt caused us to retreat further into isolation. It wasn’t until many of these friends had children of their own that I gained a new clarity on the impact of expectations on relationships.
Try as a I might, to ensure that they did not feel the same isolation and loneliness that we felt in those first few years…I continued to fail. Life had become so busy for us and we were so overwhelmed trying to keep our heads above water, that months would pass without us having spoken or seen eachother. Every now and then when we did manage to take time out for a brief catchup, there were a million things that I had missed about their lives….marriage turmoil, postpartum depression, anxiety, career confusion, unwell children, promotions, renovations, vacations. Across the few of us, we had covered a full spectrum of life crisis and achievements…and I was totally in the dark, and felt like a terrible friend. But the extraordinary thing was, they did not judge me for not being there…not even once. Or if they did they certainly didn’t vocalise it. They were understanding and forgiving. They didn’t have any expectations of me and I was humbled by that.
In this group of women, some of us are talkers, needing to vent our feelings to help with clarity and perspective, others not so much, opting to hold emotion and event close to heart.
Recently there was opportunity for a brief respite and catchup with a couple of these important women in my life. We did something that we have never done and went to see a movie together. The movie in itself was moving and extraordinary. But for me what was more so, was the collective emotions we shared during the highs and lows of the journey. As I giggled at the funny parts, their giggles echoed back, and as my heart ached and the tears were close, I could feel that they were there with me also.
Motherhood had indeed deeply altered our being and brought us closer together, not necessarily in words but definitely in heart. The deep connection I felt to these women as I sat beside them in silence was surprising and beautiful. We talked for hours afterwards about the state of our lives…the challenges and triumphs, the highs and the lows… cradling teas instead of ice cream tubs. Barriers steadily breaking down… each of us on our own journey but united in our fallibility, our lack of expectation and judgment of eachother and our deep understanding of our part in eachothers emotional infrastructure. As we grow as women, partners and mothers, moving closer to our true selves, we are constantly moving closer to eachother.
As we walked away, to return to our own lives once more, I realised how refreshed I felt from being in their presence. How alive my spirit was suddenly. I went without expectation, and what I learnt was this :
The magic of scaffolding lies not in the large and visible structure that seems to hold up the building as it comes into being….but in the almost invisible joints and platforms that allow space for small details to develop and resolve. When you remove your expectations of what you think you know, understand or see, you get an unobscured view of the beauty that is hiding right in front of you.
