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I'm about three days into my latest dilemma, and still no closer to a solution. Maybe something will come to me if I just spit it all out.

My ex-best-friend is pregnant (I found out back in August, I think), and is due sometime this month. Well, she's having a baby shower this Friday, and has invited me to attend.

So, what's the problem?

Here, allow me to explain why she has been given the title EX-best-friend:

Slutty and I became friends back in the eighth grade. It was a tough year for me because my best friend (a preacher's daughter) had moved away over the summer.

Actually, now that I think about it, I don't think I was really preacher-daughter's best friend (though I most certainly considered her to be mine). I think I was her pity friend--you know, the person you're nice to because...well...you're nice. PLUS, we cannot overlook that SHE was part of the "in" crowd, and I was a tag along--something I was always conscious of, so when she left, I wasn't surprised that my connection to "those" people began to dwindle rapidly.

Anyway, so I was bummed out about losing my best friend, and Slutty seemed to be a cool person. Then Slutty started becoming this...um....slutty person. She didn't start having sex (technically) until ninth grade, but once she started that was it.

Of course, me being the open-minded and overly nice person that I am, I never said anything to her--just took her where ever she wanted to go.

Yes, this was back when I was terrified of being alone...of no one liking me...or me not fitting in somewhere. I got over it, of course, but that's part of the story and will come up later.

Back to the topic...

So, for the next four years of high school (except for the one moment of sanity that lasted about six months, in which I ditched her for a REAL friend, because she screwed this guy I was totally crushing on), I was her taxi-cab. I took her everywhere, and she usually made me feel like it was "our outting" instead of me driving her to her next lay.

She lead me into situations that I should NEVER have let myself go into, and some of those still haunt me to this day. One in particular will haunt me forever, but that's beside the point. I have to take the blame for part (if not all) of everything bad that ever happened to me while I was in her company--even if I was a naive, overly-sheltered woman-child.

So anyway, sometime during that year after high school, I met this guy. And it just so happened that I met him while on a Slutty booty-call trip--I can't exactly call it a "girly night out" when Slutty was the only true "girly" present and men were usually her object of desire.

I fell in love. True, he was a complete loser (then, I don't know about now, but I'm sure some things never change) and used me very ill, but again, that's beside the point. He didn't like Slutty or any of the other chicks that hung around her. He started pointing out very obvious things about them, he'd do things to intentionally piss them off, and when I would get mad, he'd always tell me things like "don't you see that you're better than that?" or "I don't want to see you get hurt."

And wouldn't you guess it? I had to be a hot-head about it, and infer (albeit very incorrectly) that HE was trying to bust up the friendships that I had with these girls. I concluded that he was trying to control me somehow and that simply wouldn't do.

It's true, he WAS trying to control me for his own purposes, but he was taking an honest approach, at least.

And eventually, THEY (that is, the girls and my now-very-ex-boyfriend) started playing a game of tug-of-war with my mind. It began to jumble. I became confused and paranoid that everything in my life was a lie--which it was, only I didn't see it at the time. It was spinning, round and round, out of control, dizzy and twisted...so lost, so confused, do this, think that, believe this, dismiss that...

And then it STOPPED------when my grandfather died, and I got a letter on the day of his funeral saying they had discovered the early stages of cervical cancer in my test results.

I can't describe the blissful free-fall that happens when you're suddenly forced to detach from your entire existance. I floated around aimlessly in my own mind for days, weeks. I didn't want to deal with any of it--not my friends, not my boyfriend, not even my family.

And down I fell, into the deepest and darkest hole I've ever known, willing the work to bury me--more and more, please God, crush me with it. Anything not to deal with it all.

I drifted further and further away from him. I didn't even try anymore. Eventually I just walked away without ever looking back.

Not that he cared.

Not that any of them cared.

I didn't even care.

Five years I lived in that hole, buried beneath it all. It probably doesn't seem like long to those who have known true suffering, but this was my first taste of darkness, bitter and consuming. The light eventually shone through, of course, and I fought to reach it when it finally did. I came out of it a completely different person--different values, different dreams, different everything.

Gone was the woman-child. Gone was the sweet, optimistic, good-natured, caring and compassionate person that used to be so open and loving. Gone as it happens in most lives--but gone in a way that no person should ever be so unfortunate to suffer.

Now, whenever I see one of those people from my past life, I feel the tug of the dark--threatening to force me into submission once again, as I suppose it always will. I *am* a different person now and I'm comfortable with me. I don't feel the overwhelming need (or desire) to "fit in". I fit in well enough with myself. In fact, even though I know I still have a bit farther to go, I am more happy NOW than I have ever been in my entire life. I finally feel like I'm really ME--and not just someone's puppet.

But my associating these girls with one of the worst times in my life, doesn't make the thought of seeing any of them again any easier. The truth is, if I NEVER see them again, it would be too soon. I don't even like the yearly telephone call I get from Slutty--doesn't she understand?........Oh wait, that's right...she doesn't.

And SHE is having a baby. SHE, who I suppose deserves a more normal life than me. SHE, who got pregnant through a one-night-stand, even though she thought she couldn't have chilren. She, who obviously is more worthy of a miracle. She is having a baby, and wants ME to share in her "joy."

And I sit here...alone...wondering if I should be that girl long gone, that girl for whom she cared so little. Should I be her? Should I share in her joy, even though it sickens me?

I am not so low. I will buy her a gift. Afterall, it's not the child's fault that her mother just happens to be one of "those girls" with whom I associate such nasty feelings and terrible memories. Why deprive the child of things she will need? It wouldn't be fair.

But I don't want to attend her shower. It would be too much, and I might even run the risk of seeing the others.

That part of my life is over, and I try daily to put it farther and farther behind me...sliver by sliver...

I'll not go...

<< - >>

Save The Rayne! - 2004-12-27
Want some popcorn? - 2004-06-23
- - 2004-06-19
Pfft. - 2004-06-12
Wheehaa!! Going to see PoA! - 2004-06-02

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