Re(s)training Order

     It's been a challenging six weeks.

     In a word: BUSY.

     Well.  I was really confident in my last post about breaking up with BUSY.  I knew it wasn't working and that our relationship was going nowhere good for me. I had solid reasons - and reasoning - for dumping him.  Let's face it, he's always been a freeloader.  He's demanded so much of my time and energy.  He's controlling and jealous.  BUSY made it hard to see my friends, my family, not to mention, my husband.
     (I actually think BUSY and Mike have a past, too, which is unsettling.)

     Problem is, BUSY and I have 40+ years together, and I should have known he wouldn't go down without a good fight.

     I was sure I could make a clean break, but it turns out that BUSY is an even worse ex-boyfriend than he was a boyfriend.

     A couple of days after I announced that we were through, I came home to find him in the middle of our living room.  He was sitting in the dark, leaning back, spread out wide and confident, like he owned the place... like he owned me.

     "How did you get in?" I asked as I dropped my bag on the table.
     He smirked as he held up and dangled his set of keys. I motioned for them and he lobbed them to me.
     "I don't need them anyway," he scoffed. "I can get in any time I want."
     "Are you threatening me?"
     "Just stating the facts."
     I waited.

     “Not so easy giving me up, is it?” 

     It hadn't been easy, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of saying it out loud.

     “Can’t stop thinking about me, can you?”

     Again, this was true, but not in a good way.

     “What do you want, BUSY?”

     “I want you back.” 

     I let out a deep breath. “Of course you do.  You want everything your way."
     "Seems you liked my way for a long, long time."
     "There's a difference between living a certain way and liking it. I get lost when I’m with you.”

     “You say that like it’s a bad thing.  Don’t you want to get lost in us?” He walked over to me and leaned in close.

     “No,” I shook my head. “No, I don't. You take me down to a dark, unrecognizable place.  I don’t see myself, the self I want to be when we’re together.  You and I want different things, BUSY, and you can’t be my priority anymore.  I need to be my priority.”

     “I see,” he stepped back, nodding slowly, pretending to reflect on my words  I know this act.  I’ve seen it before.  "So, that's it?"
     "Yup."
     He straightened up. "You know you can't cut me out. Your friends are my friends. They won't choose you over me."
     "That's for them to decide, BUSY."
     "I'm not going to just disappear. I rule this town."
     "That may be true, but you won't rule me."
     "We'll see," he said.  BUSY stopped at the door. "See you around, Stephanie.  See you around every corner.  Every single corner.  Just when you think you're alone, I'll be there."
     "Get out, BUSY."
     "Oh, and uh... nice speech." He closed the door, but I knew he was still there, standing on the other side.  I walked over and flipped the deadlock and heard him laugh.

...

     So, now what? Well,  I'm working on a re(s)training order.  The most important part is firm consistency.  Sometimes I feel myself slipping back, softening to him, missing whatever that was, but I need to recalibrate my thinking and behavior.  I need to change my muscle memory. BUSY continues to lurk. He appears out of nowhere, often at the worst moments, and it always unnerves me.  But every day that I don't reconcile is a hard-won victory.

     I know this is difficult for you to read.  I know this hits way too close to home, because you've been with BUSY too.  Oh, he told you that you were exclusive?  BUSY gets around.  What, he told you his name was Productive?  Yeah, that's his brother.  Don't be fooled, they are not the same.

     BUSY is serious trouble. You may want to file a re(s)training order, too.

It's Never So Simple

It's never as simple as anger allows me to think it is.
Being angry allows me to pinpoint and shut down.  It feels powerful... for a while... until I realize how  tiring it is and how alone I feel.

This little blog of mine is not normally an update of my daily goings on - It is not meant to be the place where I share every fascinating detail of my everyday minutiae or to work out whatever issues I have.  I really hate those blogs.  Get a Twitter account or a therapist already.  But today I'm going to make an exception, because it's warranted after my last posting.  I need to offer you, as Paul Harvey would say, "the rest of the story."

First, I'm amazed by how many friends across my spectrum have reached out after reading the post to share their own personal experience of a friendship break-up. (Thank you for sharing those stories with me - You know who you are~)  I'm not amazed that bad break-ups happen, just amazed by how many folks wanted and needed to connect to share their hurt/anger/bewilderment/sense of abandonment/general bad and sad feelings.  And by the way, they weren't all women my age.  They spanned generations and gender. A close high school guy friend wrote a really touching note about the post and then alluded to losing his best friend.  It's been a painful subject for years.  I can't remember a time when we've gotten together that he hasn't brought up the topic. Amazing how sucky it can feel.

Second, I'm humbled by the complexity of it all...

So, here's the update. It took me a couple of days, but I sent the blog post to my friend. When I did it, I felt a sense of empowerment.  Take that! I thought. You hurt me and now I'm putting it all to rest.  Done!

