The Runaway Groom

I am going home for a week in April thanks in part to a wedding that has been called off.

It's a pretty long story (that I'll try and keep short). The gist of it a few months ago my cousin informed us all via a Facebook post  that she recently met the man of her dreams (who she's only been dating 6 months) and they've decided to get married! Because you know, that's a logical thing for a middle aged woman with a teenage daughter to do.

This cousin is significantly older then me. She's actual my mom's cousin, which I guess would make her my 2nd cousin or great cousin...genealogy has never been my strong suit. We are definitely related though and as far as relatives go she is probably part of our very small inner circle of family members.

She used to babysit my brother and I often but because of the significant age gap, we never really got to know each other. But she's family so by proxy she's always been super nice and friendly. Of course a few yeas has passed since she last babysat us and now she is a single, mother with a  pre-teen daughter. They recently moved to Charleston, SC to be closer to family and honestly I don't see or talk to her much unless I am visiting family or if she comes up to New York to visit.

Needless to say, I was a little confused when I got a Facebook wedding invitation from her announcing her recent engagement and that the wedding was a couple of months away. According to my mom, she met some dude in the Army a few months ago and decided to get married as soon as possible (maybe to lock it down). My mom only knows this because my cousin has been overwhelming everyone in our immediate family about wedding plans. Not only that, but she set the wedding for an April of this year which would only leave a few months for people coming out of state to book the trip.

Despite the lack of romance in my life, I am not so hardened by the idea getting married one day. It's weird to think it and write and even say out loud, but I could see myself being someone's wife. I can see myself with a husband and couple of kids in a small house in a small town with a routine that makes me happy. There was a time when I was against the idea of marriage, because I was young and it's cool at that age to think the institution is ridiculous. And maybe it still is.

But what I understand now is that marriage only seemed ridiculous a few years ago because I assumed marriage was solely about love and I thought I would never fall in love. I still worry that I may not fall in love or I am unlovable to some grand extend. But I've come to realize that you can love someone and not marry them. You can be married and not love the person you are with. My hope is that if I do marry it's because my partner and I are able to build a marriage on love and sustainability, and that one does not outweigh the other but rather compliments it. That too me would be perfection.

Because this is my outlook on marriage, I must admit I was hella skeptical when my cousin proclaimed her undying love for her new fiance. Because surely a love purely on infatuation  cannot survive. I was also pretty annoyed that she was planning an extravagant wedding so quickly and bombarding us all with her wedding plans. My mom and I gave her the benefit of the doubt because love makes people crazy and this was her first and probably last shot at planning a wedding. The only super weird aspect of the whole thing was that no one has ever met her 'fiance'. I live too far away to ever have had the chance to meet him but my mom says until a few months ago he never existed and outside of some Facebook pictures, for all we knew he was a stranger catfishing my cousin.

A few days after sending out wedding invitations, I bought my plane ticket home for the April wedding. I assumed  I could use my vacation time to head home for a few days and then travel to Charleston with my brother and mom to attend the 'wedding of the decade". But literally after I got my plane ticket confirmation, my cousin's 'finance' announced on facebook that he was not marrying my cousin in April and that the wedding was called off indefinitely.

 I wish I was joking.

What followed was a mini war of words between my cousin and her now maybe 'ex-finance': her assuring everyone that the wedding was still going to take place while he adamantly said it wasn't. It was pretty embarrassing and as my grandma stated "my cousin sure is the talk of the town now!'. She sent everyone on Facebook an email about how it was just a simple misunderstanding (he was annoyed that she was spending all his money on the wedding while he was stationed in Hawaii) and that the wedding would take place sometime but just not in the near future.

That of course did not help me, as I  already notified my boss that I was heading home for vacation. And of course, I already purchased my plane ticket home. I am only partially upset with having to take my vacation so early and also for forking over $500. But I don't need too many excuses to go home and visit my family. My mom and I have decided to make a vacation out of the wasted week. I'll get to come home and spend some quality time with my nephew and mom. I also want to visit my alma mater and she wants to hit up some beaches in Charleston if the April weather permits.

As always I am looking forward to a break from my life. I tend to fear that I am not making the right decisions and heading home always gives me some clarity. Lately I am anxious that I have placed myself in a situation that will no doubt blow up in my face. After the big blow up with Kat, our relationship is super strained. Snow-gate 2016 seems to be a turning point in our already strained friendship and honestly I am not sure if we can work ourselves our of it.

