In short, I came home and being back in a family situation made me depressed. Family = depression it's a short equation but as accurate as can be. Jessica and I bonded through depression again and as I was hanging out with my brother's friends (I couldn't find my own how sad was I?), I invited her. She invited another guy, without asking us until the last minute, and we said yes. She ended up having sex with the guy that night and blamed me for it!!! Because I told her that I could tell he liked her. And I encouraged her to be around someone who liked her. God forbid that I mention at this time that she chooses her own actions...if I blamed someone else for every mistake I made, though, I'd probably have an inflated sense of self too. Of course, he ended up being abusive, in between being great and oh won't you be friends with him. And while he was being abusive, of course I suggested that she leave him and live with me or whoever. Of course I picked her up when she was scared of him, came over when she was scared of him, but eventually I ended up feeling like I hadn't done enough to protect her. Because she's amazing at playing the victim. While we were in college, she told me she'd tried to commit suicide after her (other) boyfriend left her (she told him to go home to Spain). She later denied this but I do have a good memory for emotional crises, unlucky for her as that may be.
When she broke up with her boyfriend, she talked about taking up running. She talked about marathons when she hadn't worked out at all. I cautioned her to take it easy, I didn't want her to get excited about it and then disappointed...then feel depressed about her break up. Later she referred to this as me "doubting" her. I was one of the naysayers, apparently, in her striving to run a marathon. What??? Of course, by that time I was conditioned to feel bad about anything I didn't do for her, so it made me feel awful! Was I that abusive?
She came over to my house to hang out with me and ended up hanging out with my roommate, exchanging numbers with her, and being friends with her. Did I mention she did this in high school too? And when I was dating a guy after she broke up with the "abusive" man, she practically begged me to hang out with him. I grasped for boundaries as I told her "NO" and I didn't know why but I didn't trust her. Had I taken the time to look back on it (my fault, completely, no sarcasm), I wouldn't been better able to phrase it. Instead I said I was insecure with her around my boyfriend and I knew other people were too. She felt "betrayed"...although I invited her to a party in which she met her current boyfriend (good luck to him). At the party I introduced her to him and his friends, knowing they were environmental. I told them where she worked to get conversation going, trying to help. She was mad at me the next day! Even though she hit it off with a guy due to environmental similarities. Even though I mentioned her when he was driving away alone on his bike.
I ended up becoming so frustrated by her anxiety about him that I gave her his number and INSISTED that she text him. I told her I'd do it myself if she needed. She did it and met him for coffee the same days. Cupid, as they say, was present with arrows. A couple of months later, she was on the phone, almost crying because her boyfriend did not believe she had friends. She said to me, you're the one who got me into this relationship anyway! What do you know? It worked. I appeared at an event as her friend.
Oh and I neglected to mention that her birthday right before that consisted of ALL of my friends. She invited them all, shamelessly, and because I said I'd be there, they went as well. I WANTed her to be happy and not to feel friendless on her birthday. But this set a pattern of taking my friends as her own which only ended with our friendship.
She contacted me regularly regarding her new relationship. She couldn't trust him. She had issues. MAJOR ones. I helped her through them. I mean, come on, I have worked with enough dysfunctional people in my life (including me) to know how to help someone through a crisis...
I went to a show that she had emailed about. Her boyfriend was going and I hadn't been out to show that I was her "friend" in quite a while. I asked my roommate and she bailed like I felt like bailing. I met my current boyfriend there (good luck to him), and she actually supported me in contacting him for a date. Soon after, though, our relationship went beyond south.
I was happy with my boyfriend and she was fretting about the same problems she fretted about over the last six months! I told her she deserved better, I told her to stop fretting, and this was only after counseling her for six months... however, she couldn't handle the thought of my boyfriend (her boyfriend's good friend) talking about her to me. That was it. I was no longer her puppy dog, and she was no longer in control of the situation. She "needed a break" from my negativity, aka my no longer blindly believing and telling her that she was amazing. I was so appalled by her idiocy that I couldn't welcome her back after her "break". I told her I couldn't be a very good friend to her at the time. She said she couldn't be friends at all. Always with the trump card.
What am I angry about? no one else knows this story. My boyfriend hears it but ignores it because he doesn't want to lose his good friend. Our mutual friends ignore it like I'm crazy. I believed I was crazy for a long while before I re-examined the kinds of friends I chose to be around. I want to know why people who I thought loved me and trusted me, do not want to protect me or comfort me because of this person. I feel rejected, ashamed, neglected, because no one acknowledges that this has happened. I want the TRUTH to come out and be heard, believed. MY truth. God help me find peace, because it has been a long time and I still haven't found it. Amen.
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