Mahogany Misfit

Remember this post from a few months ago? Well I apologize for never following up here but let me give a brief overview of what's occurred since I last discussed this.

Taking the advice of many of you, I decided to go the direct route and email my friend to end our friendship in a candid, honest way. This is what I sent her:

I don't want you to think I'm ignoring you. I care a lot about you and the kids. In fact, I want to honor our friendship by being honest with you right now. 

After our last conversation about the house and you living with J, something shifted within me.

I stopped relating to you.  Like completely and totally.

I came to the realization that it is pretty much impossible to have a productive, positive friendship with someone you don't understand and constantly worry about. I didn't want you to feel belittled any further since that wasn't my intention in the first place, so I just kind of left things alone.

I want to tell you now, that I feel if you go forward with your original plans and things fall apart down the road, I won't be able to support you.

Just the NOTION of you struggling with the house and/or calling me sobbing for the 50th time about J's insensitive, ABUSIVE, cowardly behavior after you've let him move in with you makes me want to scream. Looking at this situation from the outside in is very frustrating and upsetting because I care so much about you and what happens to you and your children. J being a full time member of that household will be a catastrophe of epidemic proportions and the fact that you don't seem to realize it and  are in denial about it, makes me feel even more alienated from you.

You do not value yourself enough nor do you hold the people in your life to a high enough standard. It pains me immensely to witness this.

You've been through so much during the 8 years I've known you...and these last few years have been especially difficult and intense.

I have to be honest, lately when I hang up the phone after talking to you, I am positively exhausted and often more depressed than before we spoke. Listening to you breakdown and stress out is hard on me believe it or not. I go through such a range of emotions listening to you...anger at what you're angry about, sadness at what you're sad about, empathetic to everything that drags you down...it's incredibly taxing. Maybe it's because I have depression issues of my own. I don't know. I just know that I have spent a lot of time lending you my ear, and sympathizing with everything that troubles you, much of it being issues I can't relate to and feel could have been easily avoided had you made better choices. Our friendship is very one-sided a lot of the time.

I hate feeling like I'm lecturing you but I don't think either of us can deny that your choices...past and present...contribute to a great deal of the misery you currently endure. So to see you continue to make choices that could potentially be very damaging to you and your children is intolerable for me at this point.

Anytime I've given you advice and you chose not to take it, I never judged you or came back and said "I told you so." Not once.  However, right now, I'm seriously doubting my ability to continue holding back that way. I'm doubting my ability to support you through a potential crisis with this house and I'm most definitely doubting my ability to support you during the next J related crisis. I just know I'm not going to be able to do it.  And I suspect you, like most people, want friends who can support you through things like this, which is why I'm being honest with you about my limits. You deserve to know in clear and plain terms what they are.

I don't WANT our friendship to end but I also don't really know how it can continue with me feeling so far removed from you and the decisions you make...you have enough on your plate, you don't need too add to it a friend who is incapable of supporting you, and I truly feel as if I'll be incapable once these changes you're planning take place.

I've thought about this a lot over the past few weeks and how to say these things to you. I hope I've been able to effectively convey the concern, compassion, and love I have for you and I hope you can try to see things from where I stand. 

So as you can see, I tried to be candid but respectful here. Did I accomplish that? I thought I had.

She thought otherwise.

This is the response I got in return:

Well good to know.

I have not always like nor supported things you have done but I would never have ended our relationship over it.

But you are obviously allowed to do so.

What a shame.

Hope you have a great life.

Adios!

Yep, just as some of you thought, I am the villain here for "abandoning" her. Classic victim behavior from a classic victim. I am so fucking over it. From me to her:

This email of yours, in response to my sincere, lengthy one in which I did my best to express my concern and love, really magnifies the colossal differences between the two of us.

This completely confirms for me that we are severely incompatible as friends at this point.

In any case, I have no doubt that my life holds great things, thank you for your well wishes.

Take Care

Thought it was over, but NOPE!

How would you like me to respond?  You're basically telling me that you are throwing away our friendship because you don't agree with certain things in my life.

Do I take drugs?  No.  Do I neglect my kids?  No.  Am I violent towards others or my children?  No. 

I'm confirming that you had the right to do what you did.  It is just not something that I would have done to any of my friends.

But since you once again referred to my children as "poor choices" then maybe you are right...we are not suitable as friends.

Because that hurt me more than you will every know and personally I can't get past that.

And kids or no kids....challenges or no challenges....obstacles or no obstacles life holds great things for me too.

After all that I have been through I have overcome it all and I am extremely proud of myself.

OK so now the barometer for being a good parent is not beating or neglecting your kids and staying off crack? WHAT? This bitch loves to set the bar low doesn't she?!

Next response:

This notion of me referring to your children as poor choices is inaccurate. I've never said that. The timing of you having them was shitty and having two with J -ugh that can all be construed as being poor choices. I'm not just limiting this to you but anyone who has a kid, much less three kids while financially unstable and in an unstable relationship is making a few poor choices.  Poor choices aren't a crime, everyone makes them!  The key is to learn from them and not repeat them right? Well sadly, There is NO EVIDENCE YOU HAVE LEARNED ANYTHING.

Things weren't exactly going smoothly when it was just you and (name of her first child redacted) were they? Then (name of her second child redacted) came along and again, things were not going smoothly right? As I recall, life was very tough for you. Then, knowing what you did about J, his poor financial situation, his HORRIBLE treatment of you, and his crappy fathering skills, you had yet another child with him. And NOW you are considering sharing a home with this man, FULL TIME. In addition to that, it was only a few months ago that you called me in tears telling me you had almost NO FOOD in your cabinets...and now you think you're capable of purchasing a home?

Seriously, don't be so sure that you'd NEVER reconsider a friendship with someone who you witnessed making damaging decisions over and over again for almost a decade.

I'm sorry for holding a mirror up to your life because obviously, by your responses, you do not like what you see.

And that makes two of us.

Christ on a rubber cross, I get so mad at this whole fucking situation. Here she goes:

We don't have to keep going back and fourth with this.

I actually started to write back about all the things that have made me frustrated with you all these years, but I have decided that its just not worth it.

Hurting you isn't worth it.

No way bitch, we ARE going back and forth now. Fuck it.

Yeah, I agree. Sending me an email full of the things about me that have frustrated you isn't worth it. Because I haven't called you dozens of times sobbing my face off about a guy who abuses me emotionally and regularly breaks my spirit while listening you to advise me to rid myself of him. I haven't made damaging decisions that have set me back in life and then expected you to support me through them (often the same ones repeatedly) without getting a little frustrated. Also, I'm pretty confident you haven't spent hours worrying about my well-being after a disturbing conversation in which I described my being abused, yelled at, and degraded by the man in my life. You haven't told me countless times to honor myself by cutting this guy off, only to see me back in the same situation with him a week later.

My life isn't a big, self created mess.

So yes, since there aren't any examples comparable to this that you can bring forth, I agree with you that it ISN'T worth it.

I also agree that it's pointless to keep emailing each other back and forth so this will be my last to you...

IT felt SO GOOD to let all of that out, you have NO IDEA.

So I ended it there and that was that. July was our last correspondence.

So imagine my surprise last night when I got a text message from her...

"I just wanted to say that I hope all is well and that I miss you. You're in my thoughts."

I didn't answer.

Should I bother?