The Art of Disappearing

I am incredibly good at disappearing. I have always been good at this.

A lot of it probably has to do with my size. I am tiny, like Olympic gymnast tiny. My vertical challenge is also compounded with my often slender or svelte frame. This was not always the case of course. Much of high school and college was spent feeling awkward in my soft/round frame. I was adorable and cuddly like a stuffed animal but even still I hate looking at pictures of myself from those years because of my roundness.

Living in New York is the diet I currently live by. I walk a lot because I don't have a car and I've always eaten like a bird so when I first moved up here I lost so much weight I hardly recognized myself. While my weight fluctuates like any normal human being, I am comfortably small which makes it easy to disappear/ slip through things / escape quickly without anyone noticing.

My skill also has a lot to do with my personality. I can be secretive, often evasive and distant. Outside of this blog, I don't like talking about myself. I only like to offer up enough information so people get a general sense of who I am without knowing the whole story. I save being open, honest and fully present to a very small handful of people. I am not sure why this is either. I don't think I will ever understand why.

The point is when I make a decision to remove myself from a situation or person, I do so as soon as my mind is officially made up. I disappear. I slip away. I make myself as unavailable as possible because it's the only way I know how. There are few to no take backs in my very complicated book and world view. I mean obviously this is harder to apply in certain situations. It took me forever to decided to move on from Sean and even then it was a hesitant and slow disappearing act. But when it comes down to it the moment I hit my breaking point, I remove myself completely and swiftly. It's the only way I've know how.

I bring this up because I recently decided to end my friendship with Kat and in doing so have completely and utterly removed myself from her life. I have chosen to disappear and no longer be friends: a decision that did not arise overnight. My blogging has been very spotty these last few years and there are gaps that I have not had the time to fill in properly. Despite my overall closeness to Kat, my friendship  has been a downward spiral for little over a year and this decision was one that evolved and came into affect over months of deciding.

My relationship with Kat is murky and it would take several posts to summarize the last few years of it. What I will say is that we bonded at a time when i was desperately in need of a friend. We were friends long before Marie died but in a lot of ways after she passed Kat and I's relationship became stronger. I needed and wanted a close friend to remind me that I could connect and be engaged with another human being again and Kat was always willing to provide that. Of course when the boy stuff happened we only had each other to confide in and we become inseparable due to shared suffering.

But there is something about having an inseparable friend when you're 12 years old and when you are 30 years old. Our closeness began to wear thin pretty quickly because she expected more out of our friendship that i was willing to give. She wanted to hang out all the time, I had to text her everyday or she would feel slighted. If I made plans with other people she would openly express jealousy. If I made plans to do something by myself she would openly express annoyance that I did not include her.

Though the behavior was odd, I sort of just let it go because who doesn't want a friend that  is your right hand man. Who doesn't want to have a person in your life that you know is always available to go to the movies or museums with. I've had the most fun with Kat during my time in New York. Most of our outings were effortless and fun because wherever we went we'd spend most of it talking about things that we were both interested in: books, arts, boys, pop culture. We could turn outings to the city into night long adventures which usually ended with us laughing until our stomachs hurt. Or we could have a chill hang out at my place watching Gilmore Girls and contemplating our place in the world.

But while I valued our closeness, moving to a new town and in a new apartment created this fierce independence I didn't know I possessed. I began healing and thriving independent of our friendship that gave me a renewed sense of...productivity. Though I still loved hanging out with Kat, I quickly grew tired of our routine because I wanted to try new things and meet new people. She expected us to hang out every Friday in my apartment for hours watching TV followed by solidified plans of hanging out on the weekend. She'd get annoyed if I had something going on that would prevent us from hanging out during the week and this made me feel like she was preventing me from becoming whatever person I am trying to become.

It became overwhelming during the holidays when she expected us to spend Christmas Eve together opening presents and watching Christmas movies at my apartment. I expressed my disinterest in participating in that activity for several reasons and her response to this was very immature: why don't you want to spend the day opening presents, why can't i hang out at your house, why are you being so mean I just want to hang out, followed by catty like behavior for the next few weeks until I finally conceded and we spent an afternoon opening our presents in front of each other. Like children

I guess where the shift began was Kat's all consuming need for me to make her my #1 priority. Every decision I made had to indirectly affect her. Eventually every decision she made was directly related to one's i made. Soon after moving to my adorable town she announced that she'd like to move there also and get an apartment down the street from me so she could drop by my house whenever. At first I thought this was a joke but a few weeks later she admitted she found an apartment 3 blocks from my house that she wished she could move into. Luckily it sold before she could even ask to see the place. 