 I went a few days without talking to her because I wanted to know if I could. In all honesty since I quit Le Sad Store, I have lost touch with a lot of people. The people I was close too all got new jobs and have embarked on a new routine that makes it hard to keep in touch. Because of this Kat, at times, feels like my only friend and it can be almost as lonely as actually being alone. I want to start meeting people and making plans for myself and figuring shit out. It is a huge risk that I am taking but I have to do it. I can't imagine the next five years consisting of Friday nights at my house watching Netflix with Kat. I would be so depressed if that were my life. I am sort of depressed now that it is my life.

So, I decided to give myself a break from Kat and  I am not going to lie it felt good reclaiming my identity. It also felt incredibly lonely but good to know that independent of our friendship, I am still an interesting, kick-ass, independent person. 

Of course Kat did not see it this way and she sent me a really passive aggressive text about how she feels like we are becoming strangers and acquaintances because she hadn't heard from me is 3 days. ????

 I am not sure I have ever had a friendship as co-dependent as this one. My mom tends to be the only person I feel the need to talk to every day. I have gone weeks, even months without talking to friends only to reach out randomly and be able to swing back into the friendship without a hitch. With Kat this is not so. She often says that our friendship is uneven and I am not sure I understand how she sees it that way. To me our friendship tends to only work if it is on her terms. She needs it to be this very co-dependent friendship where we text every day, and talk about boys and shrug off responsibilities  and individuality in lieu of us reading similar books and wearing similar clothes and having similar life paths. And if isn't exactly like this she becomes a nut case, which I only just notified.

 It is like being friends with a middle school-er and to be honest this juvenile relationship scares the shit out of and also bores me. Because I have stopped responding to how she wants me to all shit has let loose. She went from sending me panicky, needy texts to accusatory and jaded ones. We were supposed to head to the city this weekend to see a show and grab dinner for my birthday but now all of a sudden she is unsure about going because we are 'like strangers'.

I am tired. I am perplexed. Even more-so I am annoyed.

I am not sure what will happen after this hangout (if there is one) but regardless this begins a new chapter in my friendship with Kat and maybe I will be able to comprehend what the hell is going on once I am outside of the situation for a bit.

It's been such a long time since I actually gone to South Carolina for vacation that I am excited. Over the moon excited even if the reason for going is devastating for my cousin. For some reason I look forward to the sweltering heat and the southern accents and the beach. I look forward to being someone different, somewhere different that is also so distinctly home to me.

I told you I was Mean

My parents got divorced when I was three and the event never had a extreme impact on me growing up because the few memories I have of my parents marriage involve my father beating my mother regularly because among his many faults...being a terrible husband and an angry drunk is among them.

This isn't to say I don't love my dad because I do. My father is the most charismatic and charming individual you'd ever meet...until he drinks, and then he is rendered something not human...but primal and ruthless. The first memory I have is of my father striking my mother after an intense argument and seeing her body crumble from the weight of his fist against her face. She managed a few minutes later, dazed and scared, to drag my brother and I (2 years old and 4 respectively) into the bathroom, where we spent the next few minutes re-enacting the violent exchange as a game...because that's what kids do.

This perhaps is the only traumatic experience of my children that I can recall vividly. My dads anger, my moms strength hidden under a busted lip and disheveled clothes, my brother clutching her legs followed by us leaving in the middle of the night to go to my grandmothers house. We've never looked back and though my mom allowed us to have a relationship with my father, I was always afraid that the man I knew as my father had another man living inside of him who could become so unhinged that violence followed.

He never abused my brother and I in any way. He was an attentive and doting father who we saw every weekend until we moved to South Carolina. But I think we always held some resentment towards him because we knew he had an anger in him that was destructive and there was always this worry that we would inherit it.

And in some ways I think that we have...not as close to the rage that my father had but in our own distinctive way. Because I was so aware of my fathers anger I learned to bottle mine up. I protected any semblance of anger like it was a secret I could not let out. I'd keep it caged because I saw how destructive it could be and for years, I convinced myself that anger was not something I felt. But of course that's no necessarily true.

