The Death of Two Friendships

As a teacher of adolescents I often end up teaching pastoral lessons about choosing healthy friendships over unhealthy ones, peer pressure and the like. However, those lessons all are so simple and black-and-white in comparison with the complexities that seem to be the reality of adult friendships. I’m not talking about the easily identifiable dysfunctional friendships. I’m speaking of the healthy ones that just seem to go wrong, have run their course and die.

I was prompted to write this blog because I’ve had two friends discuss friendship difficulties with me in the last few days. A good friend got in touch with me this morning and told me about how he had just discovered that one of his friends had been lying to him for the past six months. And another friend complained to me last week about how she feels like she is receiving a brush off from a mutual friend of ours in what seems to be an almost rude and very deliberate manner. So, in the first case the friendship ending was pretty clear-cut, but in the other case it’s a bit nebulous.

However a friendship ends, in my opinion, it’s worse than a romantic break-up. You expect friends to be there for you and stand by you a bit more than you might expect romantic relationships to…well at least I do. So, when a friendship ends that sense of betrayal and wondering if it was something you did that caused it to die is even more intense. When you realise it’s all gone wrong, how do you end a friendship?

When I have a non-responsive friend, I tend to operate on the “three strikes and you’re out” rule. I’ll make the effort to suggest we meet up and if I get no definitive response after my third attempt, I do my best to not take it personally and just stop trying. Usually said person will get in touch with me eventually and all will be well again. However, in the case of my friend who felt like she was being ignored, she has not just given our mutual friend three strikes; she has given her six. So my friend will not be contacting our mutual friend at all any more and I can’t really say that I blame her. They have had issues in the past and it’s plain that the one who is doing the ignoring has not really gotten past their prior difficulties. So, in that case it might be best to just let that friendship die a natural death. Perhaps it’s just run its course.

When you discover a friend’s been lying to you or has been dishonest in some way that is when you feel the deepest sense of betrayal. There’s nothing much to do but confront that person about what they’ve done and hope that they can offer a reasonable explanation for their behaviour. That is exactly what the first friend I mentioned had to do today. Sadly the explanation wasn’t sufficient and so now he says that friendship is over. What he went through this morning must have been awful. Then again, I hate confrontation and he’s much better at that than I am. Sometimes certain friendships need to be killed quickly and as painlessly as possible.

So perhaps those two friendships are dead, but perhaps not. There’s a great quote by Bronwyn Polson which says, “Whoever says friendship is easy has obviously never had a true friend!” Thus, I remain an eternal optimist about the immortality of friendships, because frankly true friendships are immortal. Those that aren’t true will die when their time has come in whatever manner that is. But, true friends are like the mythical phoenix. They may have their difficulties causing them to burn-up in flames but they are always reborn even more beautiful than they were before.

And it is here that I would like to say that I think I’m the luckiest woman in the world due to the true friendships I am fortunate enough to have.

Ch ch ch ch CHANGES!! (To be sung to the song of the same title by Mr Bowie)

Holy moly!

I'm moving. Actually leaving my lovely flat where I have been for 6 whole years and headed to the East End. I've been wanting to do this for years and now it's done and accomplished! After a journey of looking at houses and then deciding I should live on my own, we got the house we wanted. It also happened to be the very first one we saw. Whoop! I'll be an EastEnder in 3 weeks. Oh and ironically, the house my friend, Carolina, and I are moving to is right by a pub called The Queen Victoria. Look out Mitchells, you'll have a new punter in me.

In addition, the other night I made one of the best (but most difficult) decisions I've ever made. It started off in a rather stupid manner on my part. I picked a fight with a friend which was unjustified. He definitely did not deserve my tipsy tirade. However, it led to a conversation about why we were still friends after five years of rather complicated and sometimes dysfunctional relations. He said, "No idea, habit I guess." And that's when I knew it was finally time to call it all a day.

This isn't the first time I've tried to sever ties with him, but this time I went on to burn bridges so there would be no turning back for me. Address book->DELETE, MSN->DELETE, YAHOO Messenger->DELETE, Facebook->DELETE, LastFM->DELETE, Twitter->Stop Following, MySpace->DELETE and then I realised that I was linked up on here to both a blog where he posted a piece I'd written and a podcast I did with him. I have now unlinked those from my blog despite the fact it is my work and I should proudly show it off. Oh well. Finally, I put the nail in the coffin by posting about all this. He strongly disagrees about blogging for emotional purposes and we've had a long discussion about that in the past. If he reads this, which he may or may not do, I have no doubt that any temptation he might have had to contact me will be completely quashed.

