Shout out to Bjork for a great song by this title that pretty much expresses what's going on in my head right now.
I'm having kind of a blah day here. I came home tipsy and tired last night from wandering around in the heat with two of my downtown pals. As is becoming habit with us, we spent the day bargain shopping and drooling over the inexpensive but not cheap jewelry at TJ Maxx. Saw an absolutely stunning garnet necklace that I knew I could not afford, but I can't get it out of my head now, which is a bad sign. We went to Telephone for dinner, where I had a couple of so-so Margaritas and tottered home to unpack my purchases. Excellent shopping day with good friends, good dinner, lousy weather. Went to bed around midnight, exhausted, thrashed around in the heat, and slept until about 10:30 and I've been moping around all day since.
Part of what's making this such a crappy day is the dream blowback from the one I had before I woke up. Those are the ones that are always the most vivid and the most disturbing, if they're not just strange. This one happened to focus in a fairly lucid way on one of my friends who's having a really rough time right now and who has, consequently, backed away from me for reasons I sort of understand and sort of don't. What was disturbing about the dream was that it was a slightly warped accelerated replay of the last year, as though I were watching the deterioration of our relationship in fast-forward mode. I watched myself doing all these things she asked me to do while she moved farther and farther away from paying any attention to me at all, and clung harder to the rest of the group we were with. It was really painful to watch, even when I knew what was going on, or maybe especially because I knew what was going on.
I've realized, mulling this over today, that I was/am the only healthy one in that circle of people. KC, who is the nucleus of the group, is the only other one beside me who really has many friends outside the group, and she's the one who pulled the five of us together. It's a group I was only ever on the periphery of because I had other friends and other interests, and it still ate up a lot of my time and energy the way other friends don't. I also found myself wanting to please her in the way I've found myself wanting to please boyfriends—not because there was anything sexual in it but because I was afraid of losing her.
One of my other friends, from a much longer-standing relationship that's had its ups and downs—some not dissimilar to this one—made an illuminating but painful remark about being friends with me. She's frequently observed that I have a strong personality (true) and a strong sense of myself (also true) and that people who don't will "break" in a realtionship with me. Sadly, I think this is true, even though this was meant more in the sense that being around someone who's self-assured will only make the lack of self-assurance in someone else more obvious to themselves. It's sad because the only alternatives the two people in the relationship are left with are for the strong one to lose that self-assurance or for the weak one to break away from the strong one to find her own.
I try very hard not to overshadow my friends and to support them when they need it, but you can only be so vigilant before the friendship becomes based on one person or the other not being themselves. And sometimes people are just too vulnerable to hold any of their own ground against a more intense personality. I've gotten in arguments like this, where you feel beaten down by the other person's intelligence or the inexorability of their logic. It's not a nice place to be, but I don't come out of it feeling stupid or worthless, and I think that's the difference. When you constantly feel stupid or worthless or inferior in some way in the presence of one of your friends, no matter how innocent they are in the matter, it's impossible to maintain that friendship. It's nobody's fault, really. It's just . . . I dunno . . . bad timing? Bad luck? Bad Karma? What?
If it becomes a pattern in your friendships, then that's another thing, and I suppose you could say it is a pattern in my friendships, from a certain point of view. I've had people back away from me before. Hell, I've had people running screaming in the other direction. As a caveat, however, I will say that those I didn't mend the friendships with were people who ran screaming from others as well, and who have very few friends of their own. They're the kind of people who are always looking for someone to either fix their lives or tell them what to do, and people like that don't make good friends anyway. They're less friends than hangers-on. Most of them have never really gotten their houses in order enough to have stable friendships or lives. One or two have, but we've just lost touch with each other, maybe for the best.
Then there's the people you can't beat away with the stick. This makes me mean. I like to let people down gently, if I can, but I'm not above telling them why I think it's a good idea if we don't speak to each other, at least for a while. I generally try to do that pretty gently too, and try to lay most of the blame on my own human frailty. Again, I'm not above saying that a trip to the mental health specialist might not be a bad thing, but I'll also freely admit I've done it myself. But some people will not take no for an answer. Some people will not get the hint. These are the desperados. Beware of them.
To see if you might be a pathological hanger-on, take this quiz:
When my friends don't answer their phone, I:
1. Leave a message and forget it. They'll call me back. (0 pts.)
2. Assume they're home and avoiding me, silly them! (5 pts.)
3. Assume they're not home and keep calling them every fifteen minutes until I go to bed. (500 pts.)
When my friends repeatedly refuse to return my messages or pick up when they see my number, I:
1. Assume that they're not interested in being friends with me and go away. (0 pts.)
2. Grab the phone while visiting their parents and say, "Aha! I guess I circumvented your answering machine!" (500 pts.)
3. Assume they just don't want to talk to me right now, and keep calling them every fifteen minutes until hell freezes over. (5 pts.)
When my friends tell me they'll resume speaking to me when I "get some help," I:
1. Seriously consider I might have a problem. (0 pts.)
2. Ask my friend to read the personal journal she's encouraged me to keep and tell me what problems she sees. (5 pts.)
3. Try going to a shrink and then quit because they're asking questions that are too personal. (500 pts.)
Score:
500+ They make good drugs for this kind of behavior. Get yourself some.
15+ Honest self-analysis is a beautiful thing! You should try it.
0-14 You're probably the one being stalked. Get out while you can. Leave no forwarding address.
*Sigh* The only thing meaner would be if I even mentioned this person's name or initials, which I won't do, for a change. This person assumes, though, that we can have a friendship in which we don't talk about emotions, only about the things we do. Does this sound like much of a friendship? I'm not that interested in what this person is doing. It's not like this person is an Internationally Known Great Talent, or even a Person With Interesting Hobbies. This is the kind of conversations you have with co-workers in the elevator or over lunch, not with "friends," and I don't have any co-workers in Canada. Oops! There's a clue! I'm so bad.
Gee, strangely, I feel better now.
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