The End of an Era

Things are finally over. I have lost all respect for my "best friend" and all hope that she will ever have any clue about anything. I don't know yet what to call her here, since BFF is so far off the mark that it's ridiculous. Maybe BFNM (best friend no more - Kid-2 taught me that acronym) will work for now. "Ungrateful Bitch" is just too long to type every time. (Nor is it entirely accurate. She tried to be grateful. I simply asked more of her than she was capable of giving.)

I realized that there was no going back when I read her blog post title "Forgiveness" in which she magnanimously says she can forgive me for a host of things:

I can forgive [her] for the way she approached the situation. It was not handled as well as it could have been, by either of us. I flew off the handle and she approached it wrong. But we're all human. She probably thought to reassure me that I wasn't being kicked out but it backfired. I can only assume that but regardless, I can forgive her for communicating poorly about a difficult topic. I've been there.

I can forgive her for not spending enough time being my friend. But I don't have to open myself up to that hurt again. I can choose not to invest any more into the relationship.

I can forgive her for having a very difficult mental illness that affects her on a daily basis. But I don't need to be responsible for handling her, her family, or the household when that happens.

I can be civil to her, now that I'm not completely angry but trusting her is a different story and is what I'm battling with the most.

And now, when push comes to shove, I can forgive BFNM for this. But I cannot and will not be a part of it any longer. From the moment our relationship went beyond close friends talking online and into the realm of rescuing her from one situation after another, I have had to defend her from my friends, my family, my therapists, and my doctors. And I'm done. Sometimes it takes a harsh reality check to see what was always in front of my face. The fact is, all of those people who I swore just didn't know her like I did... they were all correct about her from the first.

From day one I have supported her. I have always had her back, no matter where that back ended up. From the moment she said she was running from her bastard ex and moving up here, I have given her my support with everything I have in me. I have given her time, energy, money, clothing, food, shelter, babysitting... anything I had to offer was hers for the taking and take she did. I have - quite literally - given her the shirt off my back. I also gave her my heart and my trust, opening up to her like I hadn't opened up to anyone since my best friend from high school and I went our separate ways. I gave her everything.

I can see now that I was rescuing, not helping. I began to see this a while ago as I began trying to set boundaries in my life. I realized specifically how last week when I was reading about the difference between rescuing and helping in my hospice volunteer training workbook. I remember being excited because I had learned a more effective way of helping.

Now it is too late. I am done helping or rescuing her. I was pleasantly surprised to find I can be perfectly cordial to her, even while fighting the urge to jump up from the floor and throttle her.

I am so angry with her right now! At the same time, I am violently angry with myself. At the hospital they always play this video tape from the 80s about co-dependence. There is a story/metaphor in it that I am going to paraphrase here:

A woman finds a venomous snake nearly frozen in the snow. Feeling sorry for it and not wanting it to die, she carefully picks it up and takes it home. She sets it on the hearth and builds a fire to warm it. She goes into the kitchen and pores the last of her milk into a bowl, which she warms and takes to the snake. Gently she spoon feeds the snake the warm milk in front of the fire and slowly the snake begins to revive.

Then the snake bites her, injecting its deadly venom into her. As she lay dying, she asks the snake, "Why? Why did you do this to me? After everything I did for you, how could you betray me this way?"

The snake looks at her coldly and replies, "You knew I was a poisonous snake when you picked me up. Why did you expect I would do anything else?"

I hear that woman and that snake as I go over and over and over this in my mind. I am so shocked and hurt and betrayed by her behavior, by her thought processes. After everything I have done for her, all the unwaivering, unconditional support I have pored into her... how could it have come to this?! And I hear the snake from the story, cold and unabashed, telling me I knew who she was from the beginning so what did I expect...

Therein lies the dual sources of anger. At her for this betrayal and at myself for rescuing instead of helping and being surprised and hurt when the bottom dropped out. The more time that passes, the more that anger points to the true culprit, me. I set this up. I asked for it. And I got what I deserved.

What if all the "helping" I have done is just rescuing and unhelpful? What if I am ruining my kids' lives as BFNM has implied throughout her blog? What if all the "good" I thought I was doing actually isn't good at all? DAMN! I don't want to be here!! I would pray for God to take me away, but He would simply laugh at me or ignore me.