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.
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