I went to the bar last night and among the friends present was ThatFriend. Somehow or other, we fell into “our thing” and before long everyone we knew had left. As soon as we were alone, he suggested that I take a class from a program he’s involved with, I wrote it down and made a comment about how I value his opinion more than anyone else’s, so I would definitely look into it. I gave an example and somehow that devolved into a night of psychotherapy, tears and too many drinks. We seem to do this quarterly. This is obviously the abridged version of what happened over several hours, as best as I can piece together. Sometimes I had to guess a little to connect bits, some smaller things I skipped here all together (I’m not Tolstoy, after all.)
It all started with this parable: “While I was away last weekend, I saw this woman panhandling with her child asleep in her lap. It really upset me. I gave her money, because of the child, but I’m still really bothered that she had her kid on the street with her, using that baby as a tool to gain pity and get more money. BestFriend said the reason I was so upset was because I had a shit childhood and I’m just trying to save myself by saving other children, but I think that’s bullshit. And even if it’s not, who cares why I do what I do, someone does need to worry about children! And sometimes actions are far more important than motivations.”
“That’s bullshit,” he said it with a dismissive shrug, “You just said that your thoughts and feelings are meaningless. You just rationalized a beautiful, kind and giving part of yourself and made it not about you. You just said, ‘It’s not me who’s good, it’s society that needs to be good. I just happen to be here.’ and that’s crap. You are a good, kind and loving person whose thoughts and feelings matter.”
I set my jaw before taking an exasperated breath, “I didn’t say that. I said that some things need doing and motivations become unimportant in the big picture. This isn’t about me. It’s about the children. You are not my therapist.”
“No, I’m not your therapist, but that doesn’t mean you’re bullshitting yourself right now and trying to bullshit me. This is a perfect example of why I think you should take that class, it will make you more aware of this kind of thing. You’re a smart woman, and you’re strong enough to be able to handle it. You’re like me in that you like to hear everything straight, even when it’s shitty. You can handle the discomfort, and you’ll understand why it had to be so uncomfortable.”
I laughed and shook my head, “Yeah, I’m pretty good at being uncomfortable. I can wallow in my own discomfort for years if it keeps someone else from having to deal with discomfort of their own. Look at my relationship with you! Hell, look at my relationship with Friend-Who-Has-a-Crush-on-Me.”
His eyes flared, “Eat a dick! This—”
I cut him off with a laugh, hating where this was going, “I have had plenty of dick in my mouth, sir, yours included!”
He rolled his eyes impatiently, the man never goes for my distractions. “Yes, you have, and it was very pleasant, but you’re deflecting. This isn’t about Friend-With-A-Crush! It’s about you. I need you to look me in the eye and take a deep breath, then think about responding to what we’re actually talking about.”
“Fuck you! You’re not my goddamned therapist and I don’t have to do a goddamned thing you tell me to do! Stop it!”
“I’m not your therapist! I’m not trying to be your fuckign therapist! I’m trying to be your fucking friend who fucking loves and cares about you. You know what? I’m going to go outside and get some air, I’m going to leave you here to think about this and I might come back to check on you in a little bit. Maybe.”
He stormed out. It was just about the most cruel thing he could have done to me. I have a horrible fear of being abandoned- especially where he’s concerned because he has wordlessly abandoned me in strange bars all on my own. The last time he did it was the cause of one of the biggest blow-ups in my entire life, he swore he would never do it again, and he hasn’t. When he stormed out, I covered my face with about 2 dozen bar napkins and took a deep breath, trying to keep calm. Part of me seriously considered storming out of the bar myself and going home, but I was far too afraid of hurting our friendship. Instead, I ordered another drink, tried to breathe and hoped he would come back, I even texted him asking for him to come back. It must have been 15 minutes before he actually did.
“You’re right,” I sighed in defeat, “Thank you. You know, it’s amazing we’re friends, that I still have you and that you’ve literally changed my entire life in such big ways. I’m glad I have you.”
“I don’t think it’s shocking at all, I think that statement says something about the way you feel about yourself and some preconceived notion of what friends are and where they come from.”
“Oh come on. You and I are friends because I laid eyes on you and thought you were the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. I just wanted to fuck you. We’re friends because I thought you were sexy as hell, and that’s not how most people make friends- trust me, I have always had loads of friends and as many lovers as I wanted, the two things are completely different.”
“Yeeeaahh,” he nodded, “but I always had a hard time making friends while sex was easy for me. So I used sex as a springboard into intimacy. If I could have sex with someone, I could usually get them talking and foster a more intimate relationship with them. You might have worked in the opposite way, but I still managed to end up your friend.”
“So you’re saying you tricked me? You sneaky bastard. I don’t have intimate relationships, I have you. I always used sex to prevent intimacy, I have no idea how you got past that barrier. Whatever, I’m glad you did. I just wish I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you in the process, but it’s no wonder I did. Good lord, do you realize you are the only love I have ever known? All that pain for all those years. Talk about discomfort! Fucking years of me trying to wait out that goddamned lovey schmoop-tastic bullshit, knowing that it wouldn’t be reciprocated and that even if it was, it wouldn’t work in a way that was worth risking my friendship with you. All those years of fucking agony, and let’s not leave room for doubt there, it was goddamned agony. And it was all because you tricked me into feeling something I had no other way to interpret.” I laughed bitterly, eyes filling with tears, “And even when I did send that email and threw my chips down, laid my emotions bare, you never even read it.”
