"Saudade (European Portuguese: [sɐwˈðaðɨ], Brazilian Portuguese: [sawˈdadi] or [sawˈdadʒi], Galician: [sawˈðaðe]; plural saudades)[1] is a word in Portuguese and Galician (from which it entered Spanish) that claims no direct translation in English. It describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return.[2] A stronger form of saudade might be felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing, moved away, separated, or died." - Wikipedia
I fell asleep tonight at seven. When I woke up, I felt disoriented. I looked at the clock and the time didn't make sense. I couldn't remember when I fell asleep, whether it was the same day, the next morning, or the next evening. Before I figured all that out, I picked up the phone to call my mom. I haven't done that in probably fifteen years or so. Mom died twenty years ago. It doesn't devastate me any more, it was just one of those things. One of those "Huh. There's that feeling again." things.
I'm going through huge changes right now. I went back to school to bring my RN license current. Then I graduated and started job hunting. I have to make a decision this week about where to work. I've got a good offer on the table (turned down a couple of not-so-good offers), and then there's the job that I think I really want. They should make a decision in a couple of days, and my gut feeling is that I will get the offer. Then I have to decide where to work. It's not easy. Trade-offs. And I just wanted to talk to my mom.
After I woke up more completely I realized that it's not just my mom I miss. There are other significant friendships that have disintegrated over time. One of my three best friends from college, Janet, decided six years ago that I was demon possessed. Because I have PTSD. And then there's Dawn. Oh, Dawn.
Dawn and I became close just a year before I left Oklahoma. We'd known each other for years before, since our babies were, well, actual babies. But it wasn't until I started losing weight that we started working out together and became close friends. We had a lot of differences, but we had a lot in common, and I thought there was a strong foundation of mutual respect between us.
After I moved away, Dawn went through a lot of stress. I tried to be as supportive as I could from seven hundred miles away. Then a few months afterwards, from my perspective, she totally flipped out. The friendship limped along for a few months after that, but it was mortally wounded. As I wrote months ago, I am no longer capable of living with subtext.
The last time I went back to Oklahoma to visit, I tried to get together with her to discuss things openly, and I was firmly rebuffed. So, that's that. It's hard to know I'll never get answers. From my perspective, my former friend is not perceiving or dealing with reality. From her perspective, well, I don't know her perspective because she won't talk about it. But my guess is that her particular flavor of fundamentalist Christianity has explained her problems in the typical narrative of sin and oppression. And somehow, I got implicated in that. Somehow.
Right now, I am missing all the people that I thought I had a certain type of relationship with, but it turned out that I actually didn't. And I can't help but question my part in it. I mean, you know, if one person you meet is an asshole, well, yeah, they may be an asshole. But if everyone you meet is an asshole? Dude, it's you. You're the asshole. If all my friends are crazy, does that mean I'm the crazy one?
Times like this are when I used to pray. Seems kind of silly to pray when you don't even know if there's anything out there to listen.
