I have been in an abusive relationship before and I don’t
want to sound dramatic, but sometimes I’m still bothered by it. There are
moments of weakness that I painfully entertain where I hear his voice in my
head. While they are few and fleeting, those unattractive things are there: the
insults about my weight and how I look. They say I “have a bird chest” or “horse
teeth” and they instigate me buying expensive diet pills that speed up my
already rapidly beating heart. They make me wear thicker makeup so that for
just one day, I can be someone else. They make me drink Irish whiskey until my
eyes wiggle and I stop asking questions.
Or sometimes, they make me ask my husband over and over
again if he’s mad at me and why, because I can sense something is wrong by look
on his perfect face. But listen, there is NEVER anything wrong; he is never
angry at me, even when I ask him the same question one hundred times. All of
this is in my head, a figment of my neurotic imagination, put in place by my
explosive ex-boyfriend.
I am prefacing with this because I understand. I know what it’s like to be beaten down by things you
can’t control. I know how it feels to be haunted by things that quite honestly,
should have long since been resolved. I know what it’s like to be bothered by
things that are meaningless, things that should no longer have any effect on
you. It happens, friends. We’re only simple humans.
I spoke to the girl who was with my ex before I was and she
said that some mornings, she still wakes up in a cold sweat, waiting for him to
come through her door. For her, it has been a decade. Sometimes people leave
marks on us that for whatever reason, just never go away. I spend every day in
a domestic violence shelter, surrounded by women who both ennoble me and make
my chest hurt. You can be proactive and do all the work in the world but
sometimes, no matter how much you’ve hardened your heart, you still get that twinge
every now and again.
But that is not what this was. What happened in this
situation wasn’t a product of previous habitual abuse or a tendency to follow
violence patterns. What happened didn’t happen because my friend was in a
domestic violence situation and she was running from her sordid past. It didn’t
happen because she was scared and tormented. What happened was, she saw an
opportunity that she could wriggle into and benefit from. She would have a
nice, comfortable life filled with BMWs and expensive, steakhouse dinners. She
would be able to rise above the alleged hand she
was given and walk proudly in those $1200 Christian Louboutins. And suddenly,
all of the other stuff in her life no longer mattered. It just fell away.
Change is the law of
life; and those who only look to the past or present are certain to miss the
future. –John Fitzgerald Kennedy
What infuriates me the absolute most about all of this, what
drives me the most to just walk away from her is the fact that she just slapped
on some MAC Plush Gloss and called it love. Literally, the first words out of
her mouth were, “I don’t want to brag, but he has a BMW.” Yes, a BMW, and a
shitty attitude.
I understand, guy: you’re under 35 and have a salary that is
purportedly over 250 grand a year. But listen, no one cares about any of that
when you’re miserable and impossible to be around. No one is looking at your
billfold when you’re treating your girlfriend like garbage. He was such an
overcompensating ass.
So what happened was, while she sat there and proclaimed
that she was scared, shaken, and unable to commit to any sort of relationship
(which would have been completely justifiable), she was out gallivanting around
Tampa in the aforementioned BMW under the pretense of love. Yes, love. Love and
permission to bang her way to the top and be classy about it, all while never
working again.
Who was this woman? This woman who used to drink whiskey
with me and supposedly aspired to be a doctor? This woman who, despite all that’s
happened since, I still believe to be one of the most beautiful women I have
personally ever seen? Suddenly she was all about going to fancy dinners and
cleansing her body to ready it for her soon-to-be half Communist child. I hate
to come to this realization but she had just traded everything for a little bit of money. And not even enough
to be really memorable. Like seriously, if I had to hear about “how gorgeous”
that goddamn ring was one. more. time.
Go ahead and cue the Kanye.
What absolutely infuriates me is that this person I thought
I knew had morphed into someone who saw an opportunity (cha-ching) and was
willing to become an actual baby farm if it meant she could lead a cushy,
unemployed life. And before you label me a slanderous, bitter frenemy, I can
totally explain.
The previous two installments of this saga chronicled our
friendship, which I now know was obviously not as legitimate of one as I thought,
and the way she turned all of this around on me. She tricked me into feeling
sorry for her, let me build her up to an innocent guy who came to genuinely
like her, and then cried helplessly in my arms, all before telling me in so
many words that I had pushed her; that she was nowhere ready for a relationship.
Oh, and she told me that my sauce tasted bland, which was A, total bullshit,
and B, is cardinal Italian sin Number one.
So she turns all of this around on me, because you know, I
was apparently a friend of low caliber. Always cooking her amazing dinners,
supplying her with midrange Irish whiskey and letting her cry like an enormous
breasted infant on my shoulder. Jesus Christ, look at me: so selfish, right?
She made me feel so guilty (and there are residual effects
of this; it hasn’t worn off) and all the while, she is out, forcing a shitty
relationship with some moderately rich guy. And then, when she wants me to like
him and throw his money in my face, I’m supposed to just forget the last few
months of pathetic (although somewhat justified) crying and binge drinking and
just welcome him into my life? Like everything is supposed to be all bread and
roses?
#girlbye
Change will not come
if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been
waiting for. We are the change that we seek. –Barack Obama
Moral of the Crazy: This isn’t about her boyfriend, turned
baby daddy, now husband out of alleged convenience, although he is a selfish,
abusive, overgrown man child. This isn’t about her being apparently money
hungry (as of late, I think…) and choosing a Gucci bag over her only decent friendship.
This isn’t about her putting up with soap opera quality drama in order to keep
her nearly three karat diamond ring. This is about her being incessantly
uncaring and assuming that everyone will always take her side because she was
born this beautiful, tortured victim.
You can go ahead and cue the Kanye again.