I hold no ill will against this person. I care for him deeply and sincerely wish him well. It's just better for both of us if we're not in each other's lives any more.

Endings bring new beginnings. I'm moving to a new place. I'm meeting new people and I'm clearing out the old to make room for all this to happen.

Start out as you mean to go on

Happy New Year!

Normally at this time I reflect upon the year and what I learnt as it progressed. Instead of writing a long detailed soppy post about all I experienced this year and the knowledge gained, I'll just sum it up in a list. Major events of 2009 included the following: a break-up, finding a lump in my breast that ended up being nothing but gave me a week of grief, having a long standing debt repaid and a friendship restored, painfully discovering what I thought to be a true and lasting friendship to be a sadly superficial one, passing the Life in the UK test and being granted Indefinite Leave to Remain, Dave and May's fabulous wedding, teaching a new year-level and receiving top marks and accolades in a rather challenging course. Not all of these received blog posts, but they're worth mentioning when summing up the year as a whole.

Now a new decade has arrived and as such I believe it deserves 10 resolutions. I started to tweet them as I came up with them, but decided to just lay them out in one neat blog post rather than just tweet away. So here they are in no particular order.

1) I will take better care of my plants.
I've been a horrid plant caretaker this year and have killed two plants due to my negligence. I've been a better caretaker of plants in my past, so I will do my best to rectify that and return to my good nursing ways.

2) I will buy a new electric kettle to replace my broken one and make coffee at home instead of buying pricey lattes.
Kettle has been purchased. It's actually kind of sexy. Is it wrong for me to think of a kettle as sexy?

3) I will make more and buy less.
I mean this and have started to do so with Christmas gifts this year.

4) I will keep a tidier flat.
No explanation needed here.

5) I will set aside at least 30 minutes five times a week to write for my own purpose.
It does not necessarily follow that I'll be blogging more, but I do intend to take my writing a bit more seriously than I have done in the past.

6) I will cook more and eat out and get takeaways less.
When doing this I will endeavour to be healthy in my meal choices.

7) I will work out at least 3 times a week for one hour.
It may be going to the gym. It may be running. It may be cycling. Whatever it is, it will happen for at least an hour 3 times a week.

8) I will put less effort into obvious superficial friendships and put more effort into the real and lasting ones.
Putting it mildly it's no fun when you realise that you're in a friendship that's a one way street and you've been kind, patient and giving only to receive little back. Or, possibly you are belittled and patronised by someone you once held dear. Both of these things happened to me this year and sadly more than once. Yet, I was forgiving and opened myself up to have it happen again and again. I am fortunate to have some wonderful people as friends and I shall keep them close and treasure them. Certain others I'll just leave be and respond politely to when contacted. No use ramming my head against a wall any more, even if I was wearing a helmet.

9) I will not repeat old mistakes.
I know what I'm talking about here. That's all that matters.

10) I will set my finances in order so I can buy a place.
I hate thinking about this stuff, but I need to and I need to do it now.

So, there we go. Ten (not so) little ways which I will change. And with this blog post, I hope that I'm starting out as I mean to go on.

Now I've got some cooking and tiding up to do.

Why Blog?

A few days ago I had an interesting conversation about my blog.

Yes, you read that right. I used 'interesting' and 'my blog' in the same sentence.

This discussion about my blog began innocently over the personal postings of my blog. A friend of mine and I have spoken about my blog from time to time. He doesn't get it. He'll read it when I write a little review or something to that effect that interests him and tweet about it, but other than that he doesn't see the point. We speak on a semi-daily basis and he knows all about my life, so why read about it? Also, he is vehement disagreement of my postings about my love life and when it has gone wrong. He has reason to be in vehement disagreement. Many, many, many years ago, long before I was blogging on Blogger even, he and I were an item and it went horribly wrong. He wasn't aware of my blog and in my rage I told the world what he did and directed them in an indirect manner to his MySpace profile by giving several obvious hints. Eventually he found it, read it, and deleted me from his friends on MySpace. We had words. I changed my post and he re-added me as a friend. Ironically, this whole incident opened us up to becoming friends somehow. And, we have remained friends since.