But that's not how this story goes, and looking at it now, I'm thankful for an alternate ending.

My friend answered back in just a few hours.  Her email was a combination of beautiful note, heartfelt apology, explanation of a different side of the story, and a timeline of her post-breakup life.  Post-break-up sounded terrible. I felt for my friend.  I heard her familiar voice as I read her words and I thought, how did this all end up feeling so personal?  The initial breakup did happen, but as I put our two stories together, there's a muddiness.  What really did happen, and how much of it was open to interpretation?  And holy cow, there were 18 years in between that had nothing to do with our friendship... it was LIFE taking over.  LIFE got in the way of either of us reaching out and mending fences. Why go back and try to rehash and restart that friendship when we were each holding on for dear life to LIFE as it was happening?

And let's be fair.  None of us has been a perfect friend.  I have several embarrassing low points when I dropped the ball and hurt a friend, and I didn't fix it.  There are times when I've looked back and thought, I should have fixed that and I didn't and now it just seems too late.

It is never as simple as anger and hurt let us believe.

I know that I said I was ready for a clean slate, and I am.  And I hope my old/former/renewed friend will join me to decorate it.

D*mn You, Facebook.

It started with (of all things) a Facebook Friend Request.
A request I've been waiting for for 18 years.

The request came from the woman who was once my maid of honor.  


We had become fast friends a couple of years before on an 8-month, 8-country European tour of the all-Americana musical, Oklahoma!  I was 24 at the time, and she'd felt like one of my first real post-college adult girlfriends.  I loved talking with her, sharing books with her, running through German landscapes and exploring cities with her.  She was a grounding force for me.  It was an intense tour, and the moments when I felt the most broken, she was a generous friend. 

The year after the tour, we settled a few blocks away from each other in NYC and both tried to figure out our next life steps.  Auditioning was going well for me, but she was considering a career change.  We both had complicated long-distance semi-boyfriends and short-term NYC dating until I met my polar opposite, Adam, and got engaged to him 11 weeks later. The year was jam-packed with big life shifts.

Of course I asked her to be my maid of honor, my sole bridal party.  She was my closest girlfriend.

Not long after the wedding, my friend candidly told me that she didn't want to be friends with me anymore.  I was stunned.  I remember fishing for specifics for the break-up, but got generalities.  I'd never done anything to hurt her personally - nothing that she was willing or able to divulge to me anyway. To this day, I'm still flummoxed. I can only guess that she didn't like the way things had developed between Adam and me.  She may not have liked him or who I'd become with him.  It had been a whirlwind year and I'd been caught up in what now looks like a string of bad judgment calls.  Truthfully, if I'd had to witness a year of one of my close friends' unhealthy choices, I might have turned off, too.   Maybe I would have slowly melted away, gotten too busy to make dinner dates... I have drifted away from a friend or two before.  But would I have formally broken up with her?  Maybe my friend felt like I deserved a true cutting of ties - maybe she thought it was kinder to offer something concrete and definite.  I'm definitely someone who appreciates resolution, but I couldn't find a grounding for it all. What would I have done if I were her?

My friend broke up with me twice.  She thought she could give our friendship another chance, but after a week (weak?) second try, she confirmed the end.  The words I vividly remember her saying were, "I just don't value our friendship anymore."  Ouch.  That didn't seem kind; that seemed harsh.

I felt really lost and confused by it.  We had mutual friends, one in particular that I was still close with.  I'd ask him about her occasionally, and every time felt like a self-inflicted wound.  She eventually moved across the country and I found comfort in the distance of place and time.

And then, Facebook ruined everything.

A while ago, I'd searched her name and found her.  I was curious and masochistic, I guess.  Who hasn't searched the names of people who have broken your heart, folks who have done you wrong, or ones who got away?  So I found her, but did nothing.  It wasn't my place to do anything.  In my mind, there was plenty to be said initially, but not by me. 


Last week, I got a Facebook Friend Request from her.  No message attached, no note, just the request.  
And I got really, really angry.  
Now I'm in this impossible situation. I can't just dismiss the request and I can't just accept it.  Oh, it's just Facebook!  Who cares!  Can't I be a grown up about it?  


No, I can't.  No, I won't.  I'm furious that I can't treat this "Friend" request as casually as she has. She is not someone from my periphery, not some kid I sang with in middle school chorus class eons ago. Someone I loved broke up with me and has decided that after 18 years, she owes me no explanation, no apology, nothing but a lame click of a button to wipe the slate clean.  

But...

Today, I'm humbled by just how debilitating anger can be.

So, now what?  Perhaps I'll send her these words and let her try and make sense out of them.  Here's my click of a button, I guess.  With it, I'll wipe my own slate clean.