So I've had some time on my hands out here (I know, who can imagine?), and I've gotten to thinking about some things. Well, one thing, really. My friends. I was watching Sex and the City the other night (I have no excuse for this) and I thought, "Why can't I have friends like that? Friends that, no matter what, would always stick by you, not judge you, and make you feel good about yourself?". Then I thought that that was pretty silly, because I do have friends like that -- just not here. My best friends in the universe are hundreds of miles away. You know who you are. I've learned recently that I do not have friends like that here. The sad thing is, I thought I did. Now some of these "friends" (which I will now refer to as "people" or "acquaintances") I married into, and sometimes it's harder to make that work. But they were really good at making me feel welcome and part of the group, and for that I was grateful. I mean, they treated the other spouse in the group the same as me (I thought) so what's wrong with that? Man...sometimes reality doesn't just reveal itself -- it smashes you over the head with a brick. Let me tell you what opened my eyes to the true feelings of the people I am talking about...
Yesterday Ben and I went to Tupelo to take Jester to get groomed and to see a movie. It started out as a really good day. The movie was awesome and we had some spare time to just fart around. During the movie, one of Ben's friends called and said he and another acquaintance would be coming up to Tupelo and invited us along. What luck! We would meet up at the mall and hang out, since we hadn't seen each other in quite a while. Ben called another of his acquaintences and his wife to see what they were up to. Guess what? Also at the mall in Tupelo. It was like a sign that we should get together. Well, after stalking a couple people to get their parking space, we finally made it into the mall. We met at the JC Penny's, which was crowded with people and extra displays for Christmas. As we were walking up to our group of people, one of them turned and waved us over. As we gave a wave back and were walking over, one of the acquaintances rolled her eyes and mouthed, "Oh, look who it is..." to which the person who waved pursed his lips in agreement. Now, I saw none of this. It was brought to my attention by my husband, who told me about it afterwords. Apparantly, she thought she was well hidden behind a jewelry display and could make this high school remark and get away with it. Now, even though we hadn't seen them in forever and we had only talked for a few minutes, two of the people left the group with their other friends to do some more shopping. That left us with the married couple. So we talked for a while and it seemed like business as usual. We left to promises of, "We'll call you later tonight!" and "We should do dinner tomorrow!". (We've yet to hear anything, by the way) I was happy, since I love hanging out with them. As we were leaving Ben leaned over and whispered, "I don't think we'll be hearing from them any time soon." Then he told me about what he'd seen.
I was, and still am, crushed. Ben went through the Academy with these people. These are the people who showed us the ropes when we first arrived in Columbus. I've cooked dinner for some of them numerous times, including Easter. We've gone over to their houses for parties and just to hang. Why were they so nice to us straight to our faces? If they had a problem, why not just voice it? What could we possibly have done to incur their wrath? Then that got me thinking...
Nothing. We did nothing. But we did have this coming. You see, I am 23 years old. I've gone through high school, and I've graduated from college. I've never been in the "in" group. The popular clique. The pretty, perfect people. The Kens and Barbies, if you will. I guess that's just because of my personality. I like to feel accepted, but not at other people's expense. I guess that's why I have few friends, but they're of an extremely high quality. Other people feel the need to create that drama that they had in high school, to raise themselves up by tearing other people down. (I mean, if you don't have a big number on your MySpace list, how will people know you're awesome?) I've only felt this kind of backstabbing once before, and what a shock, it was in high school. I've been nothing but kind and generous to these people. I considered myself lucky to have such a good group of friends, especially since I am so far from my best friends and family. Now I see how incredibly stupid and foolish I was to think that. The signs were soooooo obvious:
I'm glad that they have so many friends that they can just throw us away. I guess my friendship never meant that much in the first place. It's just never been that easy for me. I know I can say all of this freely, because I know none of them will read this. So now the real question, the one question that has come out of all of this is, "When is a friendship worth keeping alive?" I think I know the answer to this, and the problem is I know that my "friends" have already made that decision.
