Bad Friends: A Dream Analysis

It’s easy to be simple-minded and insensible about shallow friends, largely due to the fact that we are so blind to our own shallowness. This is one of the most valuable lessons I learned from losing a child. 

I wrote before about realizing, within three days after my daughter’s death, that

it was for damn sure that I was surrounded by silly, self-absorbed women who hadn’t the grace to extend a simple condolence while returning a book, much less the grace to offer a steadying or comforting hand.

It is a psychological paradox that wherever our Selves are undeveloped, we compensate for our shortcomings by giving away what we most need or want. As might be expected, this produces hollow people with hollow relationships. It’s an unfortunate part of being a psychologist that I not only know these things, but catch myself being underdeveloped at the worst possible times. This is what happened while Olivia died and I broke down; I noticed that I was underdeveloped because the self-absorption and ridiculousness of some of my friends and acquaintances was thrown into sharp relief by my grief and need.

As Maya Angelou once wrote, people may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. As I think back now on the lunatic comments or behaviors of some of my friends and family members while we suffered through one of the most painful experiences of our lives, I remember all too well how I felt.  And it would be so easy for me to externalize it and make my reactions be about these other people.

But it wasn’t about these other people.

Sure, they were silly or self-absorbed or judgmental or outrageously unforgiving while I was at my worst. Friends for whom I had sacrificed physically, materially, and emotionally were not all there for me when I needed them. They missed great opportunities to be of service to a suffering member of the body of Christ.

On the other hand, people I had barely seen before my daughter’s illness suddenly stood up to be counted. One friend simply came and sat. She brought her needlepoint, and she sat for long hours with us. She stayed with Olivia and me as Olivia grew weaker day by day. What she offered by simply sitting was a solid, comforting presence that kept me grounded while my emotions threatened to unhinge me and send me catapulting into the atmosphere without a tether.

I felt a lot of anguish when I realized that some of my best friends and closest acquaintances–people with or around whom I’d spent a lot of time in the previous years–were not there for me or my family. They were not there physically, and they were not there by any other means. Their not being there was one of the greatest gifts they could have given me, though, because their absence left a void that showed me a void–a void within a void.

The void was in me.

I looked back over many years of female friendships, going all the way back to college. I noticed that I had gone through a period of collecting friends who were needy in some way, inferior intellectually, and who needed support, care, companionship and help from me. In the typical evangelical Christian church environment, the strong are sometimes preyed upon and used by leadership and lay people alike, and I was no exception to the law of having much and giving much. I mentored these friends, set the example, and strengthened them to feel good about themselves. Funny thing was, I gave them what I lacked (or tried to): support, care, companionship, a mentor, an example. I was needing Sophia, the wise woman.

As I became more balanced and whole, my needy friends moved on or I helped them to move on, and I established new and healthier friendships. Even so, I looked back at some of the friends I found in young adulthood and I saw that I often served the cheerleader, financier, or or therapist function for people who, in turn, were my motivators. The friends who needed this type of energy from me required so much time and effort that I was able to excuse myself from living my own life. These were friends with whom I could become so enmeshed that, without them, I might feel lost; and no person should be so central to one’s life. This is the worst kind of imbalance.

Like Tom in The Water Babies, I had to go “down, down, down to the sea” of the unconscious to find the deep source of my motivations. One night, I dreamed that the friend who had stayed with me throughout my daughter’s illness was with me in a conversation. I exclaimed, “I have so much to do! I don’t know why I’m so over-extended!”

She replied, “I know why; it’s because you don’t want to read the book!”

Exposed! The truth was out! I ran out of the house and went to another friend’s house–a friend who had abandoned me when I needed her. Her house was nearly empty, with only a couple of packed boxes in the living room; obviously, a move was in progress. A key ring with two house keys on it sat on one of the boxes. I took one of the keys and pocketed it, thinking, “Now I can come back whenever I want!”

Suddenly, my abandoning friend appeared. Surprised to see me, she said she wanted to make it up to me, and I agreed. Afterward, though, she said, “It’s too late for this: I’m moving overseas.” At that, I awoke.

In my next dream, my husband suggested, “Let’s go to Europe to visit your family.” I agreed and we went, arriving early in the morning to the country where my relatives live. I went to my grandmother’s apartment, and she was sitting up in bed. She was overjoyed to see me and said, “I’ll get dressed, and we’ll talk!” And then the dream was over.

After the second dream I realized the meaning of both dreams. In the first dream, the truth-telling and truth-knowing part of me, represented by the friend who sat with me while my daughter died, exposed the motivation behind my “busy-ness”: I didn’t want to read “the book.” This reminded me of Psalm 139, where David writes, “Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.”

This book was the book of my Self, a beautiful image to someone who has been a writer since second grade! I had avoided the inner Quest into my inner kingdom by staying so busy that there could be no questing. In the dream, I ran away from this truth to the home of my abandoning friend. This second friend represented abandonment and not-good-enough. Like a cunning hero stealing from the sleeping or absent dragon, I took a key. This was a clue that the key to the problem could be found in my relationship and responses to abandonment.

In the first dream, the abandoning friend said, “It’s too late; I’m going overseas,” and in the following dream I was with my husband, representation of my animus (the doing part of my psyche), going to Europe, to the country of my birth–my motherland.

Mother Land.

Can the message be any more plain than that?

When I arrive, there is my dear grandmother, made wise and sweet through suffering–symbolic of the wise old woman archetype–so happy to see me. The message was loud and clear: “You’re doing fine. You, too, will become wise and sweet through suffering if you cross the sea (unconscious) and flee to your Mother Land.

In the Mother Land is the place of homecoming; the place of protection, nurturing, and the welcoming hearth. It is the place where the child is cared for.

I had become sick at heart from losing my daughter and from being confronted by so much grief and terror at once. Only by marshalling all my inner resources–all the major characters that make me, me–would I be able to provide a haven for myself. I could not look to any friend for that haven, for there was no friend outside of my Self who could be what I needed my Self to be.

No one else could take me home.

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