How Different?

How different can two people be and still be friends?

I've just caught up with my childhood best friend. She's a beautiful person and still someone who knows how to call me out on my bad decisions. We've seen each other grow up, though from a distance over the last 10 years. From the days we were attached at the hip in middle school, we somewhere took some drastically different paths.

I've always felt (and still do) that we each chose the kind of life that was right for us. Our differences have always been part of the strength of our friendship, but is that sustainable?

Is there a point where the queer sex-positive feminist and the youth pastor can no longer really speak the same language?

She has always served to remind me that Christians are not just those people who hate my kind of people and want us to burn in hell.

But at the same time, I've never had the courage to ask whether or not she thinks my future partner and I should be able to get married. Be able to have kids together. I've never had the courage to ask what she will tell her future children about me. Never had the courage to ask if she has or would defend me if the opportunity arose. I think I don't ask because I'm afraid to know the answer. Afraid that the crazy journey of life has led me to a place in which I lose one more important person in my life just because I'm trying to live as an authentic version of myself.

And maybe sometimes I think of her as the kind of woman with the kind of life that would make mine a lot easier. I wouldn't have to spend so much time worrying and crying about the fact that one day, my mother may very well lose her family and friends when they find out I'm a lesbian. I wouldn't have to carefully hide parts of myself and dodge questions.

I'm trying to think about what I would say as a SW to a client talking to me about the same problem. I would tell her that a friendship in which you dodge important questions maybe isn't such an authentic friendship after all. I would tell her she knows what's best, but maybe she should think about just asking her. I would tell her she isn't doing anything wrong. That the loss of people in her life is the fault of others and not her own. I would tell her its so hard and its not fair, but there are so many people in the world who want her to be happy and don't think she's defective even a little.

This post has wandered, but that's just where I am right now. A little lost.