Since then I have been honest with anyone I may date about my blog. Not that they all dash out and read it. Believe me it says a lot about how someone really feels about you if they are dating you, know you have a blog and DON'T bother to read it. I tend to get a bit reckless with my blogging in those relationships, as if I'm daring them to have a peek. However, I still don't expose confidences. I also do not name them (Well okay, when I'm REALLY angry I have, but have since removed those names). I do, however, expose my feelings and insecurities about said relationships.

So we were having the usual disagreement about my blog and he brought up some interesting points. First, he pointed out that my posting about someone else and what they've done is the same as someone taking naked pictures of me and then putting them up but with the face blacked out. I did not agree. I said my angry posts about injustices were similar to someone taking pictures of me doing something wrong to someone else and then posting pictures of it for all to see but with my face blocked out. And, if I were caught doing something like that then yes, posting pictures with my face blocked out was justified

He pointed out that instead of blogging about it I should TALK to the person. I responded that with the exception of him I have always done both. In his opinion that's just weird. Who cares? Who reads that stuff? I said it was surprising the amount of people with voyeuristic tendencies. (However, in my head I was thinking about the average amount of visits Sitemeter tells me I get a day- five. Yes, five people a day read my blog and those who are not part of 'My Stalkers' to the right find it by accident while they're searching for something else. I love Sitemeter, but I digress)

Then he pointed out that people can and do change (he did) and just because someone did me wrong when that blog post goes up, it's up there forever. What if an ex’s new girlfriend came across it and judged him based on what was there. My response to that was 1. my name isn't even on this blog or any site linking to it, so aside from my picture how would the ex's girlfriend know it was me 2. no one who has done me wrong has their name on my site (anymore). Thus it would be a bit difficult for people who didn't know me personally to make the connection and 3. if my ex's girlfriend is researching my blog to find out about him, then my ex should be more concerned about the tenuous state of their relationship or the fact that he's possibly dating an obsessive bunny boiler rather than the fact that there's something not very flattering about him up here.

Finally, my friend said something powerful that stuck with me and has bothered me since. He said that in his view my putting up private details of a relationship was unethical. He went on to add that when I posted what I posted about him it felt like an invasion of privacy and a breach of trust. He also said that in the past few years he has sometimes worried about spending time with me in case he did something to piss me off and I posted a blog about it. That hurt... a lot. I didn’t have anything to say in response but to apologise over and over for something I did years ago and got a bit teary. He told me to stop being melodramatic and it wasn’t as bad as I was making it out to be.

Maybe I've just breached his trust again by posting this but he made some very valid points about my blog and that last one followed me around like a pack of yippy dogs snapping at my ass.

I took my bitten-up butt over to some friends’ house a few days later and told them about this conversation. My friends just laughed. “I can see his point about invasion of privacy,” one of them said, “but he’s one to talk about a breach of trust after what he did to you years ago. If you have remained his friend and trusted him for this long after all of your history, then he can trust you…and does. He was just making a point and you were being melodramatic.”

“Frankly," another added, "maybe we should all be worried about being called out for treating others badly. If we all lived in fear that unkind acts towards others would be posted for all to see, maybe we’d all treat each other better.”

Somehow I don’t see my blog as some type of societal moral policeman. And, I’ve not been too nice to people myself at times. Maybe somewhere there is an anti-H~ blog.

I had a hard serious think about the reasons why I blog and came up with the following reasons:

1. I blog when I have a thought that might possibly perhaps maybe be somewhat kind of a bit profound.

2. I blog when something strikes me as funny and I want to share it.

3. I blog when I've done or seen or read something interesting (or horribly dull) and I want to review it.

4. I blog to keep peeps back in the good ol' U.S. of A. updated on what I've been up to, although I've not been too good at that lately. They can find more about what I've been doing on Facebook or Twitter than on here.

5. Finally as previously discussed, I blog as an emotional outlet in lieu of therapy. It's psychologically purging to tell the world my thoughts and fears and get anonymous support (and sometimes free advice) either through comments or emails. And let's face it, when I'm angry I want to let the whole world know. I scream it from my rooftop and then after having a friend pick me up from the police station for a noise violation, I come home and quietly blog about it. Sometimes I'm quite open and a lot of times I exaggerate. I'm talking about being angry at things in general--from current events to love life kafuffles.