My anger is often attached to jealousy, envy and annoyance I can get easily frustrated if I feel misunderstood (literally), if someone takes my words or actions wrongly. I am short tempered when someone assigns a label on me. And I loathe repeating myself, because I am so attentive to everyone words, I can get easily upset if I think I am not being heard.

I did not experience complete and utter anger until Sean came around. That boy made me angry. He still makes me angry. He was dismissive and aloof  and constantly made me compete for his affections. He was also a liar and I was often confused by the differences in our alternating narrative. He told me that I was never good enough (but I was), he showed me that I was not good enough (but I am)  and I acted out often in anger as a result of the constant discord.

With Sean out of the picture, my anger has subsided a lot this past year. I still get pretty upset over things, like any other human being, but no to the extent where I am filled with a rage that makes me want to seek and destroy.

Until this past Friday.

Kat and I got into another argument this weekend and I wonder if she is taking notes of the discord between us as much as I am. Kat and bonded over our shared attraction to unattainable boys. At the time of our friendship she was developing feelings for the married preacher at work and of course I was head over heels for Sean. Outside of this journal, Kat was my only confidant about the Sean drama and I was her confidant regarding the preacher. We actually had a lot of fun surrounding our shared infidelities and we bonded over the big secrets in our life.

Unfortunately, now that the boy drama has come to a halt Kat and I seem to have lost our ability to connect. Not on all levels of course, but on some. Now that the curtain has been lifted, we suddenly have to learn how to be friends without this drama bonding us. And honestly I am not adapting to this well because Kat without boy drama tends to be a more depressed, negative version of herself.

She got a new job about two years ago and every day complains about this new job because she doesn't like who she works with because they are old Additionally, she doesn't have fun at her job like she did at the bookstore and wishes she worked with people who remind her how cool and attractive she is.About a year an a half ago we started hanging out out after work on Fridays at my house to watch movies and eat snacks. While the majority of our hangouts are okay, we often spend the 2 hours or so talking about how miserable she is.

She has a tendency of resting her whole self worth on the people around her and if you aren't constantly telling her how great she is she becomes despondent. She'll cry and throw a mini fit and then become emotionally needy until you console her. An example of this is Halloween day. We were supposed to go to the Halloween parade in the city and at the last minute she texted me and said she felt ugly and fat in her costume and was crying too hysterically to get dressed and go because she didn't feel she looked hot.

At the time, I was sitting on my couch in my outfit, waiting for her and her boyfriend to pick me up and I became frustrated that she was pulling this shit a half hour before she was scheduled to get me. But she wanted me to console her, to tell her she was gorgeous, to give her an alternative plan to her costume failure, to hold her hand so she would feel better about her weight and the costume. But I couldn't because I was in no mood to do this. And I told her so. But not so nicely.

Then of course the shenanigans around Christmas happened and I was damn near close to throwing in the towel because of her inability to give me space and because I felt like she was robbing me of my identity.

The last few weeks I've been trying to be more patient with Kat, because when she is in a good healthy place she can be a truly great friend. But her natural state these last few months have been super depressed, down in the dumps and needy that I don't know how to handle her. I am all about supporting my friends when they need me but Kat's malaise is an infectious disease...and when she is in pain, she wants everyone around her to be in the same dark place.

But I don't want to be in a dark sad place. I am trying to be happy or as close to happy as I can manage. Things are not great in my life but they are good. I love my home, I am making money, I have dreams and ideas. I have this tiny bit of hope and insight that things are going to be okay. I am not sure why I know this but I just know. And the only time I feel unsure and unhappy is when Kat is around to bring me down.

Lately, I  much rather spend time away with her when she is like this because she is becoming a weight. We are on two different trajectories in life, one where I am trying to figure out who I am and what I want and make those wants tangible...while Kat is indecisive and negative and depressed about everything. She'll play devils advocate regarding everything to the point where her opinions are ignorant  and often very wrong. She'll complain about people posting too much on social media and then spend the weekend updating excerpts from her weekend. She'll complain that public shamming is awful and then record two people in line having a vapid conversation. During the blizzard she was upset that people were at the supermarket shopping because 'we go shopping every week...not just during a blizzard".

And while these are all very minuet things to be annoyed by.. I can't help but be peeved by her constant and negative observations and outlook on life. It crawls under my skin and makes me defensive. It's like hanging around a constant Debbie downer or pointer outer of bad things.It's like being friends with someone whose glass is always half empty while yours is half full. 

