October Feature Writer!

This month's feature writing is by Jessica Musselwhite.

Mother Of Pentacles

“Maybe you just aren’t able to prioritize your friends like you used to,” my friend Meg says to me.

It hurts. It makes me feel like a bad person. But she’s not wrong. I’m learning to accept how my world has shrunk - the cost of my persistence.

My tarot practice has long been a way for me to consider my life through a different lens. I pull a card and consider the ways it may relate to me or to people in my life or current events. It helps me think. On days when I fancy myself witch-adjacent, it can also be a tool to either reassure myself that something I want will soon be in my sights or, on the off chance I’ve pulled the Tower card, freak myself out. I recently pulled the Mother of Pentacles, Reversed. This card speaks to a sudden, sometimes painful necessity: to turn your energy inward, to connect to yourself and your needs; a choice you might make when your life is out of balance..

For years, I was the friend who sent care packages and spent hours on the phone listening to someone cry. I was dependable. I was a good friend. But when my marriage nearly ended in 2023, all my capacity was suddenly, violently redirected to the task of keeping myself sane and my family intact. The two years since have been a lesson in self-care and self-preservation; what it can mean to cherish friendships while having nothing left to give.

My best friends - Meg, Jasmine, and I - have been best friends for more than twenty years. We met while working together at a ridiculously named coffee shop in Louisville, Kentucky. Since becoming friends, we’ve seen each other through a multitude of bad dates and disappointing boyfriends, my coming out as queer, deaths of parents, three marriages, one divorce, several disastrous arguments and teary phone calls, children born, health crises, and countless glorious nights spent draped across each other on one or another’s couch. Apart from my brother and my spouse, there is no one I love more than these women. They are as precious to me as gold. They are my family.

But then things got weird.

To cut to the chase: I had a big ugly life changing event happen to me. It continues to reshape my relationships in surprising ways that I am still learning to accept.

In the summer of 2023, after 13 years together, my spouse cheated on me. It was devastating. Mare’s choices almost ended our marriage, and my response was messy and raw.

Mare and I tried to fix our relationship but despite our efforts, things got significantly worse before they got better. I moved out for a month to give them some space. Our home had become uncomfortable. It was hard to relax when we were so acutely aware of each other; trapped by intense feelings. I thought if they were the one to move out, it would be over. So I went. A month became two. It was the dead of winter in Chicago. Cold, icy, dark. Lonely.

The months stretched on. I watched a lot of television and processed endlessly with my friends. In conversation, I tried on the idea of divorce like I was trying on a jacket. It didn’t fit and made me feel panicky; unlike myself. Mare and I were in couples’ therapy. We had our ups and downs. More ups than downs, thankfully. It started to rain more than it snowed. Tree branches were studded with green buds. Suddenly it was spring and I was still living at my friend’s apartment. I was impatient, scared, uncertain whether or why Mare was ready for me to come home. Or if they ever would be ready. I needed a lot of care. I was a wreck.

My emotional life was a catastrophe, and professionally, I had been thrust into a demanding new role, pouring all my spare attention into my job and my marriage at the expense of everything else. I was obsessed with my failing relationship, lonesome and missing my creature comforts. Quite literally. I couldn’t take my cats or my elderly dog to my friend’s apartment so I was even more out of my element. I was a mess and I leaned on my friends. A lot.

Things slowly got better. Mare and I learned how to talk to each other again; how to be tender with each other, how to give each other grace. I learned how to be patient. Finally, I moved back to our shared home just before Memorial Day. Things got better and then they got good. In many ways, our relationship is better than it’s ever been. I’m grateful for my home and my marriage. But it was a lot for my friends to handle.

I have lived enough life to know that relationship shake ups are hard on more than just the people in the relationship. Especially when a couple has been together for a long time, when something happens in a relationship, it rocks the people who are in everyone’s lives. Sides are taken. Things are said that can’t be unsaid or unheard. I have been the friend who tries to make her friend feel better by dissing the boyfriend or the wife. By loudly recalling a time they said or did something stupid or embarrassing. And I have been the friend who feels caught out when they get back together.

I knew that when I picked up the phone to tell someone that I got cheated on, it would result in a reaction. I just could not have guessed that two years later, I would still be experiencing the ripple effects of my relationship drama.

When I think about my friends during that time, the first thing I feel is gratitude. My friends lifted me up when I hit the ground. Annie answered the phone that first night and listened quietly while I spiraled and gently told me that I shouldn’t hurt myself. Kelly did the same. They kept me safe. Mark flew me to New York the very next day, gave me a bed to sleep in, and tried to feed me. One of my most vivid memories is of his young son, who insisted on wearing a witch costume daily (in mid-August, no less), who greeted me every morning with a sweet soft voice and gentle hands that tethered me to reality. Mark, along with old friends Amy and Elia, marched me through Coney Island, distracting me with ferris wheels, crowds, and fried foods. Meg and Jasmine drove up from Kentucky when I got back to Chicago. Held me during an ill-advised experiment with edibles. (Turns out that weed gummies and strong feelings are a bad mix for me.) Jasmine distracted me with a much needed closet re-organization project between crying jags. Carolyn held me together during the cold months I spent at Patrick’s apartment. She answered the phone when no one else would or could. Called me back multiple times in a night as I churned through every possible emotion as I processed my feelings. Patrick gave me a place to stay; a port in the storm.

