(I've been writing this blog in my head for a few weeks. It's a work in progress, and will most likely continue to be edited for a long time to come.)
One of the things our family often lacked, in my opinion, was loyalty. Loyalty to one another, specifically. Whether it was a defending a sibling against a bully bent on a fistfight, or covering for one another with our parents, or one of our parents defending us against claims that "he/she started it", we all learned by a certain age that the only person we could depend on was ourselves. Or, at least I learned that. I guess I didn't get the memo that the rest of the family did that our family motto (according to my sister Kim) was "My name's "been it", and I ain't in it."
Me, I was always the one riding to the rescue. As the oldest child, it was up to me to defend my younger siblings against everything from things that go bump in the night to those same bullies - whether they wanted me to or not. I shielded my sister Kim especially from many of the things going on in my parent's marriage - so much so that she had no memory of much that went on in the latter years before their divorce, despite having been in the next room for much of it. I'm glad of that.
But it wasn't often the other way around. Once when a boyfriend punched me in the face, I went to Kim's house, truthfully looking for a little sympathy, and instead got "Why do you always have to pick guys that want to hit you?" Considering I had helped her shred a former boyfriend's tires for writing her name on the men's bathroom wall where she worked, along with the word "whore", I was pretty hurt. There are many other examples where one or the other of us should have stood up for the other, and didn't. I think that was just something fundamentally broken in our family. I watched my father run through his front yard and into his house days after having knee replacement surgery to keep from becoming involved in a disagreement between me and my brother. As I've said before, you just can't make this stuff up.
But I think it made me a better friend to others, because I knew how valuable love, friendship and loyalty were. I don't make friends easily, but I have been lucky enough to have had the kind of best friend relationship that is like sister or brotherhood....where the phone call comes in the middle of the night, and you go, no matter what, or where I could make the phone call and they would come. I have trust issues stemming way back to high school when my best friend, after a huge arguement, stole something from me then flaunted it to everyone that she did so. I was stunned - you just don't do that to a friend, no matter what. I wouldn't have. What stunned me further was that someone else, someone I didn't even consider that close of a friend, chose to defend me and hold her accountable for what she did, when those closer to me chose to support her. I wasn't used to being defended by anyone, and truth be told, had he come to me in advance and told me what he had planned to do, I would have begged him not to. I'm just not the vengeance kind of person. I'm more of a Karma kind of girl.
Unfortunately, believing that when you have a "best friend", you stick with them until the end has its downside. When my best friend of 20 years succumbed to her drug addiction to the point she didn't care about anything, including losing her children, and then she turned on me because I wouldn't support her habit, I finally learned that when a friendship becomes a one-way street away from you, then it's time to stop the car. I walked away from her, and despite the fact that I still love her, and have checked up on her over the years, I know that time in my life is over. I grieve for her on occasion, but there's no way you can turn back the clock. She and I, even if she has conquered her addiction, are different people today. Another friend, for reasons I have never understood, chose to be rude and hateful to my Grandmother Didi and Great Aunt Helen on a visit to Florida. Once we returned home, I never spoke to her again. That's loyalty, and in my head, that's just the way it is, wrong to anyone else or not. You make my Didi cry, you're gone.
2011 was a huge year of losses for me, some of which I've explored in other blogs. I lost Kim who, besides being my sister I also considered my friend, and who I loved and will always love so much. I lost the house that I had loved very much at one time. And I lost, again, a best friend.
Like other times, it was my decision to end the relationship, and I didn't take it lightly. My friend, whom I will call Mike, had been so for over 15 years. We had been through a great deal together, and next to my husband, for most of my marriage, he was one of only two people that I felt I could confide ANYTHING in...anything at all, and know that he wouldn't judge me. We sat in a car not long after my mother died and I cried on his shoulder for what seemed like hours. I allowed him to vent to me when he and his wife were having problems, and I did the same with him when John and I, as any marriage does, had difficulties. Don't get me wrong - we had our own spats over the years - we're complete polar opposites politically, and finally had to come to a truce where we agreed that we just didn't discuss politics, and Michael Moore movies were definitely OFF the menu. We had other disagreements but always seemed to eventually be able to work through them. The biggest problem became logistics...as we moved farther and farther away from Greenville we didn't always get to see each other as often, but we always seemed to have fun when we did.