But maybe I should be a bit more editorial about what I put on here about my personal life. After all isn't it kinda like throwing stones in a glass house?

Stop by in a few months and see if I've had a change of opinion about being too personal.

Oh and if you're going to go back to my old blog to try to figure out who my friend is, maybe you should think about the quality of your own life. Why is who that friend is even important? In the greater scheme of things why was writing about all of this even important?

I think I've just entered some type of blogger's existential crisis.

Songs and Emotions

A short while ago I made the very difficult decision to end a friendship, which was very unhealthy for me. Frankly, I think ending friendships is even more difficult than ending romantic relationships and this one was doubly so. This began as a romantic relationship more than 2 years ago and then transitioned into a friendship. The friendship had gone in and out of its messy points since then and, no matter what my resolve, always ended up blurring the lines between being just buddies and lovers. I finally got to a place where I realised I would never be happy with the grey area we continuously fell into. The nature of this relationship seemed to always bring out a dark and rather nasty side of me. In short, I became someone I didn’t like.

I’d been doing ok since this all ended. It was, after all, my decision and I know it was the best for me in terms of overall long-term happiness. I’ll admit there are times late at night when I miss the text messages I would receive as I drifted off to sleep, among other things. But, I’ve been very happy overall since cutting ties.

Isn’t it weird how songs can elicit emotions? I had hardly given this much thought really and then BAM! A Mazzy Star song comes on my iTunes during my prep time and I’m reduced to ball of pain and depression. I probably would have begun crying if a colleague hadn’t come in with a query about our whiteboard program. Funny thing is I had never related this song, ‘Flowers in December’, to said friendship, so I’ve no idea why it triggered the response it did.

As usual writing this has made me feel better. Nothing to do but keep moving on and so I’m back to work.

Roller Coaster

My friend Steph stopped by for a night on her way to Copenhagen. We had a lovely catch up. And, despite a comedy of errors she made it off this morning and arrived safely. She will be returning next Saturday. Yay!!!

M-'s band is playing tomorrow. I found out by the Facebook Newsfeed, not by him. We're meant to be friends, and he knows how much I want to see his band as they weren't gigging while we were together. He and I had been actually hanging out outside of work and getting on as friends quite well up until my mid-winter break, so I'm a bit bummed that he's neglected to mention this gig to me. He had plenty of opportunity to do so at work today as well, and I'll be dammed if I'm going to chase him down and bring it up. I'm convinced that this slight is girl induced, which is silly since I'd be happy if he was seeing someone. I am (well kinda-that's something I think best not to blog about) I kind of feel like smacking him upside his bald head, but it's not worth the energy it would take. Boo!!!

The ski trip was fantabulous and free! The discipline problems from students were relatively minor in comparison to the discipline problems from some adults (not associated with ACS I hasten to add) who were staying at the chalet. I will post another blog soon about parts of it complete with pictures. Yay!!!

I'm ill. It's amazing how much snot your head can hold. I am continuously blowing my nose, and it doesn't seem to make a dent. Yeah that was gross. Sorry, but it's true. Boo!!!

I do like roller coasters, but not like this.

Additional Lessons Learnt in 2007

Two final lessons...

If you are travelling on a long international flight (10 hours or so) and have your shoes off for comfort, make certain you put them back on before going to use the loo or else you will have urine smelling socks. I actually learned this over the summer, and I was halfway to the toilet on my flight to the US when I remembered. I had no problem remembering this on my flight back.

So, yes I'm back in the UK now. Tucson was great with my family although my brother couldn't be with us, and Seattle was....uh....interesting. It was good to see those I was able to see, but as usual I wasn't able to see everyone. I had a great time, don't get me wrong. However, things are no longer the same with many of my friends and will never really be again. There's a lot of hurt and anger presently. I had many heavy conversations with many people and heard many opinions about why this is the case. Despite it all there does remain a love and camaraderie among those I was able to see. And, so my final lesson in 2007...

You can never really go home again, but true friendship really will always survive any adversity.

And so I'm off to Linds's to have a quiet night in since I'm getting over my jet-lag, but at least my socks don't smell like urine.