Yesterday Ben and I went to Tupelo to take Jester to get groomed and to see a movie. It started out as a really good day. The movie was awesome and we had some spare time to just fart around. During the movie, one of Ben's friends called and said he and another acquaintance would be coming up to Tupelo and invited us along. What luck! We would meet up at the mall and hang out, since we hadn't seen each other in quite a while. Ben called another of his acquaintences and his wife to see what they were up to. Guess what? Also at the mall in Tupelo. It was like a sign that we should get together. Well, after stalking a couple people to get their parking space, we finally made it into the mall. We met at the JC Penny's, which was crowded with people and extra displays for Christmas. As we were walking up to our group of people, one of them turned and waved us over. As we gave a wave back and were walking over, one of the acquaintances rolled her eyes and mouthed, "Oh, look who it is..." to which the person who waved pursed his lips in agreement. Now, I saw none of this. It was brought to my attention by my husband, who told me about it afterwords. Apparantly, she thought she was well hidden behind a jewelry display and could make this high school remark and get away with it. Now, even though we hadn't seen them in forever and we had only talked for a few minutes, two of the people left the group with their other friends to do some more shopping. That left us with the married couple. So we talked for a while and it seemed like business as usual. We left to promises of, "We'll call you later tonight!" and "We should do dinner tomorrow!". (We've yet to hear anything, by the way) I was happy, since I love hanging out with them. As we were leaving Ben leaned over and whispered, "I don't think we'll be hearing from them any time soon." Then he told me about what he'd seen.
I was, and still am, crushed. Ben went through the Academy with these people. These are the people who showed us the ropes when we first arrived in Columbus. I've cooked dinner for some of them numerous times, including Easter. We've gone over to their houses for parties and just to hang. Why were they so nice to us straight to our faces? If they had a problem, why not just voice it? What could we possibly have done to incur their wrath? Then that got me thinking...
Nothing. We did nothing. But we did have this coming. You see, I am 23 years old. I've gone through high school, and I've graduated from college. I've never been in the "in" group. The popular clique. The pretty, perfect people. The Kens and Barbies, if you will. I guess that's just because of my personality. I like to feel accepted, but not at other people's expense. I guess that's why I have few friends, but they're of an extremely high quality. Other people feel the need to create that drama that they had in high school, to raise themselves up by tearing other people down. (I mean, if you don't have a big number on your MySpace list, how will people know you're awesome?) I've only felt this kind of backstabbing once before, and what a shock, it was in high school. I've been nothing but kind and generous to these people. I considered myself lucky to have such a good group of friends, especially since I am so far from my best friends and family. Now I see how incredibly stupid and foolish I was to think that. The signs were soooooo obvious:
- They never call. Never invite us anywhere. We always called and asked them to grace us with their presence. Since we wanted to see if we were really the ones keeping the relationship going, we stopped calling them about 3 months ago. They've yet to call us.
- One of these people had a hard break a couple months ago, just a major disappointment that has since gotten better for him. I gave him my sympathy multiple times and have left comments on his MySpace, just asking how he's doing, I'm glad things are better, etc. I've yet to hear from him. Apparantly all I'm good for is boosting that all important "Friends" number.
- We had to beg some of them to come to our wedding. Due to all of our circumstances out here, we knew for some it would be impossible. However, for the ones we begged (one of whom was a groomsman) it was merely an inconvienence. Keep in mind, I'm still paying for the tickets to get to their wedding that took place a year ago.
I'm glad that they have so many friends that they can just throw us away. I guess my friendship never meant that much in the first place. It's just never been that easy for me. I know I can say all of this freely, because I know none of them will read this. So now the real question, the one question that has come out of all of this is, "When is a friendship worth keeping alive?" I think I know the answer to this, and the problem is I know that my "friends" have already made that decision.
