It's not over until I pull your name from my Rolodex...

The other night I was looking for an address in my overloaded Rolodex and began weeding it, tossing out old cards and coming face to face with multiple questions about the nature of relationships.

People find their way into my personal Rolodex for many reasons. There’s not too much debate about whether to pull the cards of former co-workers or neighbors that I haven’t seen in ten or more years and don’t hear from except maybe at Christmas. Which makes me wonder, does just getting a Christmas card constitute a relationship? If so, when?

Is it ever OK to consider ditching family members? There are names in the Rolodex of relatives that I’ve lost touch with. Some I get a letter from every Christmas, others an impersonal card, others nothing at all. Some will respond to me if I initiate contact with them but that’s about it.

Are they just being polite? When do I stop carrying the burden of the relationship? Or when do I stop viewing making contact first with someone as carrying the weight of the relationship? Is that what it’s all about—keeping score, wondering whether someone still likes you? Is it adolescent to care who does what—or stupid to ignore obvious signs of disinterest?

The same dynamics apply to some old college friends—the ones that drop a few lines once or twice a year but never really SAY anything or tell me about their lives. Are they friends? Will we ever revive what we once shared or is it time to admit that our relationship sputtered to a dead end a long time ago and just throw their cards away?

Then there are those folks that have gone through some major life changes or hard times and drifted off despite my attempts to reach out to them and keep them in my orbit. Can I accept that some people are too busy? Are they too stressed to even deal with or acknowledge my attempts to lend support? Are they looking to make a fresh start and rely on a new network of friends? Should I leave them alone or keep reaching out?

Weeding the Rolodex or trimming the Christmas card list painful because it involves dealing with rejection, the passing of time, life changes, and some insecurities. What went wrong—if anything? Why have these ties frayed? Why do I hang on to some people and look for excuses to cut others out of my life? The desire to be realistic in my expectations is tempered by the need for connection, not just to people but to times in my life.

In the end, after tossing out a stack of cards, I go back through the remaining ones I’m struggling with and simply turn them around so they face the wrong way. In essence, I'm putting them on hold.  Turning the cards over is my way of  acknowledging our failure to connect with one another right  now while keeping a place in my life for them to return to. 

November 6, 2006

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

Comments

[Lux Lisbon]

I didn't know Rolodexs still exsited!:)

[V-Grrrl]

After hearing nightmarish stories of people losing all their contact information in PDA and computer crashes, I opted to keep my Rolodex. I actually have two, one with electronic addresses (URLs and e-mail) and one with physical addresses and phone numbers. I keep tellin y'all that I'm a nerd and yet you keep being surprised by my nerdiness! ; )

[Shirl Grrrl]

I still have my old fasioned address book, too. I think a Rolodex would be better, because of the one name to a card thing. Now, I have several names to a page, some crossed out because of a move or a marriage. There are also some pages where there is someone who has died. I can't bring myself to cross them off... it seems so mean. I have quite a few people that I only hear from at Christmas, an old boss, a few college friends but I can't seem to cross them off my list yet. I have a lot of elderly friends that never contact me but I still send a Christmas card too, as I feel like they could use the cheer of a card. But man, I keep adding the card list when I need to be shortening it! I'm glad that I'm still in your Rolodex! :-D

[wordgirl]

What a brilliant blogpost! The Rolodox and the weeding thereof is a powerful statement. The realization that relationships die or fade away. That life can be top heavy with deadwood and it requires a day with a limb saw and a wood chipper. There's the fear that, if you cut out the people who have drifted off, there will be no one left. And the Rolodex can also serve as a metaphor for the blogroll. Christmas card lists. Yeah...I'm there with you. Who do I drop this year? And who has dropped us?

[Wendy]

Keep the one you still have something to say to, even if it is not acknowledged. Trust your gut on that one. Be open that people may need to say things to you.

This post hit home with me. I have a few of these deep conflict cards in my mental rolodex(I am way to disorganized to keep a real one). I am notorious for being able to drop off the face of the earth. This is usually when I have messed up badly...either my life, or someone elses. But on one occasion, I allowed myself to be found. and it changed my life.

If I have something to say now, I say it. I don't worry about how its recieved.I'm always preaching to my girls..the only feelings (and behaviors) you can control are your own. I have tried to stop "fooling myself" about my connections. If they aren't important, there not..no matter who the tie is to. But if they are, then they are. Even if I don't understand them. I let them be.

Very nice and topical post.

[V-Grrrl]

Shirl Grrrl,

We've been friends for so long that you deserve a GOLD Rolodex card.

[Javacurls]

I don't believe all relationships are meant to last a lifetime. People come in & out of our lives for different reasons and it's ok to let go.