Because you see, I don’t like that. I don’t appreciate being
roped in against my will. I don’t appreciate having my limited time on this
earth wasted by someone who knowingly and intentionally took full advantage of
me. I don’t like labeling someone as my best friend, and then treating them
respectfully as such, just to be trampled all over, ignored, and blatantly
disrespected. I ain’t about that life, friends.
I just think the whole way that all of this went down is
unsatisfactory. To be honest, she has contacted me a couple of times, although
it took her awhile, to no avail. The truth is that I have run out of things to
say to her. I am angry and I feel as though any response I give her will convey
that, and only that. I won’t have any response other than a cold, sarcastic
quip about how terribly she treated me the last few months of our friendship.
Not to mention the fact that her most recent email was very passive aggressive,
implicitly putting more blame on me than it did on her. (Because God forbid,
right?) And I don’t find that to be fair in the slightest. It’s like, the
moment she feels the need to getting around to talking to me, I’m supposed to
just drop everything to talk to her? Because she just now realized that she
destroyed the only real friendship she’s ever had?
And to be fair, that is the way our friendship has always been. She would blow me off for
as long as she felt like and then I would jump the moment she called. And while
that has been the predominant dynamic of our relationship, I still don’t
appreciate it.
Sometimes it’s the
smallest decisions that can change your life forever. –Keri Russell
There was one instance where she called me, all upset, kind
of demanding that I meet with her. As per my usual standard with my friends,
and her more especially, I dropped everything to meet with her. She was an hour
late because of a mix-up, pushed her food around on her plate, and then rushed
me off when her asshole boyfriend/baby daddy/fiancé said he wanted to meet up
with her. (Long story short: he wanted to meet with her so desperately because
he had just dumped her and threatened her life. He’s a scary son of a bitch.)
After that, she disappeared off the face of the earth for two goddamn weeks. I texted her nearly
every day, I called her and stalked her Facebook and Tumblr accounts because I
was so worried. I even Googled this bitch to see if she was dead! Came this close to calling her elderly
father to see if he had heard from her because I was that concerned. And for what?
For her to text me after two weeks to say that she hadn’t
been feeling well. I’m sorry, but if she is going to claim that she didn’t even
glance at her phone once in those two weeks, she is not being honest. I mean,
especially given how controlling her boyfriend/now husband is, I highly doubt
that she didn’t look at her phone for two weeks straight. And also, not to
sound bitter, but whenever she was with me, her phone was always right beside
her so she could stay current with phone calls and text messages. But yet, she
was neglecting her phone for two entire weeks? I highly, highly doubt that very
much.
And it’s like, I Googled her to see if this crazy person had
lost his shit and killed her! I just want to reiterate that point to express how
worried I was, especially given her absolutely chaotic relationship with her
boyfriend, and the multitude of things she had told me about him. I was so floored
when all she had to say in response to my collection of questions and Alex
Forrest phone calls was, “I haven’t been feeling well.”
….
Then a few days after that, she texted me a photo of the
sonogram with the caption, “It’s a girl!” I didn’t respond for a few days
because, well, I just couldn’t. What could I say? As with every aspect of our
friendship, I was expected to just DROP EVERYTHING, congratulate her on her
illegitimate child with her allegedly violent, controlling boyfriend and show
my excitement for the days ahead. Is that a fucking joke?
So I waited a few days because I was angry and couldn’t
formulate a sentence without the word “fuck” in it. (I’m German and Italian. My
angry emotions are very cold ones.) And when I did respond back to her (after I
had calmed down a bit), she told me I was insensitive for waiting so long. She claimed
that this was something so super personal and important to her, time sensitive
and exciting; that no matter how angry I was at her (and she clearly knew that
I was by the read receipt on her sent text message), that picture message
merited a response.
Maybe she has a valid point in that because if I’m being
completely honest with myself, if the situation were reversed, I would probably
be hurt. But on that note, I also would never blow someone off for two weeks.
That is just ludicrous.
I have a lot of mixed emotions in regards to this though,
because a huge part of me hates that I’ve lost her. A close friend of mine
gently remarked that I have this tendency to get abnormally close to people too
quickly and that maybe this is why I get hurt by people I’ve labeled “best
friends” all the time. She may or may not be correct in her assumption but
regardless, this situation was different.
This woman and I were best
friends. We were very, genuinely close. I felt at home with her because she
was one of the few people who understood me. She got my obsession with old
music and she would smile whenever an old Coltrane song came on. Even though
she listened to hard rock and terrible metal, she accepted me and put up with my
controlling music tendencies. She told me (ironically enough) that all my
friends were emotional vampires, draining the life out of me and taking
advantage of me. She told me that I put up with too much shit, but she loved me
for being so sensitive. It was a complicated, true friendship.
I’m sad because of how she treated me and the events that
transpired but I’m sadder that I lost her. I’m glad that I no longer have to
stress about this because all I have to do is ignore her email, but I’m
melancholy when I think about how close we used to be.
I listen to Amy Winehouse sometimes, late at night, and
think that I could easily fix this. I could call her up and discuss what
happened, make her an Italian dinner and smile as she caught me up on her crazy
fucking life.
But why?
To be pushed aside and neglected again? To be reminded of
how cold, stubborn and uncaring I’ve been as of late? To be persuaded into
apologizing for something that is seriously one hundred percent her fault?
I miss her, so much I try not to even think about it, but I
almost find this a blessing. May I learn not to be taken advantage of; may she
learn to take better care of her friends. May she have a happy life and enjoy
motherhood. May her husband learn how to treat her with the respect that she
deserves. May she still love me, despite it all and know that like her, I had
my own choice to make.
May we both remember to be kind to others, but above all, be
kindest to ourselves.
Things do not change;
we change. –Henry David Thoreau
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