a couple of people have commented that i look really good. and one even said i am losing weight. that felt really really nice. i’m changing my life for myself and for my life with my daughter, but the exterior recognition shores up my self doubt that anything is outwardly changing.
inwardly the revolution is on schedule.
i had an unsettling encounter with someone i had, until two days ago, considered a reasonably good friend. grad skool is tough in the friend department: you are thrown into an extremely stressful situation and you pretty much gamble and go on chemistry to build a quick support system. i chose this guy, and i chose very badly but predictably. i am surrounded by narcissists, my mother being perhaps the most deeply affected and most important character in this particular rat trap. the result is that i am often a perfectionist, as i try desperately to get the daffodils in my life to notice me. my avatar on the forum is from this friend’s birthday actually. i rented the most amazing costume and thoroughly enjoyed myself, but it’s a good indication of the lengths to which i go for these people to love me.
about two and a half months ago i got very very very upset about my inability to write. i really needed a friend, and i called jason. he essentially blew me off, telling me i was a smart girl and that i would figure it out. it hurt, and i realized in that moment that he would never be capable of being the kind of friend i want in my life. about two weeks later, he cancelled a standing dinner date when he was already late (so i had cooked and was waiting for him to show up). he flaked out a second time, and i stopped inviting him and considered the arrangement altered. i was hurt, and felt that there were always more fun things to do than have a quiet dinner wit my daughter and me. this was mitigated by the feelings i had of his insufficiency, and over time i just let it go. in the meantime i got moving, starting eating a lot better, sleeping more and shook off (knock on wood) the heinous depression that had been fogging my life for almost two years.
this week we went for lunch. and about fifteen minutes in he starts this long drawn out “explanation” of why he pulled back from our friendship, citing feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy brought about by his own behaviours in relation to my daughter. i think he said something about feeling like his father or something…it was all in a psychoanalytic frame, but very subtly accusatory. he said that two weeks after canceling on dinner he found himself back in psychoanalysis and it wasn’t until the night before our lunch, plagued by insomnia, that he had made the connection between needing to return to therapy and his behaviour with me.
no apology for fucking me over twice. no recognition of how he might have let me down when i needed help. no recognition that his “pulling back” might have hurt me or some how affected me.
nothing.
i looked at him full in the eye and told him i had thought through my own behaviours and i had no sense that whatever had happened had anything to do with me, that i was annoyed by the cancellations and pointed out that there had been no further invitations. i did not feel upset. i was not angry. i was in utter disbelief, but i did not rush to solution mode, or caretaking mode or perfection mode. i finished my lunch and got on my bike to campus. then it hit me.
he and i are profoundly done. he will never step foot in my home again. ever. i will be collegial. professional. polite. but i will not grant him any access to any part of my heart or mind again.
and then another friend called, a much longer standing friend of the very same sort. she talked about her kids ad naseum, failed to ask about mine or me or anything else and after more than an hour sighed and said “well, i guess i should let you go.”
no dear. i guess i should let you go.
i will begin to let the relationship fade. i will slowly stop coming to her, stop being open, stop offering my bloody pitiful sacrifices for her all the time. if she stays in my life, that would be excellent. i like her a lot. but if she does not, i think it will be a healthy separation.
so this is progress. everyone in your life is there to teach you something. and i am open to what the people in my life are teaching me right now. it’s funny in a not funny way how we attract the same people into our lives over and over and over again until we recognize what kind of life we’re building for ourselves.
and my castle is plodding through a cataclysmic fucking renovation at the moment.
i’m moving like a demon. i’m resisting weightwatchers. i feel wonderful. i’m kicking my own ass. i’ll eat better/more vegetables/on plan/write it down. i will. i know what’s happening. i’ve known for 10 days. i just need to melt the mole hill. i’m eating very well, not losing it to ice cream or anything but i won’t do as i should and write and count. self destruction simmering on the back burner.
and i need to kick this fucking cold! can you believe i still have it?
i’m going to go back to student health. something’s not right. a lot of this snot’s not right 
so all in all, i’m declaring it a helluva week. peaks and valleys, furrows and mounds, skies and pits.
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