Early Warning Signs

Had I paid attention early on, the warning signs were all there. Had I listened to voices that were trying to get my attention, I would have never ventured so far down the road of the friendship that ended up devastating me. The warnings were all there, I just didn’t want to acknowledge them.

To not make the same mistakes again, I first need to understand my mistakes. This is a painful process of reexamination, and a process I have no choice but to take, if I have any hope of moving forward in a life not completely closed down. If I cannot understand what I did wrong and how to avoid it again, my only other choice is to keep the world at arm’s length (and honestly, that’s where I am right now).

There were signs. There were times when red flags went up. Each time instead of paying attention, I excused them away. I wanted my friend to be more than these moments. So I excused them away the same way heterosexual women continually excuse away the bad behavior of men.

One of the first flags was her telling the story of a man that worked in her shop (a salon that caters to “high society” people – not the likes of someone like me). She was complaining of his bad behavior and how he had not been the same since his home burned. I know nothing of him or the details of the house fire. What I know is only what she told me. She complained that he should be “over it” now because (her words) with the insurance money he was able to purchase a better home. He even had granite table tops and (here is the red flag), “[she] didn’t even have granite tabletops yet!” I can still hear her voice escalate as she declared this. She didn’t even have granite tabletops yet. There are so many red flags in her statement: one’s happiness is determined by the value of their home, she pays attention to what others have and aspires to meet or beat these benchmarks, and that she expected that of course, I would jump in agree with what she was saying – no embarrassment saying this in front of me.

I believe I remember that moment so clearly, even today, because it was a moment the universe wanted me to pay attention to. Much later, when I called her on it, she denied ever saying this (yet another red flag).

The very first day we got together again after so many years, there were red flags I ignored. After having shared so much of my nature-centric spirituality with her, she proceeded that day to pretend a tree was talking to her. This didn’t feel right, but again I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. That she said the tree was “full of itself” (ego) only points to her acting for show, instead of having a genuine experience. “Full of itself” is a human reaction. All-that-Is has no need for ego.

We spent part of that first day at a mountain lake, visiting my uncle’s home. Multiple times she would say something about “lake people” (people who live in homes by a lake), telling me how lake people behave, lake people do this or that. She recently married a man who had a family cottage by an upstate NY lake and they spent summer weekends there. Therefore she was in the “in” crowd of lake people, and being “in the know” she now could instruct me in how lake people behave.

I grew up learning to swim at this mountain lake, learning to canoe there, spent many many days on the dock letting fish nibble my toes, of learning how to use a snorkle and flippers, and visiting my “aunt and uncle” who were not my aunt and uncle at all but were such close friends of the family that I was about 12 years old before I understood the titles of “aunt” and “uncle” were honorary. Never once did I feel the need to define “lake people” as a special class or make sure I added myself to that category. I don’t pay attention to social class.

She had told me that she essentially bullied her husband into marrying her. He agreed to under ultimatum. Either marry her or she was moving out. He acquiesced. She bragged about it to me. Red Flag. My partner and I are together out of mutual respect, not any coercion or ultimatum.

She told me that while still with her ex, one night he got violet in the home. I can’t remember if he hit her or only if he damaged property. She told me she made him sign a confession for all he did in that incident. She also told me she once struck him hard right across the face with her fist and knocked him to the ground. She didn’t tell me she signed any confession later. Double standard. Red Flag.

I lost count of the times she told me how her weight was once up to 180 lbs and how horrible that was and expected me to chime in with a “poor poor you” note (and I guess I was expected to give some complimentary commentary on her body image now). I did not. I stood quietly each time…. all 182 lbs of me. I should have spoken up for myself. I did not. Shame on me. She had no sense that saying this to me was inappropriate. Red Flag. Shame on her.

It was clear anytime we drove through neighborhoods she was keenly aware of all the homes she felt were better than hers. She had ambitions to ultimately get to this or that neighborhood. This was far more a driving force in her than I understood until the end. It was an obsession. That she would rant that she could not live in the house she was in because her husband had lived there with his ex, this was so disingenuous. It was just an excuse to feed her “need bigger, need better” illness that drives her in most thing. Her two story home, with a garage and pool in the back yard in a fine neighborhood was not good enough for her, even though it was better than anything she had ever had before. She expected me to join in the “poor you” mantra she had worked up for herself. I refused. I lost track of the number of times she would say, “every women I have talked to agrees that I cannot be expected to live in a home where my husband’s ex once lived.” I had to say, you either are denying my womanhood, or you no longer can make that statement - because I disagree.

So many people have so little. I do not have a home. And yet she, not being born in high society, felt perfectly fine complaining in front of me that all her new found riches were not good enough. She told me exactly how much money her husband makes. Red Flag. No one else in my life discusses salary. Its rude to do so. But for her, she has her eyes focused on that money. I am sure that if her husband didn’t have such a good paying job, she would not have moved in with him.

The toxicity of being around her was eating me but I didn’t realize it for a long time. She is the only friend I ever had that managed to make me feel poor and ugly. That’s how out of balance I became.

Finally it all became too much and I called her on all of it. I am not at all proud of how angry I became. I am sure she felt completely blindsided. She has built a world where she is the center and no one tells her she is wrong, and I came along and told her she was wrong. The incessant discussion of needing a better home, of social climbing, of her weight, of trying to carve out a more “perfect” body, of needing to always be the center of attention….. it was all too much.

Judi has said to me that it was not inherently bad of me to want to believe in the good in a person. And I do believe there is a good person inside of my (ex)friend. However she isn’t doing anything to nurture that good person. She has instead taken on the values of, what I can only assume, are the women that visit her high-end salon. She has a need to be the big fish in the small pond.

I had made too many excuses for the bad behaviors. This is what I need to understand in myself – why did I do this and how can I avoid doing this again? Why did I not listen to my wiser self?

Why did I do this? My need, or maybe my hope, to be less on the outside of life, and to instead be more connected, to believe that maybe I have enough value that someone (in addition to my partner) actually sees value in me, actually likes me for me, that I am not so much an outcast but rather just another person worthy of consideration – this need I think blinded me to too much. I wanted to hope the friendship was real. I wanted to believe in it very much.

That she never once lifted on finger to fix any issues that came up in our friendship is the tell-tale sign that the friendship was never real. “Her way or no way” is not the basis of a friendship. I don’t know what it was. I don’t know what she thought she was going to get from me. I don’t know at all what her motives were. I had nothing to offer that would advance her in any way that she valued. I only had friendship to offer. I was not good enough.

I think for now, my best plan is to simply come to some sense of peace with being the outsider, the unloved one in a society I see as shallow anyway. I need to find peace with being alone and being with myself, and understand that looking for acceptance in someone else’s eyes just diminishes me.