At a wedding last month, we met Johnny, the groom's uncle, who lives in London.
We sent Asher to study stage management in London after he finished high school. He was a very young and inexperienced adolescent then, and the school management did little or nothing to help him find his way in that unfamiliar place. We, his parents, hadn't realized how much Asher would have to fend for himself, and I don't think I did enough to help him. But in fact he managed and matured significantly in those two years.
I never even went to London to visit Asher at his school - a sign of the distance there was between us at the time. I must not have felt that he wanted me to come. But at least we were able to put him in touch with Johnny, who was generally nice to Asher and advanced him some money for us - the banking was surprisingly cumbersome, and it was difficult and expensive for us to transfer funds to Asher.
We had never met Johnny, and when we did, at the wedding, my first impulse was to thank him for being there for Asher, but I realized that I couldn't, because then he would have asked, "How is Asher?" and I would have had to tell him what happened.
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Oysh! This one really hurts: dreading encounters with old friends and acquaintances who innocently, haphazardly, politely ask the usual questions. Always, in my head are the questions and the answers... while in their heads... nothing... yet. My choice is staying indoors in a sealed room or groping through the dread, pain, and awkwardness of facing other people.
I have found, given such miserable choices that surrendering to the dread and to my imagination, facing people, then losing it... crying, even sobbing if they respond kindly, helps me and probably them. Yet it is hard. And I have to manage my response to theirs, which can be the hardest part if I find their response unhelpful.
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