Once Bitten, Forever Shy: Part 2

Part 2: It was Tough Loving Bess

I'm not writing about these people in any particular order - just as their stories come to me.


For a while, Bess and I were joined-at-the-hips-finish-each-other's-sentences kind of best friends.  Until I befriended her, it had been a few years since I had a bosom buddy that was female; the majority of my close friends had always been male.  So when Bess and I met and became fast friends, it was like I had found the Carrie to my Miranda.  Bess was interesting in all the best ways; she did fascinating things with her time and never shied away from any adventure or new experience.  Spending time with her was like walking around a movie set and being the star of a music video.  She gave off this magnetic aura and I was so happy she wanted to be my friend.  She was the kind of girl that every guy wanted and every girl wanted to be.

But our friendship was never punctuated by jealousy.  I never actually wanted to be her (sometimes it's more fun to hear the stories of a wild life, than to actually live it); what I cherished was how understood I felt when I was around her.  We were on the same wavelength.  Here was a girl with whom I could talk about every topic from shoes to the ethics of New Age religions.

I'm not really sure where things went wrong but they went wrong in a rather colossal sense.  It wasn't like our friendship skidded into a ditch; it ended up being a 15 car pile-up on the freeway with casualties on both sides.  I feel sorry for all of our mutual friends, because the implosion of our friendship tore a closely knit group of comrades apart.

We had had minor tiffs before and the usual disagreements between friends, and at first it seemed like all could be forgiven and forgotten.  Bess and her boyfriend split up after 5 years of living together and I was there with her every step of the way through her break-up: when she was thinking of getting back together with him, when she was looking for a new apartment, when she moved, when she started dating again. 

But it was impossible to deny that she had gotten a touch meaner after her split.  Understandable yes; but was she justified in taking it out on me, I'm not entirely certain.  Suddenly everything I was doing was not quite good enough for her.  She became the master of 'negging', or giving backhanded compliments, all wrapped up in a joke or sarcasm, so I could never actually call her on it.

I bought a winter hat that I really liked - just a simple black floppy beret. If you've seen me the past 2 years, you've probably seen me wear it.   I told Bess about my purchase and her immediate response was, "Ugh I hate those hats.  It's so trendy, all those girls in the magazines are wearing them."

Uhhh thanks?

She always looked down on my modeling, saying that I wasn't an artist like her and that a model had no input into the creative process - after all, all I had to do was stand there and look pretty for the camera.

Excusemewhatthefuck?

I would change my profile photo on Facebook and she would respond with some kind of jokingly scathing comment, about how my clothes made me look cute but like I was 12, or how the angle of my face made it look like I had been gorging on potato chips haha lol j/k.  She hated all the art I put up in my apartment because it was either popular, made me look like a poser, made me look like I was just jumping on the bandwagon, or it wasn't made by a real artist.

What really ended the friendship for me however, was after the Ex announced he wanted a separation.  I tearfully went to her, to try to talk it out - to try to glean answers.  Why was he leaving me?  Why was my marriage ending? Was it my fault?  Bess gave me some dodgy answers about my behaviour; she claimed I was just a child playing house and I was not very mature so it was no surprise that my marriage was ending.  Her comments gave me pause; and then I very calmly asked her if she respected me.  I suppose it had been building up to this point all along. Bess responded very simply that she didn't respect me.

I'm not certain what was hurting more at that moment: the impending divorce or losing a best friend in your hour of need. People expect divorces; people don't expect best friends to jump ship on them so suddenly.  You know what to do when a boyfriend leaves you but who do you go to when a best friend breaks up with you?  I suddenly could not stand to be talking to her anymore so I told her we should take a break from our friendship until I got my life sorted out.  Even after she had hurt me so much, I still took the onus for ending the friendship.

Bess was incredibly upset by this, which surprised me.  Why would you want to be friends with a person you did not respect?

We attempted a few times to reconcile our friendship.  Bess explained to me that she felt I was a child because I had never lived alone before and I hadn't moved out of my parents house until I was 26, whereas she had moved out at 18.  Because of this, she was of the opinion that I was a weak, needy and dependent person.  She had the gall to tell me it was all right and she would still love me even if I was weak, needy and dependent so long as I would stop selling myself as a strong, independent woman and be true to who I was.  Bess further explained that she felt I was not committed to our friendship because I was unwilling to do the hard things, like be tough on her and tell her to suck it up, princess.

It was almost amusing sitting there and defending my notion of what made a person strong, if my blood wasn't boiling over.  I told her about being with my father through out his battle with cancer and staying by his side when he died.  I explained to her there were different methods of being a listener: some people were problem solvers, others were empathisers.   I never told her what to do because I have faith people know what is the best course of action for themselves, deep down and that my role as a friend was to be there no matter what a person decides.  I explained that my decision to live at home was a smart one economically as I was able to save on 8 years worth of rent and move out completely debt free.

I was on trial and she was my judge, jury and executioner.

This was when I realized that Bess' framework of what an appropriate life was fairly narrow. It was her way or the highway.  When we were in sync with one another, it was easy to get along with her.  All my decisions mirrored her philosophies.  But whenever I struck out on my own, I was wrong.  I was vastly unhappy in this relationship; it was bordering on abusive by now.  For the sake of my own sense of self-worth, I had to walk away.  It had to be a clean break with no further communications.  After all, any explanation to her would continue to treat her like she was a parole officer who deserved a reason for seemingly truant behaviour.  I could never win with her and I knew it.  If I told her I felt she was being cruel to me, her response would have simply been that she was being honest and it was my fault for not having a thick enough skin.  It never occurred to her that there could be different 'right' ways to live a life.