Last January I didn't make any New Years resolutions but I finally decided to let go of some friendships that I had either outgrown or were unhealthy for me. It was tough. Especially since one of the friendships I let go was a HS friend who I shared many important life experiences with. And unlike the other friend where I just deleted her information from my address books & blocked her e-mail (yikes that sounds so harsh once I see it in writing), this friend wanted an explaination as to why I was dissolving the friendship. This was especially difficult but in the end I feel so much better. I will always have wonderful memories of our relationship when things were good and I didn't want the current status of our friendship to poison those memories any longer.

I'm much happier knowing the friends & family I surround myself with now are those who truly care about me and my family. The ones who have constant contact with me and make the time to keep our friendship alive.

I firmly believe that the friendships we treasure are the ones we put energy & life into. And those we don't well... those are the relationships that I think deep down inside we're okay with letting go.

[Ortizzle]

The Rolodex of Life, eh? Well, I have to say I have never kept a Rolodex. Always used the even more old-fashioned address books. When they got to the point where they had holes in the pages from erasing, dog-eared corners, and the binding was falling apart, that's when I would do the "weeding." But it wasn't too painful because I just copied all the ones I contacted at least once a year into a new address book. Then I put a rubber band around the old address book and stuffed it in a drawer. Just in case.

Doing it that way didn't make me feel like I was cutting anyone out of my life, just putting them on a backshelf if neither one of us had contacted each other in a really long time. (Of course, there were some names crossed out that I clearly shed no tears over, but others...). So it was a comfort for me to know that the old addresses, etc., were still there.

Maybe with a Rolodex you could put all the "weeded out" cards in an envelope. That way they're also "still there" for a while longer, but it's not so "in your face" as a card in the Rolodex facing the wrong way.

Great post. Reminds me that I need a new address book for my purse. (I don't like having that info on my cell phone, etc., 'cuz I always figure it might go into a black hole.)

[deezee]

Love the analysis. Love the solution.

I only delete people from my phone book if they die. I figure with the comings and goings of life, the shifts, adjustments, new places, new experiments, you never know when you'll want to call up a voice from the past...but that's just me...

[Elisabeth]

I have written many times about people that come in and out of our lives. But here is a thought - I have a few "friends" who are people with whom I had a certain degree of closeness years ago. That closeness has faded, but we still communicate once a year, at Christmas. I would just about die if I no longer heard from them before the Holidays.

I have recently successfully reconnected with friends with whom I had not been in touch for - truly - over 30 years. I have also been utterly unsuccesful and harshly rejected by a friend whose track I had lost only maybe 8 years ago. Those thing are very weird and extremely unpredictable.

Oh, and today, I was instrumental in making sure that someone who had been a poisonous colleague of mine did not get a job to which she had applied. And that person thought all along that I was a very insignificant entity in her life...

[Shirley]

First, count me in as one who keeps her addresses on paper ... for addresses, I use my planner, an old address book, and a card box from when we originally sent out our wedding invitations (one of those deals where you tracked gifts and whether you sent a thank you note, and then later Christmas cards LOL). I do still use a Rolodex. Formerly, I used it for phone numbers in the office, but now I use it by my computer with Frequent Flier numbers, passwords (not in a way they could be compromised), and such. As far as deciding who comes out ... mostly when people die, but there have been a few cases where I too have moved on from friendships (Java curls--I, too, didn't respond to emails and blocked that person from email and AIM AFTER she wouldn't listen to my explanation ... I felt like I was being stalked so I was glad to close the door on that one). While I think it's true that people invest in friendships that mean a lot to them, I don't think that just because you lose touch with some friends, it means they or you don't care ... like V was saying sometimes our lives just get too busy or complicated and it takes too much energy to just get through the day much less touch base with friends. Sometimes people lose touch because they are going through a lot personally and know they will spill their guts if they call an old friend and they just can't do it ... don't have the energy themselves and don't want to bring their friend down. We've probably all been there at some point or another. That said, I do think there are times we should let friendships just fade away ... there time may have come .. the relationship is not in any way toxic; the connection is just not there any longer. I agree that people come into our lives at different times for different reasons and go out sometimes the same way. I send a huge number of Christmas cards ... to friends and family--even folks I might not have seen in years ... just as a way of telling them I still care and still think of them--I usually write a short note in them. I think the good news is that in this day in age of Googling people and using people lookup features, it's fairly easy to find someone again if you did discard or lose their info. V--you are so right, connections are vital and placeholders are a good thing.

[plain jane]

I wouldn't throw the cards away. I keep all my old address books, I don't keep in touch with many but it is like a memory book of my life and the many places I live.

I didn't do it but for my 40th birthday year I planned to write a note to everyone in my address books as a way of seeing where all those folks in my history were now. Maybe for my 50th.

[Nance]

Great post! I still have a card file with people's original email addresses on it from ISPs that don't exist anymore. I cannot toss old addresses. It's like tossing the person himself. I stopped sending Christmas cards ages ago in my "streamline to live" movement, but I still have addresses just in case I ever feel like it again. That's my criteria now: if I feel like it.