THEN I told her about my interest in getting a car and based on that discussion she went out that weekend and leased a 2016 Subaru Legacy because "if you deserve a car, I deserve one too". THEN she ask if my job was hiring because she thought it would be cool if we worked together again. THEN when i told her I was going to take my mom to Washington D.C, she booked a trip a few weeks later and stayed at the same hotel I booked with my family.

I know these seems like very minor similarities but jebsus meffing fiest! I felt like I was living the plot of Single White Female, except with someone I've been super close to for the past 5 years. I was always aware hat she had a habit of 'copying' out of love. If i liked something she would try her hardest to like it as well, in some attempt to relate to me BUT i am not the kind of person who likes that attention and  never found it flattering. Instead I resented her and what I perceived as a blatant overstep in our friendship.

In many ways I felt like her copying allowed her to take credit for ideas or achievements that were never her own but that she was getting validation for. And it annoyed the crap out of me. She would tell me that she only got her car because I inspired her to get it and then she accidentally sent me a text meant for another person where she talked about her new adult purchase that she made all by herself. The fact was that I knew Kat  as a person who couldn't make any decision without the approval of someone around her was greatly different from the person she presented to the world. The person she presented to the world very closely mirrored me and things that I did or talked about doing.

In order to prevent myself from resenting Kat I decided to distance myself a little. I started hanging out with other friends and planning activities that didn't involve her. I still put aside time to catch a movie with her every once in a while  (and Fridays for the most part resumed as normal) but I wanted to create a boundary with her where was one was lacking. Naturally she did not take this well. She thought that I didn't value our friendship and said that "people would kill to have a friendship like we do and you are outgrowing it. that's sad". Before crush boy became bye boi she was worried that he would cut into our 'us time" and got vocally upset when i wanted to reschedule plans to hang out with him.

Now, I know what you are thinking because I have thought it to but Kat has been in a serious relationship with a great guy for 10 years. They live together and have talked about low key marrying because both aren't going to just up and start dating someone else. Though Kat cheated on him twice she admitted that she would never leave him because he treats her like a fucking queen and honestly he does. But Kat is a person who likes to have the best of both worlds. I think she is used to getting undivided attention from her boyfriend that she expects this sort of end all-be all commitment from her friends and that was something I was not willing to do.

I love Kat. I think she's dope but in her mind she was okay with me just being there only for her. and no one else. If she could plan the future it would involve me remaining a dutiful, faithful friend who is always available to her when she needs me to. In doing so though, I didn't have much time to pursue my own personal interest or relationships because she demanded my attention constantly.

After several months of living like this, I completely got fed up two weeks ago when I told her I saved up enough money to finally buy a car (this is before I knew that my enough was not actually enough). I only told her this because she picks me up on Fridays for our mandatory Friday night chill-fest and I wanted to let her know that she wouldn't have to do that soon. Her response: speaking of big news, so I've decided to go to Chicago for my birthday. It was a last minute thing but you talked about how much you liked it and I figured I would like it to"

What? Asaywhat? Awhatthefuck? I don't know why I was annoyed by this announcement but on top of everything else this just seemed to be the icing.  Home girl couldn't find Chicago on a US map a few years ago and now I inspired her to go. It was at this point that I admitted to her that it makes me uncomfortable that I inspire her to do things that end up very seriously mirroring my own experiences. Despite my frustration and anger, I promise I told her this in the most polite but direct way ever. And her response "ARE YOU KIDDING ME. ARE YOU ACCUSING ME OF SINGLE WHITE FEMALING YOU. YOU KNOW WHAT I'LL CANCEL MY TRIP NOW AND RETURN MY CAR WHILE I'M AT IT"

She eventually calmed down but the fact that she herself brought up Single White Female as a reference makes me think this is not the first time someone has accused her of copying. We ended the conversation on what I thought was a good note and then proceeded to hang out as normal that Friday. A few days later I texted her about her trip to Chicago and what she wanted to do for her birthday when she returned. Her response: No. Thanks tho.

It was at that moment that my disappearing instinct kicked in and I decided enough is enough. I don't want to be her friend anymore. I don't want to know someone who cannot support my ideas and aspirations but instead robs them from me. I cannot be friends with someone who wants me to sacrifice my own happiness to cater to her own. I do not want to be friends with someone who only months ago gave me an ultimatum: be my friend like I need you to be my friend or I am done with you.

So, I made it easy for her. I disappeared. I faded. I slipped through the cracks and made a fucking break for it. I sprinted as soon as she gave me a petty window to do so and because my decision making is very absolute, I have no plans of turning back. There is so much I want to do and see. There is so much I want to accomplish and be and man o' man did it feel like she was in many ways preventing that progress. Cause progress is what I am about these days.