My friend broke up with me—here’s what I learned | Meenadchi | TEDxDelthorneWomen

The first thought I had after my best

friend

broke

up with me was don't you want to grow old with the person who taught you how to put in a tampon? We met when we were 10 years old. We became best

friend

s when we were 16. We went from being daughters of immigrant mothers who knew that nothing fits in that hole until t

here

's a wedding ring on your finger, to people who chose careers and paths outside of our parents' expectations. and in the immigrant home in which I grew up I

learned

that friendship is a lifelong expectation because friendship is synonymous with Liberation the fabric of my family was fractured by the genocide 3 days after my birth and our people were scattered across around the world as the years went by I saw my parents come together and embrace each other with friends they hadn't seen in 10 15 sometimes 30 years I come from a culture w

here

it is common to hear that your cousins ​​neighbors brothers-in-law best friends family Your daughter was reaching your danger zone and could you take care of them for a few days?

We would bring them to your house, make sure they were fed and when it was time for bed, they would be given the big bed and everyone else would be in sleeping bags on the couch. Friendship was a resource that was taken care of generationally and that was how we were. I made sure we were held and then my best friend

broke

my heart and altered my view of the possibilities. Today I'm in a room full of people who presumably have similar values ​​to me of freedom and equality of community care, but I bet most of the people here have been on one side or the other in a tampon breakout story, So

what

does that say about our ability to consistently and collectively care for each other?

There are some lessons that this experience taught me, lessons that have to do with friendship and lessons that have to do with love, Liberation. and our right to dream, the first is that letting people choose the right path for them is key to finding the right path for us. My best friend and I didn't have a big blowup, we just became people who no longer fit in. in each other's lives and after 26 years together my best friend didn't want to have a conversation about why we had drifted apart or how we could get back together, she didn't want to and I kept thinking she should want, should want, should But she didn't that wasn't the way she wanted to love me and love is a choice even when it's the choice to end our time together we choose how we present ourselves to each other we choose how we protect each other we choose how we are each other with others when it comes to building a world we want to live in, a world where we feel safe, you may have a completely different idea than I do of how to get there and I can condemn your choices or I can choose to reimagine the Possibility, maybe there are more ways to free myself than I think or know, and even if after everything I've imagined I still think your choice is totally wrong, one thing I know is that for me freedom will never be about.

Shoot or shame someone into making the right decision. Liberation will consist of creating spaces where we are collectively able to choose differently. The second is a little difficult to accept, is knowing that peace will not always be found by searching for the answers because sometimes the answers do not seem to be found in the weeks and months after our breakup. I searched the Internet for reasons why this had happened. Google was my God, you know, I read a story on Reddit from a woman who shared that her My 24-year-old best friend had stopped talking to her cold turkey when I read that story.

I took a deep breath and when I let it out I thought it wasn't just me. As I read more stories, it occurred to me that this is something that happens, I don't know. why it happens, but I understood that it was not fundamentally because of who I am and I understood that I was not alone. I don't know why systems of oppression exist in our society. Why genocides are documented on social networks by 24-year-olds. I don't know. I don't know

what

rupture occurred in our Collective Soul that introduced a hatred of fat bodies, foreign bodies, disabled bodies into our way of being, what I know is that there is more context to what is happening than one person in a lifetime. could know.

What I know is that what is happening is not because of who we are and what I know is that we are not alone in the moment my best friend broke up with me. I experienced a constellation of breakups from other friends which I have

learned

is how it often happens that one of these friends unfriended in 2018 in 2021. I texted them I miss you, they replied and slowly, cautiously, We all called each other, we were clear that there were no expectations of returning to the friendship we once had, we did not live close to each other and we had no real reason to commit again, but here we are, 2 years later, we are back to life on the other with a rhythm that feels fluid and easy, they are preparing to get pregnant so sometime next year I hope to receive news about my new bite.

I'm going to pause here and invite everyone to take a breath with me because lesson number three about love, liberation and our right to dream is to remember that even when things feel like a loss, they can turn into a victory, thank you.