Can't get back to you

Backs came up in the conversation last night as I talked with Jeanette. We were talking about hurts in our friends. She spoke of a carbuncle she once saw, I spoke of one Mom mentioned last Tuesday, on the back of Dad's neck that went so deep that when it was removed and healed you could still feel the hole.

The idea was that it takes a friend to see we have a problem with our back and it takes someone besides ourselves to fix it. You have to trust them with your back. You have to turn your back on them, make yourself vunerable, to have it fixed or even scratched.

She said "we can't see our backs either" and I saw that was mostly true. You can set up the mirrors to see it, but you still can't reach it to fix it without help. It takes two.

Interesting to me was that we can't see behind us. Can we see our pasts? Or have we taken hurts from there and filed them in our hearts without giving them a good look?

So often when we care and then it fails we take it to ourselves and accept the blame because we don't think the one we love can do anything wrong. It really is the truth that it takes two to make things work out. Even when you don't want to see it sometimes the one you love screws up, too. Sometimes they dump on you and then you take it to your heart and you feel you failed or should have tried harder. It lowers your view of yourself, lowers your self confidence and you show that by how you treat yourself.

When we show our past to others, they may see it differently. They may have a word to share that shows it to you in a different light. They might even be right! You reconsider your past in the light of your friends eyes and see that maybe you are carrying something that wasn't because you failed. It was because it takes two and you both gave up or even that the one you loved didn't have what was needed to work it out with you. You may have really done the best after all, in that particular situation.

Those tags that stick out and collars all twisted and the itch we get where we can't see it all take a friend to fix for us, one we can turn our back on. It takes one that we can trust to care to share our past hurts with and get, perhaps, a new perspective on them.

I have friends I trust with my back. Not as many as when I first counted. To really turn your back and walk away when they know so much about you takes an act of faith. To leave your truth where it can be shared about you, that takes trust.

The one's I say, "I have their back" to someone are the ones I will do anything for. I have my sisters, the Mom and a few friends that I say that about. It's how I say I love them. What ever I have is theirs.

Who do you turn your back on and who scratches it when you itch? Which people will always tell you that you picked wet paint to sit on? When you have a problem, who do you see for comfort and even if it's just ten bucks, who says, "Never mind, I 've got it!" ? The friends that love you do.

Having a front is wonderful and I can hide a lot behind one. But the truth sticks out to those I trust to turn my back on.