(no subject)
Andrea was one of my very best friends from the day we met in elementary school until about the middle of our junior year of high school. We shared absolutely everything from lunches, to crash diet attempts (they were all short lived and utter failures), to major crushes. Unfortunately, during that last year, one of our mutual friends had a huge mental breakdown and was hospitalized. Not long afterward, both Andrea and I began losing what little sanity we had left. She was worse than me by any stretch of the imagination - I broke down and went to counceling while she stayed home and continued to hallucinate, attempt to overdose, and riddle her body with cuts and stab wounds for weeks on end.
When she came into school one day with a large burn on the inside of her left arm, I confronted her. She said she had told her mom that she burned her arm on the stove, when she had actually taken her aunt's curling iron to herself. She confessed that she did it to stop bleeding from a self-inflicted wound because she panicked at the thought of actually dying. I told her that if she didn't talk to her mother that night, I would. I got a very tearful call that night from her mother, thanking me for saving her daughter's life. Andrea was subsequently hospitalized and medicated for the various mental conditions that plagued her.
While our mutual friend and I both wound up succeeding fairly well with our treatments (both of us needed more later, but at least we were in some semblance of control), things only got worse for Andrea. She came out of the hospital with more problems than when she went in.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, the Andrea that I knew and loved died. She was replaced with a kleptomaniac, nymphomaniac, pathological liar. She invented new symptoms to get new drugs. She stole her aunt's pain and cancer medications. She stole from just about every store she entered. She slept around. Yet none of this really affected me, personally, so I let it all slide. It took almost two years for me to finally get dragged down by her behaviour. She would start alternating between ignoring me completely and begging me to visit her. She shared wild yarns about my friends, and did the same to me when I wasn't around. I held on to her for far too long, praying that my beloved Andrea would come back and that the new "Andi" would go away. That didn't happen.
Then there was Douchebag. Tommy was the love of my life. We had known each other for only two months when we started dating, but the concept of marriage came up right away. Of course, our religious views didn't exactly mesh. The whole Catholic vs. Wiccan thing tended to throw a monkey wrench into our delirious joy. Then again, so did my refusal to watch Harry Potter (because I don't fucking like it). He argued that since he had watched LotR even though he didn't like it, I should watch HP. We had all kinds of petty arguments like that, but I didn't really care, and he didn't seem to either. It was just part of us. We would get furiously angry with each other, then have the "I love you, sweetie" talk. (Sidenote: don't anyone call me sweetie if you want your jugular to remain intact.)
His mother hated me, too. But what can you expect? She was so incredibly Catholic that she went to confession more than once a week, every week, no matter what. She called me a "godless heathen" (which is quite the oxymoron) and was effectively the hammer that drove the nail into the coffin.
Douchebag dumped me the day before finals, my first semester of my freshman year of college.
For some ungodly reason, I wanted to remain friends.
We had one night the next summer where I made the mistake of saying that I wanted the last kiss that I was denied. He continued it. That night, I wound up off the road because one of my tires blew out. While I was panicking, he called. I told him that I couldn't talk - I'd just gone off the road, and I didn't know how many of my tires were still intact, if any. (3 were.) He insisted upon telling me that he thought that night was a mistake and that nothing like that should ever happen again.
After many long months of me trying to get it through his thick skull that his lack of consideration and ability to treat me like a human made me intensely dislike him, I finally made him understand. I think the threats of actual homicide (including where he could be buried and never found) that last time actually got to him. I agree, I was the moron again in this one. Stupid "last kiss" bullshit.
And I certainly can't forget Jenn...
I met her through my brother. She was fun! She had oodles of money, so if her parents were at their "usual" house, we could go to the "other" house, and vice-versa. She and her boyfriend were great fun, and the two of them joined with my brother and another friend to play Shadowrun in Eddie's basement. Well, she was loud, and obnoxious, and got me into trouble various times because she wouldn't shut her damn yap...but she was so much fun to be around. She was always goofy, never really afraid to do what she wanted or be herself, and really new how to make a party interesting.
Like the fireworks the night of the Battle of the Sexes. Don't ask. It wasn't pretty.
Through all of the boyfriend stupidity, the England stupidity, and the loss of my dear friend Dave to the dark side (another long story), we kept in touch and remained close friends. She even became friends with my brother's then-girlfriend/fiancee/cheating whore. When that relationship dissolved due to the almost-definite cheating on my brother, as well as the absolutely-definite blatant bitchtacularness and mockery, things got squiffy. See, cheating whore was very much like me, except with fewer brain cells, morals, and reasons to be 500 miles away. Obviously, Jenn wanted to be friends with both of us...
But CH hadn't told her exactly what happened between her and Rob, so Jenn begged me for information. I told her what I knew (which wasn't everything, as I hadn't managed to drag it all out of Rob yet), and then proceeded to vent. Anyone would. Some bitch just broke your brother's heart, treated him like a meal ticket and slave, and all signs pointed to her cheating on him. Of course I was furious! I vented. I said very angry things, which were all said with the understanding that I was venting and that it was private.
Three days later I had to contend with CH being a complete ranting, raving, raging, psychotic bitch who refused to listen to reason. Two hours later, I finally got her to get frustrated and fuck off. (Being extremely nice and calm with someone who is trying to start a bitchfight really takes the wind out of their sails.)
Needless to say, I confronted Jenn about this, and she had absolutely nothing to say in her own defense. Yes, I had stayed in this friendship for far too long (it should have been over after the whole "Dave and Crystal hate my boyfriend" fiasco...), but I got out of that one before it got to the devastation phase.
But now it's happening again. I'm in another toxic relationship, and I'm being worn down. It sucks that I can't even trust one of my closest friends to treat me with basic respect. We're not talking saying please and thank you here, either. I mean, I'm being treated like a doormat, and Kitty doesn't like being treated like a doormat. I refuse to be the only one putting in any effort. Things have been going downhill very quickly in the past few months. I went from being confidante and partner in crime to being just another person that this "friend" can't be bothered with. Everything I do is completely overlooked, and if it isn't, it's treated like a nuisance.
I can't do it again. I've been dragged through the dirt more times than I care to recount, and certainly more times than I have recounted. I won't go back to that feeling. I've done everything in my power to keep this relationship a healthy one, and it hasn't done a damn bit of good. We'll scream at each other and get to a level that feels right, but within a week, I feel like I'm right back to being the crappy carnival goldfish. You can't bring yourself to kill it, but you also can't be bothered to feed it more than once every couple of weeks.
So that's it. I'm through with all of the attempted repairs. You can keep adding plugs to a leaking boat, but at a certain point, you have to realize that there's more cork left than wood, and then you have to abandon ship. This relation"ship" is sinking fast, and for once in my life, I'm going to get out now. I'm not going down with this one.
I'm sorry.