Toxic Friendshipssssssss
Why, tell me. Whyyyyyyyy did I spend so much of my time talking about the pain that the whole Joel series in my life was, but I never wrote about how I felt about the shit that went down between me and Amanda Spendlove?
Like.
Amanda Spendlove was Stephanie Bedford-level trauma. I don’t remember anyone from my childhood by name. Except for Megan but I met her again in high school and it was great because she was a complete sweetheart. Anyway, I can’t really name my friends from Elementary school, but I can name Stephanie Bedford because of how she affected me years later. I mean if anything she showed me what it was like to have an frenemy. (Wow that just got autocorrected that’s beautiful.) BUT ANYWAY.
Amanda Spendlove is someone who affected me on that level. Or rather, someone whom I got upset over. (The framing of someone upset me vs. I got upset is an important distinction it make, it signifies ownership.) (Oh shit so I had to change that to “whom” because I’m typing and I’m a dang nerd BUT it shows how language can change the way that you think. Because we have a tendency in modern dialects to say [blank] upset me, rather that I’m upset by [blank], it implies that we do not own our emotions but that the happen to us and are uncontrollable. It is SO important to teach students to saw “I’m [emotion] because…” And to specifically speak that way about emotions as much as possible.)
OKAY WHATEVER INTERESTING DIGRESSION ABOUT LANGUAGE ASIDE.
I felt terrible about all of the things that happened with Amanda Spendlove. I felt hurt and I felt the aftershocks of the way that she tried to own things that weren’t able to be owned.
I definitely fed into the competitive nature of our friendship, I won’t deny my part in it, but I do feel that it was started by a specific jealousy on her part. I didn’t care when people compared us, or lumped us together, because it didn’t matter to me. I didn’t and I still try and actively work on not comparing myself to others. Because I know that life is like swimming. And not swimming in a race, really. Swimming in a practice race. You care about improving your own time. When I won a race at IFC? ICFs? (Whatever) I was not completely overjoyed by my coming in first (okay, I was, we can’t deny that), but I was honestly so happy to have improved my time so drastically. I remember, in my happiness, I thanked the girl who was riiiiiight next to me for pushing me, because she motivated me to dig deeper, to get a better time. (This memory might also be of a meet, rather than that big competition because I think I was in the middle and for the competition I was on the end and I was an upset win.) Point being, that’s how competition can be helpful to your improvement. That’s healthy. It’s not resenting the other person for doing better than you, it’s being inspired by the other person.
I can’t speak for Amanda Spendlove’s emotions. Because I don’t know them necessarily. I can only speak for mine, and my experience. And my experience was feeling uncomfortable, feeling like I wasn’t enough, feeling like I was always fighting. I know she had done emotional labor for me, she listened to my problems, she talked me through so much. And I know I didn’t give her much love in return, at least not from her point of view. Especially as I got busier, I didn’t spend much time with her. I definitely didn’t reach out near the end. I made that one invitation at the end and when it didn’t work out I retreated. I didn’t feel comfortable bringing up what had upset me, not in talking. I definitely just talked to other people about it, which didn’t do the relationship ANY good. If anything it hurt the relationship.
I wanted to make those gems for her, I even did a bit of work, I got all the supplies and then I didn’t finish them because my first attempt didn’t work out. (An example of how I need to work on my grit.)
I hurt at the end. Ached. I still do, even. Writing these words is honestly pretty wrenching right now. I’m really only keeping my shit together because I’m in a classroom and I’m in my professional kid clothes.
I want her to be happy, I want her to be well.
I was invited to a party by her, definitely after the fact. Because Victor saw an invitation and I checked and I didn’t get one and then later I got one. It was at night, I was doing homework and I looked at facebook, wishing to find dopamine in the form of notifications. I groaned. Loudly. I was frustrated by that having to come up in my brain. I was exhausted, entirely, because of that whole 4-7 hours of sleep divided by 72 hours thing (a binger of bad decisions and frantic inability to get to work started in earnest).
I think I’m happy that she’s reaching out, I think I might. Maybe. Want to mend things with her.
I need to talk to Barbara about it.
When do you know you’re ready to heal a relationship? Especially one that got so toxic?