What do you say

I had dinner Tuesday night with two co-workers that I also consider good friends. We try to have dinner together every few months to catch up with each other away from the office craziness and we'd been trying to schedule this last dinner since mid-March, but couldn't seem to get the timing right. I couldn't understand why the one girl was so insistent on making this dinner happen until a few weeks ago when we found ourselves in the lunchroom alone, finishing up our meals. And then she laid out what she has been going through the last few months. It wasn't good. After over 5years of marriage, she had filed for divorce in January. The rest of the story is full of details that I'm not comfortable sharing as it's not really my story to share. Suffice to say though, I was shocked and struggled to find something to say, as opposed my jaw hanging open and unintelligable sounds coming out of my mouth.

Once I found out what was going on, we got that dinner scheduled asap and I tried to get over feeling like a complete tool for letting it go so long in the first place. Thankfully, when our other friend heard the news over dinner the first words out of her mouth were succint and so true, "If that is what you've done, then obviously it's the right thing and we're here for you." If you knew this girl, you'd know that no better words could have summed up the situation.

My friend is very strong and someone who tried to work through the issues for years before realizing things weren't going to change. Even though she knows she is doing the right thing, there are still good days and bad days and happy days and stressful days. You'd never know she was going through her own personal hell if you saw her at the office though, aside from the fact that she has recently taken up running and has lost quite a bit of weight off her already tiny frame, she is the same hard-working, caring, fun-loving person that she has always been.

And yet, my heart can't help but feel so heavy and sad for her. You never want to see your friends hurting and this definitely qualifies as that. Besides being there for her and keeping things normal around the office, there isn't anything else I can really do for her, but that doesn't mean that she isn't constantly in my head and on my heart. I wish I could make it all better for her, but I know that I can't. I also know that while this is my first friend to experience something like this, it likely it won't be the last. And this makes my heart even heavier. :(