Because I am beginning to feel fed up, I've been pretty short and argumentative with her in hopes that she'll see that she is bringing me down with her. I am a calm, rationale person until I am pushed into a corner and then I am filled with so much frustration it turns into anger, and that anger scares me.

This Friday we were scheduled to hang out again despite the fact that I wanted to cancel because she'd been texting me the whole week about how depressed and sick she's been but  I decided to follow through with plans unless she said otherwise. Friday morning, I was shocked to wake up to a bunch of snow and debated calling out because my commute is pretty brutal and it was a Friday. But I decided against it because while a lot of snow had fallen it was light, fluffy snow and expected to stop around noon. Plus. I wanted to save my snow day for more imminent weather.

As expected the commute was shitty. I had to take two buses, walk a few blocks to my job and got to work all gross and wet and cold. Surprisingly everyone showed up on time, with only a few people coming in to work in the afternoon after the snow stopped. As soon as I get to my desk, Kat texts me and asks how the roads were in my town. I tell her that the roads were terrible and that nothing was paved but that I went to work anyway because the snow was supposed to stop around noon and I saw no reason to call out.

She then  admits, quite proudly, that she called out of work because she didn't feel like driving in the snow and she wanted to take it easy because she hadn't been feeling well anyway. I was a little annoyed by her excuse and didn't understand why she was gloating and i told her I thought it was a little silly not to go in, especially because her reasoning behind getting a new car was so she could drive safely in the snow.

She gets mad defensive and starts listing additional reasons why she couldn't go in to work.
I tell her I don't care but because it's Friday I guess we'll reschedule due to her not feeling well and skipping work. And this my friends is where shit hit the fan. She tells me that she plans on still hanging out at my house, despite her reasoning for not wanting to go in to work. When I call her out on the discrepancy, she tells me she doesn't have to explain herself to me and that we are hanging out regardless.She'll meet me at my house after work.

Excuse me? Asaywhat?  Are you fucking crazy?

I was instantly filled with rage, a rage I have not felt for a very very very long time. A rage for once that may or may not have surpassed any rage I have ever felt towards Sean.  It happened so quickly, I had to look around my desk to make sure I hadn't growled in fury and disrupted the calm of my office. I kept re-reading the text to make sure I saw her words correctly. I then had to clutch my phone to prevent me from propelling it out  the window or worse. Even now, I am angry at the tone,  at the assumption that she could impose herself on my house and my time because she wanted to. That she used "i don't have to explain myself you" lingo like an annoying teenager when it is my house we always hang out at. I was pissed that she'd given me another example of how things are never completely mine..but hers as well, even if I did not give her permission.

For the life of me I could not imagine leaving work on Friday, taking the bus home only to have Kat waiting for me door (in her pj's and  her own food) to let her in because it is what SHE wanted to do ESPECIALLY after calling out of work for the day. She may not have to explain herself to me when it comes to the small stuff but when it comes to invading my space she does. Especially after she spent the better half of our conversation telling me she was too sick to go to work or too anxious to drive in the snow. Would she not be too sick after work...would she not still be anxious to drive in the snow.

 I was too through with her after this text and because I was angry, I did not mince words when I responded. My anger may not manifest physically but my words are sharp and I have had a tendency of lashing out verbally when, once again, I am pushed in a corner.And because everything has been so pent up lately with her, I was sort of indignant and furious with her. And I let her know this, not so nicely, to the point where she back-peddled and said I had misread her words and she didn't mean what she wrote and that i took it out of context. Followed by...'So are we still hanging out".

It took me a couple of hours to calm down. The intensity of the anger freaked me out. For a brief moment, I was full aware that I am my fathers daughter. That anger is a much a part of my life as the good parts. And it freaks me out. That I couldn't control it despite how badly I wanted to.

Of course Kat and I have not talked since Friday (and no, we did not hang out either) but  I am trying to figure out how to move forward. A part of me wants to have a long talk with her and tell her everything that is bothering me. But i don't want to hurt her feelings, I don't want to push her too far that she breaks and I also don't want to make it seem like the discord is all her fault. Because it's not, a lot of it has to do with me. I am growing up and wanting different things and I want to surround myself with people who bring out the best in me. And while I am not saying I don't want to be her friend anymore,  I am not sure I like how draining our friendship is. And I just need something to change.