the women of my tribe

I realized something today.

That the women I'm closest to, the women who will cancel their shift at work just to spend the day comforting me, the women who always make time for me, who embrace and accept all of me, have all had something painfully tragic happen to them. 

I don't mean simply heartache, everyone has some pain they carry with them, some wound from hurt feelings past. 

No, I mean tragic, epic, lifetime original movie fucked up shit kind of pain. 

The shit most people just read about let alone have to survive. 

The sisters I rely on are survivors. 

Warriors.  

They empathize and understand and carry such extensive compassion because they know, they fucking get it, the fear, the anxiety, the ptsd, the wanting nothing more than to just lie in bed for hours. 

Days. 

The numbness and the indifference, the confusion, and the disbelief. 

And none of them. 

Not one soul has made me feel wretched for the awful night I survived. 

You got out, she kept telling me. You're out.

And I am so grateful. 

Overwhelmingly thankful to have so many kindred souls in my life who understand this kind of pain and fear. 

Who've survived and know I have a strength, a reserve I don't even understand because they got through and I will too and one day you'll be able to help someone, Reese. Because of this. Because of what you went through.

Just as they have done for me. 

And as I was laying in bed, laying and feeling nothing, feeling empty as the details of that night played repeatedly in my mind I thought of her. 

For the first time in a long time I thought of the girl who just had to focus on herself right now.

I thought about how this was probably one of the most fucked up things that's ever happened to me and she doesn't even know. 

She has no fucking clue what I'm going through because she doesn't want to know. 

And there really is, sadly, a division amongst girlfriends.

"Friends."

The acquaintances we may still make time every few months to see, the girls who rarely text you back and only ever like your Instagram posts of your cat and of trees. 

The girls who don't understand your pain because they would never make such poor decisions, or get mixed up in such atrocities, so they blink a lot when you talk, and they stop responding when you tell them the sad things that happen. 

And I resent them.

The frenemies who were there for me when I was Susie fucking Sunshine but who don't seem to have the time when I'm hurting and shit is painful. 

But in some ways, in some humbling and accepting ways, it only makes me that much more appreciative, choking on gratitude for the gracious few who will stand in the fire with me.

I truly don't know what I would do without them. 

And if I've learned anything through all of this, it's that there really is a dividing line between the people who know you.

Those who respond. 

And those who never pick up their phone.