I love my chick-friends, don’t get me wrong.  Without them I’d last maybe a week and a half before I’d be a mumbling, crumbling mass of something really unpleasant.  But sometimes. They’re. Exhausting.

Like this week.  We do an annual chick’s cottage thing in February.  It’s been going on for 10 years now.  We book a big Martha Stewart-type cottage on a frozen bay where the big ol’ fat seals climb up on the ice to lounge.  While six of us sit inside in front of the fake fire.  It’s 2 nights of eating amazing food, drinking a vineyard of wine, getting caught up and relaxing.  We always leave on Sunday afternoon feeling like completely new women.

So it’s coming up and someone emailed the group about bed arrangements and someone was having an extra-crappy day and stuff got interpreted badly (thanks email!) and someone said she wasn’t going, she was just too broke.  And everyone chimed in. So I worked behind the scenes to straighten it out.  We talked some stuff through.  She came clean to the group about the bad day and how she interpreted things badly.  She got bankrolled and everyone was emailed to say all was good.  We started joking about breakfast menus.  Whew – crisis diverted right? 

Nope, someone else in the group emailed this morning and said the whole exchange had pissed her off, she was out, and she wished us a good weekend without her.

(Sigh)

And I just didn’t have the energy to try to fix it today.  And I was OK about that – but it still bugged me and that made me think about detachment. 

Detachment comes from the idea that clinging to stuff causes us problems.  And when we’re tangled up to our eyeballs in issues with all the nasty emotions that come with it – the alternative seems like it should be a cranky, pouty, arms-crossed-defensively-over-the-chest kind of thing.  But that’s just a new thing to cling to isn’t it?  It’s just a new problem.

Getting all “that’s it I’m outta here” isn’t respectful of the relationships I really care about. Looking at my friends, it seems like reading too much into emails and reacting negatively is just proof that we *really* need a weekend away together to chill.  It’s not anything I need to get cheesed off about.  I don’t want to be angry at my friends.  But I also know that I can’t feel tangled up in the intensity.

So what detachment options do I have?  When I look it up in the dictionary it’s words like “separation” and especially “aloofness” that makes me thing nah, I don’t want that in relationships I care about. 

But the part I do like is “freedom from prejudice or partiality”.  To me that means being free from reacting.  Free from simply dismissing my friends as nutheads.  Or choosing to feel calm rather than caught up in the crazy.  Choosing to be loving to my friends.  And choosing to detach myself with compassion.

A single step back is enough.  Not stomping off in anger or saying ”I’m so outta here”.  A step is just enough to detach myself but still be close enough to see my friends compassionately as they are - over-worked, too-much-wintered, need-a mini-break kinda gals.  Just like I am. 

Maybe tomorrow I’ll have the energy to talk to the friend who baled.  Or maybe I won’t, that’s ok.  But I will stock up on wine so I can share it with my buddies who show up.  And hoist a glass to wish the ones who don’t, the very best.