“Yes I did. I just didn’t know how to respond. If I got something like that now I’d be better equipped to handle it.”
“Oh you responded. You responded with something that might as well said ‘Well that’s nice. Sucks to be you, though, unrequited love is shitty.’ It felt like you didn’t hear anything I’d said at all.”
“Is that what I said, or was that your interpretation?”
“Absolutely my interpretation, but it’s hard to not interpret a one sentence response to pages worth of my raw emotions.”
“I have a pretty good memory, I seem to remember most of that email being about how you thought I would respond and less about how you felt. And we talked about it that one time, I tried to explain how my response was filtered through the WASPy culture I grew up in, you said that made sense after knowing ExHusband and his family.”
The room tilted. “What?”
He looked concerned. “Remember..? We were at Bar-We-Never-Go-To and we talked about it..?”
I’d been tearing up on and off for a long time, we’d even moved across the bar so that I didn’t feel so on display, but when this happened, I burst into tears, barely able to get out enough words to explain it wasn’t him causing the tears and that I needed a moment before I ran to the bathroom and calmed my sobbing. When i came back, I explained: “I’ve been noticing for a few years now that I have some big gaping holes in my memories. And they’re not related to drinking, they’re not from nights where I was so drunk I forgot something, because when that happens, I generally have at least a spark of recognition. This is different, it’s like I have these black holes in my mind where nothing lives and I’ve looked it up, it’s the kind of thing that can be caused from head trauma. TheEx put my head through walls. My dad used to yank me off of furniture and I can’t tell you how many times my head was cracked on the floor. I’ve had a lot of abusive head trauma and it’s taken a part of me away. When I did my first degree, I had an eidetic memory, during a test I would have perfect recall of the page of the book I read something on, or what day of lecture something came from and what the professor was wearing. I was the annoying friend who remembered everything, no matter how fucked up on drugs I was. Now it’s gone.”
He had tears in his eyes, “I can see how that would be terrible. It sounds absolutely horrifying to me.”
“Let me finish. Please? You know, I didn’t take that Mensa test until after I left TheEx, so it’s not like he beat me stupid, I’m still smart. But growing up, I was smart, it was all I had, it’s always been very important to me. I had an eating disorder, I didn’t think I was pretty, I knew no one loved me, I knew my parents wished I’d die or go away forever somehow. But I was smart. And I was smart enough that I could be witty and funny and people would want to be around me for that. When I’m confronted with the loss of that, it hurts more than I can say. So that one’s not about you, it’s about a part of myself that is gone.”
We walked outside together so he could have a cigarette, holding onto eachother like lovers. His arms wrapped protectively around me, mine around him and my head on his chest. We both had tears in our eyes, he kept saying he loved me, I kept saying it back. Obviously it wasn’t romantic, but I needed it no less. Anyone watching would have thought us a couple pulling eachother through a loss of some sort
We walked to his car and I started getting defensive, though I can’t remember what it was that set me off for the life of me. I remember saying over and over “Read the email! You need to read it and know that I love you, that I loved you. You need to see that I laid myself bare- that I tore open my chest and bared my heart like one of those Sacred Heart of Catholicism sculptures. Read it.”
He kept agreeing and yelling back at me (neither of us ever raise our voices, so this is the most civil version of “yelling” you can imagine) to resend it to him and he would read it again. We started arguing in circles. He pulled up in front of my apartment and I stormed out of his car like a spurned teenager, got inside and wrote him a prologue to the “I love you” email of 2010. I called him my anti-soulmate, I wrote about why he’s a bastard and how emotions are hard for me. I wrote about how much I love him, even though I have finally accepted that it’s not romantic in nature.
He texted this morning, asked if he should read it or if since I was drinking and upset last night, that if I wanted him to read it he would, but if not, he would delete it. I re-read it and told him to delete it. In the sober light of morning, I could see that I’d been deflecting. He would point something out to me about me, and I would counter with “I loved you and you didn’t care.” Why? Because no one likes to feel cornered, and he had me cornered. I couldn’t fight him appropriately, so I aimed for a distraction. Like a child.
I grew a lot last night, even though I didn’t want to. And I’ll be changing because of that conversation for a long time coming. I love him. I hate him. But he is the only person alive who dares to challenge me, who dares to push me and call me out.
And that is the way I learn. You might remember when I was in therapy for the PTSD after TheEx and I interpreted that CEU seminar about PTSD? I learned so much more about myself and what I was going through from that than I did in actual therapy. It was like once I could understand the neurological part of it, I was able to calm down and accept the experiences for what they were. This class sounds like a great idea, it seems like it’s tailored for my way of learning.”
“So what I hear you saying is that you approach your emotions very rationally, is that right?”
“Yeah, you know that.”