I've journaled and / or blogged off and on since I was a teenager which was a long time ago. I've been watching Mad Men on Netflix and the protagonist, Don Draper, has been going through an evolution of self in this last season I watched and has been writing as he goes through this experience. As I watched, I remembered the very cathartic satisfaction I get out of writing when my mind is cluttered and I feel change in my life. I'm not going to work to promote this blog but really treat it as a virtual journal. If you stumble upon it and find it a place you want to stop by, great. If no one ever reads it but I have the experience of purging my mind by journaling and it will still be a successful endeavor.
2012 was a year of great change for me mentally and emotionally. I was divorced. I begin to actively pursue a healthier lifestyle. I decided I wanted to be a newer and better version of me that I have welcomed with open arms. With all the change, I begin to see things through a new set of eyes. I grew tired of chaos and drama in my life and in the lives of those around. I developed an intolerance of people being entirely self-serving and narcissist. As the months passed in 2012, I experienced some things that made me develop an almost unrealistic aversion to events that results in drama, I easily walked away from many that continue to live in a state of chaos that is largely self-inflicted.
In the midst of letting go of this chaos, I let go of two very old and very close friendships. One of those friendships had taken a number of hits in the past year or so. Indiscretions. Drug and alcohol abuse. Holding the victim card handy to throw out to explain away her failings. Calling me in melt-down mode at any time to listen to her cry about how she had been wronged even though the wrongs were dealt by her own hand. There simply was not much more I was going to take for the sake of this "friendship" and it was faltering precariously by a thread.
The other friendship was more solid than it had been in a long time. He is currently in recovery. He has turned over a new leaf and is living a more positive life than he has ever lived. This friendship was a solid go-to person. He had always been anything but drama in for me. He was fun, he was kind, and he was solid.
These two met and not surprisingly, the most unhealthy characteristics of the two became magnetic. She even said at the onset that I would not support something between the two of them. I took them both aside and explained my concerns about pursuit of something like this and although I didn't feel like I should go out and say "I forbid this" because they are both consenting adults, I hoped their feelings about me and my warnings about the two of them would be heeded they wouldn't enter into this. Both of them elected to keep going down that road, he only received the message that I didn't want to hear about their drama, she knew from day one that pursuing this would hurt me because I would lose both of them.
There was more to it. He was a solid in my life and I knew by her getting involved, that solid would crumble. It's in her DNA to create turmoil and strife. Of course, my warnings were ignored and they proceeded down this path. She made the decision to not only pursue this, but to also hide it from me. I have always been taught that if you are hiding something, you know there is something wrong with it. Inevitably things collided and I was hurt and angry. I said things in anger in forums that were not the best and I did something I probably should've done some time ago. I walked away from the friendship with her.
Sadly, but as I predicted, the friendship with him has crumbled as well. However, I didn't predict that it would crumble because he didn't once stop to think that maybe my reaction was valid. He never considered for a moment that he viewed my reaction so extremely and that maybe there was even a little validity to my reaction. He believed completely and totally that she was simply a victim and I was attacking her based on this one event. That I think is the saddest part of all.
However, I guess if it was that easy for him to discount 20 years of friendship over a couple of months knowing her, then maybe he wasn't as good of a friend as I thought.
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