Larry King: Hi everyone, thanks for joining us tonight. The hot topic on everyone's minds right now is, of course, the Pockets Reconciliation. We all hoped for it, but we never really expected it.
Me: That's right, Larry, and thanks for having me. Hi Mom!
Larry King: Tell us what happened.
Me: Well, Larry, you know what happened prior to Tuesday morning. When Pockets found out John and I had gotten together, she went nuclear and disappeared completely. I've seen her have emotional outbursts before--I've even been the recipient of them before--but I'd never seen one so full of anger and betrayal. I feared that was the end of our long friendship.
Larry King: You'd been friends for thirty years?
Me: That's right, Larry. For long stretches of my childhood, she was my only close friend. Outside of my immediate family, she's the only connection to my childhood and adolescence I have left. Now, I won't pretend that a thirty-year relationship--ANY thirty-year relationship--doesn't have its ups and downs. We fought, we made up, we got angry at each other, we both did really stupid boneheaded things, sometimes we wouldn't speak to each other for weeks or months at a time. But through it all, we were friends. The hardest thing about this last...incident...is that it felt as though all connections had been severed, that she wouldn't consider making up.
Larry King: But she ended up being the one to make the overture.
Me: I hope my original assessment was correct--that she just needed time, and space. On Tuesday morning I received an email from her, the first I'd gotten since...the unpleasantness. I'll admit, Larry, when I saw her name in my email inbox, I winced. I was fully prepared for another vituperative diatribe, possibly even for "I will firebomb your wedding." Happily, I was wrong.
Larry King: What did she say?
Me: Several weeks ago, I'd sent her an apologetic email, ahead of her wedding invitation (which I now know she never received). I didn't hear anything from her at the time, so I assumed it had fallen on deaf ears. But she wrote me a very heartfelt, very rational apology, stating that she missed me and wanted me back in her life. I responded with a very heartfelt apology of my own. Tears were cried. Various emotions were expressed. We made up.
Larry King: Even though, as your fiance put it, "In spite of the high-yield nuclear detonations of anger leaving spots where nothing will ever grow again?"
Me: Well, yes, Larry. There was a lot more nuclear in this than I was prepared for, or hope to ever see again. But this argument wasn't entirely one-sided; I made mistakes in this, too. As you know, the last few years, up until the road trip, were not good for me. I was in a bad place. And when I'm in a bad place, I tend to become self-destructive, self-absorbed, and a general pain in the ass to those around me. For all of you that put up with me during those years, I apologize. That's the thing about being in a downward spiral--you can't see it until you're out of it.
Fortunately, I'm out of it now. The road trip was exactly the spiritual boot to the head I needed, and John of course was a big part of that. But Pockets bore the brunt of a lot of my pain-in-the-ass-edness, and that contributed to the blowout. I shouldn't have broken the news about John to her as flippantly as I did, and that also contributed to the blowout. Mistakes were made, on both our parts.
Larry King: Still, it does seem a bit of an overreaction on her part.
Me: Well, maybe, Larry. But I've done some breathtakingly stupid things in my life--I mean, haven't we all? It's just that my stupid things tend to be tactless and possibly also self-destructive. Hers tend to be emotional outbursts. Trust me, there are plenty of times in my life when I would have been better served to adopt a more scorched-earth policy in my emotional expression (or, you know, lack thereof).
Larry King: All that anger, on both sides, and all it took was a good apology. It's heartwarming, it really is. But I have to ask: if that's the case, why can't you do that with your exes?
Me: None of them ever apologized.
Wait, that's not entirely true--one did. We're friends now.
Larry King: It's quite a story. So, what now?
Me: We pick up where we left off. And I hope we can stay there--I'm getting too old for this shit. Life is about the people that are important to you. I want to keep the people I love close to me.
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