friend

This will likely be all over the place because I am feeling particularly jumbled and irritable today. (I am not certain I have taken my pills in the last few days, I have been incredibly tired and have practically fallen asleep walking up the stairs to bed)

I had a friend say something to me last night and it has been on my mind today. In a nutshell, she said that her husband was "supporting" our long-distance friendship and even encouraging the long many-hours-travel visits because he knew now that we were not a "friendship-fling" and we were going to last. He also understood that we were good for one another.

I wrote before about my daughter struggling with G and I being close friends because see rarely sees me with anyone other than my mother. I started thinking about why that is. . .

I grew up in a large church. I had a good friend who was 2 years younger than me, but was much more popular, prettier and far more vivacious than I was. She was always the life of the party, willing to try anything and always needed to be the center of attention. That worked for me because if she was the center of attention, it left little chance of me being noticed. We had all the same friends and most of them were male. We all got along famously and they all lusted after her. I was merely a friend. I got to sink into my own little world and not be noticed quite so often. It worked.

What didn't work is the way she treated me. I was her stepping stone. I was the one she used as a cover. When we grew up and she went to college, she found way cooler friends than me. She dropped me like a hot biscuit, except when she needed something from me. When they betrayed her, like they always did, I was the one she would cry to. She never really realized that they turned on her due to her own choices. Girls usually don't like you sleeping with their boyfriends . . . multiple times . . . with multiple friends. Huh? Who would've thought? Her idea of attention and friendship was sex, with anyone and everyone. In her mind. she had no worth outside of her appeal. Who was it that was always there ready to pick her up? Me.

When we moved into an apartment together, I was the one who took care of everything. I cooked, cleaned and did her laundry. I was the one who paid the bills. I would have to nag and nag for her to write me a check for her portion. She would take my clothes and my shoes and mistreat them. I put up with it for a very long time. She was tied to my group of friends. She was my sense of meaning and importance. She needed me and I fed on that.

It wasn't until she went to grad school and her younger sister moved in with me that I realized that she had been telling her family all along that I was the person that she was. It turns out all these years, her family thinks that I am the one sleeping around, experimenting with drugs, and being all around wild. She would tell these stories at Sunday lunch and put me in as the main character instead of herself. Her father was an elder in our church. They had never really liked me and I now knew why. I was devastated. She had betrayed me. I never confronted her. I just simply stopped talking to her. The girl I thought was my best friend for 10 years was no longer a part of my life.

I never really got over that.

I have not really had friends since he eldest adopted son came into the picture. I have always told myself and others that that happens when you parent a special needs child. We cannot find babysitters so how do you go out with friends? Now,I can see that is was a convenient excuse. It was a way for me to guard myself against ever being hurt like that again. I have opened myself up to those on the internet, in my "circle", but that is not the same. They are far away, and they will not be a part of my everyday life. Until now.

G may be 2 states away, but I feel like she is with me everyday. She is kind, caring and compassionate. She cares about what is going on in my life. She reprimands my kids without even thinking about it! (Which I love!) I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is there for me at any moment of the day or night. The internet and cell phones are a mighty thing! Last week her husband went through a procedure that could've went south really fast and I was prepared to drive 2 states to be there with them in a moments notice.

It is nice to be able to give that to someone else again. It is nice to know that someone has "your back" (even though I hate that saying!) It is just know to know that someone "gets" you. I love her and her family with my whole heart and I am so thankful that she has opened up that part of me again . . .