I can't actually put my finger on when things changed on his end...I know when I noticed it, and ironically enough, it had to do with Kim's illness and death. When we found out Kim was ill her estranged husband Darrin did everything in his power to prevent anyone in the family from coming to Puerto Rico, including making threats against me via email, facebook and text message, threats which I took seriously and turned over to the FBI. This was a terribly traumatic time for me, and I was very thankful for the support of my husband John, my friend Lisa, and my friend Gareth. Conspicuously missing, though, was Mike. I neither heard from nor saw him during that period, and for a couple of weeks after that. When I finally did see him, he asked me how Kim was, and as I incredulously informed him that she had died, and then asked him had he not seen anything that had been on my facebook page, or the texts I had sent him, his response was "Oh, I saw something but realized it was a personal matter, so I quit reading and got out of it."
I was stunned and terribly hurt. At a time when I could have used a friend more than anything in the world, this person that I had considered my best male friend for many, many years shied away from a "personal" matter. I probably should have explored this at greater length with him, but we had been watching a movie at another friend's house, and at that moment he turned to the person with the remote and said "Press play." It was never brought up again.
Later in the year, we were invited by Mike and his wife to see a movie. I don't remember if we were told that other friends of theirs would be joining us or not. We arrived at the theater, and Mike was standing out front with out tickets, as we had been worried that it would sell out before we got there so he had purchased them for us when he had gotten his own. We paid him and went inside, and as we were standing getting refreshments before going into the auditorium, Mike came back and said "guys, I'm really sorry...my friends forgot to save you seats."
If this had been the first time his so-called friends had "forgotten" to save us seats, I would have been more understanding. After all, if you have a large group coming, sometimes you mis-count. But this particular group had "forgotten" to save us seats three times in a row. It wasn't "forgot", and I knew it. I had known for many years that Mike's wife didn't like me. Didn't know why...on paper, we should have been the best of friends as well. We have many of the same interests in hobbies and books, enjoy many of the same movies and activities. But many years ago, whether it be jealousy or some other reason, she took a dislike to me and while she was friendly to us when we got together, I knew that under the surface it was still there. Apparently these other friends of Mikes followed her lead.
I confronted Mike in the lobby of the theater and told him how hurt I was that he allowed his friends to treat us this way. He never said a word, just left us and went back to sit with them. This hurt me even more. First of all, I would NEVER have allowed my friends to treat another friend in that manner. I'm not shy about speaking up when I see behavior I don't approve of, and if one of my friends had EVER treated Mike the way his friends treated us, they would have gotten an earful out of me. Secondly, had I been Mike, I would have sat with us, not with them. After all, he invited us, not the other way around, and I would have wanted my friends to know that that kind of thing doesn't fly. But that didn't happen. After the movie, Mike and his wife invited us to dinner and it was nice, but it didn't change the fact that Mike had allowed his friends to be rude to me over and over again, and if he ever said anything to them I never knew about it. What really hurt is that there had been times I had driven round trips of up to 90 miles a day to care for his dogs while they were on vacation, while these same so-called friends couldn't be bothered, despite the fact they lived in the same geographical area - even when they told him they would. Yet he allowed them to hurt someone that he professed to love. That's just wrong.
Mike's father got sick later in the year, and we spoke a number of times on the phone and in person about how he was and what was happening. I was surprised that Mike didn't drive home to be with his father during that time (his parents live several states away but he's very close with them) but I know that different families have different ways of doing things, and I tried to be respectful. But when he told me very matter-of-factly that his father was dying, I was amazed that he was still sitting at his home here. I don't have a good relationship with my father, haven't for years. But if I did, and my family called to tell me he was dying, nothing would have kept me from doing everything in my power to be there by his side. After his father passed, I expressed my condolences to him, and instead of thanking me he began telling me about the lawsuit his family is bringing against the hospital. Remembering the night I cried on his shoulder for my mother, I couldn't help but compare how differently we handled the first loss of a parent. Still, each person handles grief differently, and I tried very hard not to be judgmental. I've sat with this guy and held his hand while he cried after his dog died though...
There were other things...little things...in and of themselves nothing much...and because Mike had been such a wonderful - and loyal - friend to me over the years, I let most of it go. Then we decided to have a Halloween bonfire at our new home, and invited Mike and a number of other friends to attend. I knew not everyone invited would be there, but Mike had been telling me for an entire month that he would be. That very same day, he texted me a number of times about his excitement at attending. So when the bonfire started, and we started cooking hot dogs, and singing songs, and the evening wore on and no Mike, I began to be worried that something had happened to him. After all, with us moving to Seneca Mike would now have to travel through most of three counties to get there, and it being a holiday there could be idiots on the road. So I texted him, figuring if I didn't hear back from him I'd call his cell phone next. His text comes back that he's not coming, and didn't I get his Facebook message?
