Friends?

When you go through tough times, I mean heart wrenching tough times, you see who your friends really are.

I split up from my husband of over 20 years in February. It has been hard. I loved him, still do, and I thought we were happy. I thought we were happy until I found out he had a profile on a dating web site. I left him and have embarked on a new life alone. I miss him. He was my one, my person. He was the strong presence in my life to which I had anchored myself. Maybe that was too much to put onto one person, but he never seemed to mind or complain. I also don’t for one second think our life was perfect, or that I was the perfect wife. I wasn’t. I have issues just like everyone else. A lot of them stem from my first marriage to a narcissist piece of shit who thought the sun rose and set on his ass. That belief was fueled, and still is, by his mother who acts like he’s God’s gift to the universe. Anyway, I digress.

I’m living alone as an adult for the first time. When I was single before, I had my kids to take care of. They were what kept me getting out of bed every day. I had to show up for them, I did, and I didn’t mind. I’m proud of myself for doing that. I’m proud of myself for teaching them that that’s what you do when people need you.

I went to school, got my degree, and I’m a teacher now for almost 20 years. I love my job even though it’s tough and sometimes I just want to walk away and never go back. I love the people I work with also. They are good, hard-working people. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that teachers don’t work hard. We bust our asses every day to teach our students. I’m blessed to work with a group of people like that.  

Anyway, I’m going through this tough time. I cry a lot. I know that I’ll love him and miss him for the rest of my life. I left him to preserve myself, but I so wish I hadn’t had to do that. I wish I could have stayed. He was good to me. Until he wasn’t. The words here don’t do justice to the depth of feeling I have right now. It’s painful every day. He broke my heart. If you’ve experienced this, I’m sorry, truly, because it sucks. It’s a pain I carry every single day. It hurts with almost a physical pain, like someone took a sharp spike and drove it through my chest.  

I have a friend who has been going through her own private hell after the death of her husband of over 30 years. She is a much more deeply emotional person than I am. That event nearly broke her and I really felt bad for her. I don’t want to say I felt sorry for her because I didn’t. I felt sympathy for her. I hated what she was going through. I was there for her. We carpooled to work and she talked about what she was going through. We were carpooling before he died and I know how incredibly hard it was on her. Again, words don’t do justice to the difficulty of caring for him as he was dying from COPD. I was there for her as much as I could be, and I tried to give her sympathy and understanding. I know I wasn’t great at that but I tried.

Anyway, I’m going through pain now too. She has bowed out. She said she was coming over last week to stay the night with me so we could just hang out and talk. I didn’t ask her, she volunteered. She texted two days in a row, saying she forgot her stuff. The third day, I got nothing. She totally ghosted me. That hurt. I really didn’t expect her to show up by then, she’s notorious for backing out at the last minute, but I did expect to at least get a text saying she couldn’t make it. Nothing. Nada. Friday night we were supposed to meet friends for dinner and a catch up. She backed out at the last minute. Like my one friend said, why even bother to say she’s coming? She almost never does.

I finally got a text on Sunday saying she’s sorry for not being there as a friend. I didn’t answer until the next day. I was upset and I didn’t want to say something I’d be sorry for. I hate when I lose my temper. I answered back Monday evening saying I wasn’t upset about her not showing up Friday night, or even not coming over when it was her idea. I told I was upset because she ghosted me. She answered by saying she shies away from emotional things right now and that she’s going through her own stuff Ok. She’s going through her own stuff. I guess she doesn’t have room in her life for anybody else’s stuff. She didn’t acknowledge ghosting me, just made it about herself and how she’s going through stuff. Well, I don’t have the energy for her stuff. I can barely handle my stuff.

That’s what I mean about being a friend. That’s what I mean about finding out who your real friends are. Maybe I’m making this about me. Maybe I’m making a big deal out of nothing. I just thought we were friends. I guess we’re not. At least not at the level I thought.

This is just a reminder of a lesson I’ve learned throughout my life. People are never really there for you. People who claim to be your friends are only there if it benefits them and when it starts to become any kind of effort, they bail. I’ve been reminded of this over and over throughout my life and here’s another one. I’ve never really had a real friend, someone who really cares about me. Even so-called husbands have let me down.

I really believed this last time, though, in my husband. I really thought I’d found a good one. I really believed in him. I was wrong. I guess I’ll just pick up the pieces of myself and my heart and move on alone.