Three or so years ago, one of my "friends" left me a tearful voicemail stating that she could not be friends with me any longer. It has wreaked a havoc in my life that is rooted in childhood triggers and in how unfairly she treated me, yet how she is viewed as a saint by all she knows. Like being friends with an angel who stabs you in the back and only through the piercing pain do you discover that it was really Satan all along.
This person's name is Jessica Wilson. Yep, it's her real name. I'm stating this because I feel there should be a warning for toxic people out there, and I know nobody reads my blog anyway. It is cathartic to know that there is even the minute possibility that someone might read this and be warned by it.
I met Jessica in 4th grade, when I went from bilingual classes (translation: classes for illegal immigrants - mostly - who did not know English), to private schools. My parents (another venting blog altogether) thought that I needed the Spanish in my life, then they changed their minds or somehow imagined that transitioning to all English, and overmore, all wealthy, classes would somehow be healthy for me. So Jessica showed me around my first day in private school. I remember that she wasn't super excited to do so, only wanting to interact with her friend who came along with us. Later this was made to be our poetic first day of meeting (by Jessica), in which our relationship began to grow from a seedling of a tour. I remember talking to my mother about how disturbed I was by Jessica's mean behavior. Coming from an emotionally abusive home in which my father cycled through angry episodes and took them out on us...I KNEW what mean was. And Jessica was it! My mother would complain to me about my father being the tyrant that he was, so I knew I needed to complain about Jessica. My mother's recommendation, wise (and wouldn't it have been great if she had followed it herself?) was to stop being friends with Jessica. I tried to convince our mutual friends to do so, thinking that they had been hurt so much by her that really they were the ones who needed to be protected. The creepiest moment I recall from my childhood was telling my friends that we should stop being friends with her, as they complained about how mean she was, and Jessica popped her head down and said, go ahead I don't care...or something to that effect. CREEPY!!! I thought she was going to hurt me, literally. From that point, I kept my distance. She was one of those friends who took those physical games a little too literally and I knew all too well she would be gunning for me for trying to protect other people from her. Our mutual friends, by the way, like victims in domestic violence cases, withdrew their criticisms of her and pledged their loyalty to her so like always...the Joan of Arc gets burned at the stake. Thanks, ladies. And I wonder why I don't feel so close to any of them anymore. :)
Here's Chapter 1 of my relationship with Jessica. It's complicated, confusing, and multi dimensional.
I'll say, at this point in my life, I knew I didn't want to be around abusive people and I had pegged Jessica as abusive. Later on, I realized that I knew best how to deal with abusive people, in fact I had learned how to be abusive, and THIS was when I learned to be friends with an abusive person again.
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