Burlap & Satin

There was a time when I honestly thought I would have the baggage under control. In my young 20-year-old naivete, I thought by the time I was 30, I would be fully reconciled with my past, fully healed from every wound I ever suffered and that I would be the happy and confident women of my dreams. It was easy then to believe that I would never love someone that wasn't worth my love, that I would never lose myself many times from trying to make other people happy, that I would never be close with old friends from high school, that I not be anything but famous and successful, that I would not be anything short of shining and brilliant.

It was so easy then. It was so blissfully easy because I had no idea what being an adult was even about. I imagined myself being young, thin and beautiful forever. I imagined myself clearing a path that others would follow. I imagined myself never growing old and never losing the ideals I had when I was eighteen. Most of all, I never imagined that for the incredibly abusive life I had survived, I would go and give myself even more baggage by making consistently horrible decisions.

It's so easy to sit here and tell you all the reasons I am the way I am, all the reasons I've lived the way I've lived. It's so easy to simply say, "I was abused, I was never good enough, I grew up being told I was a nuisance, I was ignored." Yes, all those things are true. But the real truth now, the painful truth, is that I am now the only one that can fix it.

The reason I bring this up is that I find myself incredibly melancholy lately, but in a quiet and introspective way. Not a general sense of sadness, but more a need for a friendship that is lost. Some of you may be familiar with the entire fallout between me and my Maid of Honor / Best Friend last year. It wasn't pretty, but I at least try to maintain the fact that I handled it in a dignified manner and I didn't stab anyone in the back, as she did with me. I was honest and inquisitive, I wasn't bitter. I didn't send emails laced with hatred and I honestly did everything I could to understand without just pointing angry fingers. Some of you may have read the emails she sent me (they were password protected, but if you want a refresher, just let me know and I'll send you over there). There were more exchanges after that, but I mostly just ignored them because I honestly didn't know how to respond. The last thing I told her was not to worry about me and the wedding, because she had too much on her plate. I told her to go be with her family and that I loved her. That was it. Then... I walked away.

I never told her as much (because it wouldn't have mattered), but I knew it would become apparent over time when she didn't hear from me. I knew that our friendship as I had once known it, was done. Her birthday is on Tuesday. I still have her birthday present from last year wrapped and sitting in my basement. I never got the chance to give it to her because every time I was in my hometown, she couldn't take the five minutes to come and see me. I've lived less than three hours away for the past 12 years and she's come to see me once. Yet every single time that I was home, I made a special effort to not only go see her, but spend good quality time with her. We would go out to dinner and talk and catch up. For the past few years though, our dinners out were never about our lives anymore and they certainly weren't about catching up. They were about her problems, her crises, her boyfriends, her wild partying stories, her need for my advice. It got to a point that I began dreading her phone calls, began finding ways to not have to visit her when I was home. It's sad and I'm nearly in tears having to write this. Watching a beloved friendship fall apart isn't easy for anyone and I don't like that I have to face it at all. Sure, I could have discussed it with her and I often tried, but how do you reason with a martyr? Simple, you don't. The very night that I asked her to be my maid of honor in 2005, I knew right then that she wasn't going to be at my wedding. I knew she would find an excuse, she would come up with a million reasons that she couldn't care or help or be there for me. Yet she would continue to phone me for advice and I would be expected to drop everything for her current crisis. I knew this the moment I asked her, but I held out hope. I dreamed of having her there and I desperately tried to be positive and thought she would find a way, she would come through.

We had to postpone the date of our wedding by an entire year because of my horrible knee injury. It crushed me. It made me cry myself to sleep for weeks. When I was on crutches and unable to leave our condo, she didn't call once. She didn't bother to ask how I was doing. (Though she did call to tell me all about her current health problems and ask what she should do about them.) But when I had completed physical therapy and we had a final date, we sent out Save the Date cards nearly 10 months in advance. We created a website and updated it regularly. We talked of nothing but our 40s style wedding plans with anyone that would listen. We had living proof of our wedding everywhere - it was actually happening and we were ecstatic. I made it as easy as possible for her, I bought her dress, I arranged for my family to give her a ride in order to save gas (to which they were eager to oblige), I told her she didn't even need to be at the rehearsal if she couldn't make it, I asked nothing of her but her presence and time for one day. I tried not to let her lack of interest or involvement bother me, but it did. I didn't expect a lavish bachelorette party, but I would've at least liked a phone call or an email that asked how I was doing or how the planning was going. That really just would've made all the difference really, now that I think about it.

Needless to say, she wasn't at my wedding in 2007 nor was she even in my life, just as I had predicted. After the entire blowup happened, my aunt bumped into her at a department store in my hometown. When asked very tactfully about what had happened and why she couldn't be in the wedding, her response was, "well, you know, Staz kept changing the dates." The day after the wedding (while sitting at a cookout with the family and friends that had celebrated with us the night before) I heard from her for the first time in two months - a single paragraph email full of martyr-style apologies and even more sob stories about why she couldn't be there. Not a single congratulatory wish to be found. I realized then that I had a choice to make. I could continue to bend over backwards for a one-sided friendship that would never pay me back, or I could drastically change the way I defined "friendship" and move on forever.

It has taken me a year to decide what I want and to be honest, I'm still deciding every day. It's incredibly hard to walk away from someone that basically defines your adolescent and young adulthood memories. It's like mourning the death of a relative. There's a history there, there's a person there that understands you on a fundamental level, and then they're just gone and you're left with nothing but old memories and new pain. However, in this case, that person continues to live, just without your input or any concern for how you're doing. It's like someone ripping a band-aid off you repeatedly while laughing. I want to tell her that I wish her all the best in life, but I know it wouldn't matter. I want to tell her that I love her endlessly, but I know she wouldn't hear me. I want to tell her that I hope she gets everything she ever wanted in life, but I know she would only sabotage my wishes with tales of her own dissatisfaction.

I tried to imagine what I would say to her if I sent her a birthday wish after a year of silence. After composing a few attempts in my head, a pattern quickly emerged. I realized every single sentence or paragraph I conjured was me explaining away my feelings, apologizing for my actions, explaining how she was a wonderful person and didn't deserve what she got. I was doing whatever I had to do in order to be accepted, loved, and taken in by her again. Soon after, I also realized that was bullshit. I'm a 30 year old woman and here I am again, trying to get into the good graces of someone that doesn't want me, trying to save people that don't want to be saved by simply enabling them and hoping for an eventual payoff. It's a pattern I've done a lot of after being abused for so many years. It's also a pattern I'm damn sick of repeating.

I'm realizing now that it will take lots of time to mourn a 15 year friendship. But I'm also realizing that this voice in the back of my head, this thing I thought was my conscience whispering to me again and again when I've been lonely this past year, "but you walked away, you walked away, you walked away, it's your own fault you're lonely because you walked away"... well, that voice is crap. Yes, I walked away, but I did it with honesty and dignity. I did it for the sake of the friendship, as ironic as that sounds. I did it for my sanity, I did it for me. I stated my case, I asked for clarification. She gave me excuses, anger, bitterness, rage. I asked for understanding, she gave me insults, guilt, more rage. I walked away, she threw it away. Either way, it's done.

In the past year, I have worked harder to maintain the healthy friendships that I have and to try harder to create new ones. I don't want to go through this again, this pain of losing a friend, but it's more than that. I don't want to give one more second to repeating the relationships and mistakes of my past. I want to focus only on those that truly care for me, those that love me for exactly who I am. I want to be asked how my life is going and I want to know that my answer to that question is important and heard. Most of all, I just want to be me - here, now, healthy, happy, present. And I don't ever want to feel guilty for that. Ever.