I was truthfully stunned. The bonfire was held in honor of Kim, who loved Halloween. Mike had know Kim, had liked her, had even gone on vacation with Kim, John, my son Clay and myself. I walked inside and read his facebook message. He sent it about an hour after the time the party started, and it basically said that his wife wouldn't let him come. Everyone at the party - even people that didn't know Mike but had heard of him, were flabbergasted....who does that to a friend??? Even a casual friend...who goes an entire month planning to attend a party given by his best friend, then sends a Facebook message bowing out? How hard would it have been to pick up the phone and make up some excuse for not attending - even if it was a lie - to keep from hurting someone you profess to love?
If that had been the only thing, I would have gotten over it. But coming on the heels of all I've described here plus other things I haven't even gone into, I was so hurt that I couldn't really even enjoy the rest of the party. I put on a good face but was relieved when the last guest left, everything was cleaned up, and I was able to sit down and bawl my eyes out like I had been wanting to for hours. At first I wanted to call him up at 2 in the morning and give him a huge piece of my mind, but I'm old enough to know that when I'm really angry or hurt, I say things I don't mean and regret it later. So I waited. I waited two whole months for the hurt feelings to die down, for the anger to subside, and all the while he keeps texting me and sending me messages like nothing has happened. Our semi-weekly movie night went away...I didn't want to attend, and the person who's house we usually used felt uncomfortable about the whole situation, so he decided not to do it for a while. And I guess, in the long run, I was waiting for an apology, for ditching my party, for treating a friend like that, for not calling...and none ever came. To read his messages, you would have thought nothing ever happened. After two months, I knew that I could no longer be friends with someone who has so little regard for someone that he has loved and has loved him for so long that he would treat me that way. So I fired him.
I wanted to write him an actual letter and mail it to him, but after about ten ripped-up attempts and one violently-broken pen I gave it up. I am STILL angry...two and a half months later, I still shake and tears still flow thinking about it. I picked up the phone twice to call him, but didn't let the call go through because I didn't trust myself to do it without breaking down. In the end, it came right back to facebook. He sent me a message and it was like something went "click" in my brain and I responded, letting it out. Not all of it...that's what this blog is for. Just the highlights, ending with the thought that the person I used to love would have never treated me like this, and I just couldn't find it in my heart to love the person he had become.
What was the response? Absolutely nothing. Not a thing. After a few days he asked for his DVD back, and asked what we wanted him to do with the DVD he had of ours, along with another item. I was polite, asking him to mail the DVD and I would do the same with his. Later, he friended John on Facebook something he hadn't done before then, apparently. No idea why. His wife doesn't like John any more than she likes me.
At my age, it's hard to make friends. So many people in my age group are involved with their families, careers, and personal interests, that while they keep up with friends they've had over the years they aren't really interested in making new ones. I have lots of acquaintances, lots of people I'm friendly with, and the community I've moved to is where I've worked for a number of years, so when I go to the grocery store I generally run into someone I'm friendly with, but it isn't the same. I feel the loss of Mike's friendship like it was a sore tooth that I had fooled around with for way too long, and finally had pulled. The wound may have closed but the area is still tender, and I still keep sticking my tongue in the space expecting a tooth, and it's not there. While picking up some things from Gareth's house I discovered a Christmas present I had purchased for Mike back in the summer. I don't know what to do with it now. I suppose I could donate it to a charity, or just keep it myself, but I don't really want it. I guess I could even send it to him anyway...but I doubt he'd appreciate it. Just like he didn't appreciate the gifts of my love, my loyalty, or my friendship.
In the same vein, I could have decided to continue to see Mike as a friend, and continue to socialize with him, but knowing that he didn't even care enough to be sorry that he hurt me, sorry that his friends hurt me, sorry that I was going through everything that I did with my sister.... I had to think of myself. Allowing someone to continue to hurt me like that would be like...well, like continuing to be involved with men that liked to hit me. And I vowed long ago that I would never allow another man to hurt me that way again. I won't allow anyone to hurt me repeatedly without care, even if I do love them. Sometimes, you just have to walk away.
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