Note from Elsewhere

My bestest friend, who I love more than anything in the world and is married to the world's biggest loser, sent me this story today. Again, I didn't write this. She did.

"Once upon a time, there was a sweet young girl with a lot of potential. One day, she was walking past a quicksand pit in the forest. She looked down and saw a handsome man in the quicksand pit. He smiled at her nicely and said that he had been there his whole life. Without him even asking, she tied a rope around her middle and tied half to him, and she started to pull him out. As she pulled, she noticed that he had weights on his arms. They could be slipped off with some effort, but he wasn't slipping any of them off. Then she noticed that he didn't know how to swim. She tried to teach him, but he just got angry and wouldn't learn. After a while of trying to pull him, the sweet young girl realized that she was slipping backwards into the quicksand as well. She just couldn't pull him out.

She had a choice - cut the rope or get pulled into the quicksand forever."

I hate that she feels torn. It's especially hard for her because everyone told her that she was making a big mistake when she got married. So now she feels like she can't tell everyone that they were right. Even when she tells me her problems, she feels like she needs to send me the problems in little parables. I don't know what's sadder - that she feels like she's being dragged under by this man or that she can't even tell me what's going on without cloaking it in symbolism.

On her wedding day, as we were heading to her hair appointment, she said to me, "I know you think I'm beautiful and smart and funny, but most men don't think so. And sometimes he looks at me and tells me he loves me and thinks I'm funny and... and sometimes I believe him." And that was sad to me. Because I KNOW she's beautiful and smart and funny and worth about eight million of her husband.

One of my other really close friends from college just graduated with her master's degree last weekend. She's now in a state of transition and doesn't know what she's going to do with the rest of her life. She's in flux and really confused about what she should do. I guess life is never really easy, even when you're doing something you think is right.

So, for them, and for the other people I know who are in a state of transition right now, I say that the moral of my bestest friend's story is that we all need to learn how to cut the rope sometimes. It's sad, it's painful, but it isn't our responsibility to keep the boy out of the quicksand by ourselves, it's our responsibility to do what's right for us.