Bess attempted to contact me a few additional times, once apologizing for how she treated me. She explained that she held all of her friends to the same standard that she held herself and that she couldn't blame her friends for failing to live up to her perfect standards.  Then she berated me for not responding to her Facebook messages, saying she was sure I would find some twisted way to justify my behaviour to make it seem like I was right for ignoring her.

I laughed. Then I deleted the email and did not respond.

Once Bitten, Forever Shy

 Part 1: This Too, Shall Pass

One of the most important life's lesson that I learned last year was that human relationships - whether it be of a marital, romantic, sexual, friendly, affectionate or professional nature - are fragile. Temporary. Frail. Evanescent. Quite frankly, I'm a little surprised it took me this long to learn this invaluable lesson but maybe it's not because I'm slow but because life has been kind to me.

I generally don't bemoan the loss of a relationship through natural drift.  We cannot remain in touch with everybody we have met over our years on this Earth and as easy as Facebook has made it to be 'friends' with people, you have your "friends" and you have your friends.  People need shared space, shared time, shared interest in order to stay friends; you take away these key elements and it becomes exceedingly difficult to maintain that bond.

No - this past year was the year where I lost relationships through intentional severance. After such a loss, I think it's natural to want answers and whether they are real or contrived, it doesn't matter.  My knee-jerk response was to place the blame squarely on me; after all, I was the centre of this maelstrom.  I was the lynch pin. I was the only common denominator.  I lost several of my best friends in one fell year because I was a bad person. I was one reason on my laundry list of reasons why I wanted to kill myself: I was a terrible person and I didn't deserve to live.

Eight months of therapy later and I'm finally starting to see things in a different light.   Will it bring these people back to me? No.  Will it help me maintain relationships in the future? Not at all.  Will it help me cope with being a human, moving in human circles? Yes, probably.

It was a lesson in how fleeting everything human truly is.  To wish for eternity is a fool's game; it's grasping at straws that do not even exist.  Any pithy or cliched beliefs about true love being forever, about BFFs, about blood being thicker than water - it's a salve we apply because we're afraid of being alone.  It's a religion that is nearly universal.  Well - it's a religious doctrine with which I no longer agree and I'm going to explain why. Not because I have to justify myself to anybody (thanks, therapy!) but because writing it out makes it more real for me.


Besides, why should I feel the need to pander to you? You won't be here in a year's time anyway!

Knowing Where You Don't Belong is Just as Important as Knowing Where You Do

I grew up in a small, socially conservative but economically left wing small town.  It was a town that was big enough to aspire to be a metropolis but small enough to not matter.  It was a good upbringing - the people were kind, the neighbourhoods were safe, the streets quiet and the pace leisurely. I learned and could appreciate ridiculous 'country' girl things, like how to bait my own hook when fishing, how to cook over an open fire, and what to do if you see a bear on your property.  Living 'up north' squashed any squeamishness I might have had about bugs, dirt, foul weather, blood, guts and death - I dare anybody to call me prissy.

Growing up in such a small town means, on the other hand, that there is a fairly narrow way of life.  Things are just done a certain way; differences are not celebrated but are threatening to the fabric of that society.  It's a subtle pressure to confirm but it's there and it wasn't until I had moved out that I realized how much I had shaped my life to fit into a mold that would have ultimately made me unhappy.  Where I'm from, you went to school, married your sweetheart, got a job that paid okay even if it was completely unrelated to what you studied or were passionate about, got married, bought a house and a car, had kids... It's a beautiful, suburban existence.

It's not for me.

Many of my struggles in the past year has been coming to grips with this.  I thought I was defective, because I wasn't sure if I wanted children; I thought I was selfish because I had career goals.  Going 'home' during the holidays was incredibly hard for me because I didn't feel like I belong there.  People thought I was abandoning the northern way of life, that I was selling out, that I was a big city snob, that I was material and superficial.  They made me feel like I was making all the wrong decisions and when was I going to smarten up and move back 'home'?

My home is in my new, adopted city.  It's a place I CHOOSE to be in.  Before, I felt like a puzzle piece that didn't fit with the other pieces and I had a choice of either being discarded or being rammed into place whether I liked it or not.  Now I realized that I was just a puzzle piece that got mixed up and was in the wrong box.  Now, I'm a radio that has found the strongest frequency; I'm the needle in the groove of the record.  I flow with traffic and I don't fight the current.

I like the hustle and bustle of the city. I like the sirens at 2 in the morning. I like the lights and the noise and the fast pace.  I like the options that a city like this gives me - it is the world, quite literally, at my doorsteps. Every weekend I can do anything I want.  Jazz show? Rock concert? Experimental Japanese cuisine?  Indian fusion? Spanish tapas? It's all here.  For a person who craves 'newness' and 'experiences' and 'checking things off the bucket list' as much as I do - this city is a godsend.

Most importantly, I like the multitudes of world views.  Suddenly, I'm not aberrant and there are dozens if not hundreds of strong independent men and women who share my worldviews.  If they don't share my worldviews, then they understand and support it.  And if they don't, it's all right because I have millions of other souls just waiting to connect with me.  At 28, I feel like I'm finally coming into my own and that I am finally 100% me. 

I didn't just blossom when I came here - I was reborn.