I cannot imagine what my life would be now without their counsel. Without their interventions. Without their kindness and patience.

Other people in my life -my brother, my dad, my sister- helped too.

I’d always thought I was a good friend. I put in the work. If you had asked me what I thought my best skills were, I would have probably said, “maintaining friendships.” I have had long and deep friendships with many people. I love my people. And I think - I hope - I have been there for people when they have experienced turmoil. I am quick to bring soup or to send a care package. I set reminders to send texts to check in on someone if they have lost a job or a parent is sick. But all that changed two years ago. And honestly? I hate myself for it. I don’t know how to think of myself now. I’ve changed.

For the first time in my adult life, I was the one in an acute crisis. I needed far more than I could give. I wish this was going to be an essay about how I learned about myself and came out a better person. This isn’t that.

I did learn about myself, but I don’t know that I’m a better person now.

(If I was still speaking to Carolyn, she’d chide me for my black and white thinking, my inability to stray too far from categorizing myself as a good or bad person, my geo-locating of myself according to Christian markers of sinner or saint.)

Outside of my marriage, my other relationships suffered. They wilted under the heat of my sadness and anger. They stretched and snapped back. Some broke and fell away.

Annie was the first to go. She disapproved of me staying with Mare, encouraged Al-Anon meetings, set firm boundaries - rightly noting that my threats of self-harm were scary and caused her a great deal of stress. I didn’t know how to apologize for that. I couldn’t. I let her go without much of a fight.

I almost lost Kelly. I tried to sneak Mare back into our group chats. Kelly wasn’t ready and firmly said so. I grew impatient, wanting her acceptance. She needed time and I needed her. We climbed out of a deep pit by talking only about books. It’s better now.

Carolyn and I haven’t spoken in a year. When she needed support, I couldn’t give it. She was falling apart while I was just gaining back my equilibrium, and I knew I was letting her down. I chose myself, working with the grim logic that my own survival had to come first. The guilt lingers.

Earlier this year Jasmine was going through a period of great stress. Jasmine spent weeks being the sole caretaker for her mother following a complicated surgery. It was intense and I wasn’t there for her like she needed. I thought I was being attentive but now know that I was wrong. My dad had been diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery around the same time as Jasmine’s mom. I had limited capacity and hardly noticed my own incompetence.

We drifted, mostly texting, slowly growing more distant. She avoided my calls. I made textbook mistakes - sending a joke when Jasmine was sad, failing to ask follow-up questions, being generally thoughtless. She avoided conflict, kept her distance. I could feel the gap but didn’t know what to do. Meg felt caught in the middle - it wasn’t great.

When it finally came to a head, it hurt. Jasmine was frustrated that I insisted on talking about it. I was frustrated that she didn’t want to talk about it. I felt foolish - my least favorite feeling - when she pointed out times I’d been careless. I felt unmoored that another friendship that had been so central to my survival was falling apart.

So I started questioning myself. I had a conversation with Meg where she noted that perhaps all the big things that she and Jasmine had been experiencing in the last few months were things I’d been through - parental illness and caretaking - and that they were small potatoes, regular things that I’d been through and processed. Maybe all the hardship I’d survived in the past two years had made me less conscientious of others. Maybe I couldn’t be the friend I used to be, and maybe my priorities had changed.

I gave it a lot of thought. What were my priorities now? My spouse, my brother, my dad, my sister. My job. A job where I’d gone from being an executive assistant to the executive director at the same time as all my relationship strife. It had been a lot but I had thrived in the role.

My friends just couldn’t be the center of my world anymore. And that is hard to reconcile with the person I have seen myself as. And the person who I loved being.

I’m trying to do better. To find small ways to show care, to remember stories. Like I said, I now set reminders to send texts to ask the right follow up questions. To try to pay better attention. I’m trying not to judge myself for being more selfish; for my world getting a little smaller. But it’s hard- I feel bad about how I’ve changed. I’m grieving my old self, I think. This new, smaller orbit is difficult, but it is one born of necessary survival. I feel guilty but I don’t know that I’m sorry.

I think it is a hard lesson to learn: the integration of priorities, the painful process of learning that to care for others, you must first care for yourself. Aiming to find some balance. I am learning patience with myself and my capacity for care, trusting that my friendships that have lasted twenty years can weather this necessary period of self-nurturing and that I will be a better friend again someday. I look forward to finding that self again.

Jessica Musselwhite (she/her) works as an arts facilitator in higher education. Jessica holds a BA in Art History and Humanities (University of Louisville) and an MA in Arts Administration (School of the Art Institute of Chicago). She has been working in the arts since she was 16 years old and began organizing awful bands to put on surprisingly well attended shows in her father’s musty law office basement. She is a resident of South Shore; an avid but unfocused gardener; and a bibliophile.