Dear Joe:

You wrote about the friends you had, that they “also had not-so-shiny-and-happy pasts so they never judged.”-

Interesting to me, because the people who do judge, the family members and friends you described, I don’t think they had “shiny and happy pasts”- it is that they refuse to look into the darkness and instead bounce the darkness off them by mistreating another.

About the last friend, you wrote that she is the only person who makes any attempt to understand you. This is a great improvement over a person who makes no such attempt, yet the friend of the type I am writing about is one who attempts and is successful in understanding you.

I learned the following principle, as I will verbalize it next: the good friends you have and the one friend you still have- in comparison to the other people in your life- have been and are great friends, but you only know what you know, what you already experienced. What you don’t know is what you didn’t experience yet, a closer friendship, more empathy, more understanding…

anita