Calling You Back

There’s a particular kind of ache in being told that what you once shared was real — and then hearing, in the same breath, that she has no drive to make it close again.

She pulls no punches about it. The great relationship we had is something she decided to step back from her senior year, and she’s been fine leaving it there, sealed as history. Hearing her voice after years of distance is hard enough. I can’t even remember the length of the silence the way she can, but her voice carries none of the old itch to rebuild something. Instead she lists what I’m allowed to do. Nothing she sounds excited to do herself. I don’t understand how that can be — it kills me each day without them — but it seems the absence has been manageable for her. From the first moments of the call there is the quiet expectation that going forward her schedule will simply be too full for calls anytime, though I am welcome to “ask an occasional question” by text.

All of it points to the same reality: she does not really want something real and great with me again the way I do.

And how could she, really? For years she has forced herself not to want me — doing what she felt she had to in order to protect herself. She has worked to forget what that closeness we had before used to give her: the security, the stability, the steady support. Some of that space was rightly filled by other friends, especially as she prepares for marriage. A spouse should be the primary rock on which they build their domestic church. That part I understand. But real friendships and family were never meant to be either-or. They can stand side by side. Both always could, and still can, coexist and even strengthen one another instead of acting as adversaries.

The rejection held even when there were no friends around to blame it on. It stayed when we camped together as family. It stayed when she was home next door with no one else pulling her attention. It stayed through breaks and full weeks at home when I asked, clearly and gently, if we could just talk and catch up. Those requests were ignored, again and again.

So of course there is hesitation now. She has probably enjoyed, in many ways, not having me in her life each day and risking what she calls the “cycle”. It feels safer that way. That is why she has not allowed herself to actually love me for years, there hasn't been a reward worth the risk for her. I haven't been worth it. But it's not actually safer. And it actively prevents her from loving me which is how the cycle always restarts when that becomes apparent that there isn't really love from her or that she allows herself to receive from me. As C.S. Lewis wrote:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

She was willing to be vulnerable with a stranger last year, and now, a year later, she prepares for marriage with him. Maybe this call back tonight is just another day of putting on a polite face, smiling, and tolerating the conversation while the deeper want and desire to love and be loved remains locked away. Maybe.

Or maybe one day she will allow herself to want to be with me again the way she used to. Maybe she will stop locking up her heart and share it again — and be excited to see ours too.

I could spend these next hours and days turning over every what-if and every moment that went sideways with the right words not coming in the phone call. I’m choosing not to. I’m choosing to hold onto the simplest fact in front of me: she chose to call me back.

After months of asking me to leave her alone, she did not have to take that moment. After so long without a real conversation, she could have let the silence keep its shape. She didn’t. Even though she cannot see it from where she stands right now, I am choosing to give her grace. I have given her grace ninety-nine percent of the time across these long months — every single day — while carrying some of the sharpest rejection I have ever known and still being told to stay away.

She chose to call back. It isn’t a lot. But it is something. She even suggested questions that could help rebuild. What remains to be seen is whether she wants the vulnerability that any real relationship requires in return. Every real friendship she has must already rest on that.

And she said she will call again when she is free, so we can talk through it more.

So I trust.

And I wait.

She’ll never see this, but for the first time since she asked me to leave her alone, there is a small, fragile hope. I hope she will allow herself to love and be loved again in the only way love can actually happen — with vulnerability, trust, grace, presence, and joy. Wanting it. Willing the good of the other. Eager to be known again by someone who has loved her deeply for years. We have to start over and rebuild. But rebuilding if that first relationship was the real thing I remember it to be, wouldn't take much or very long if she really wants it. After all - she went from 0 to marriage with a stranger in only a year by wanting it. From whatever this is to a brother and sister again should be easy once she desires it again. Hope, pray, and do not worry.