Because I feel betrayed.

Yet I am mature enough (or boring and stick-in-the-mud enough, take your pick) to step back, analyze and realize that what has transpired here is really not about betrayal, and it's not about people setting out to hurt me.  

I know that at least one person read this post.  I'm not pimping it here per se, but it expands upon what I will summarize below, if you're interested.  For 11 years and change, from the first day of college until the last day of the 2009 World Series, I called a certain person my best friend.  The World Series is important here because I'm a fan of the Phillies and Red Sox, and she's a Yankees fan (to be fair, she is a real and knowledgeable lifelong fan, not a bandwagon-riding, front-running moron). 

Also, I'm a Republican who thinks Reagan wasn't quite conservative enough, and she's a Democrat who thinks Obama needs to be more liberal.  More also, I'm a Christian who has faith without the pretentious post-modern fake irony, and she's never quite stopped being morally and mentally lazy and  decided whether she's Christian, agnostic, Buddhist, atheist . . . you get the idea.

We're polar opposite human beings.  However, I was raised with and hold to boring, old-fashioned, wonderful values like integrity, loyalty, kindness, and consistency.  Hence, I was more than happy to go on with the friendship for the aforementioned 11 years, because, well, you're supposed to do right by people, and I take life's "supposed to's" seriously.  I was the Maid of Honor in her and her husband's wedding, for heaven's sake.*

It's worth noting that the man I almost married during this time is also a Democrat and a Yankees fan, and he and I don't now hate each other.  Funnily enough; he's pretty near entirely consistent in his ideas, attitudes, and actions.  This issue did not originate in my little corner of the world.

However, as I noted in the post linked above, over the years since college, I've grown up and she and her husband simply haven't.  Whether they can't mature any further or simply refuse to is not a question I can answer, and frankly it isn't relevant; the situation is as described.    

For the last few years, I've been growing steadily more frustrated with and disappointed by their essentially random behavior, and my post-2009 Series heartbreak was, I guess, the catalyst I needed to really admit to myself, "I'm so mad her team took that from my team because really I'm just so tired of her bullshit and I cannot. take. it. any. more."**

A couple weeks and a few dissatisfying e-mail exchanges later, I recognized this for the dead end it is, squared my shoulders, and went about the house consigning framed photos of us to closet bottoms.*  Then I got all post-modern, deleting the two of them from my cell phone, e-mail address book, and Facebook account (from which I also blocked them--I don't even have to see it when they communicate with mutual friends). 

And the thing is, I simply did not feel very sad.  Not even a little sad.   More just tired and vaguely annoyed, as if I were running an errand.  In the previous post, I wondered if I might be some kind of sociopath due to that lack of emotion.  My real best friend***, of 23 years' standing, assured me that I am not.  We also discussed the importance of not taking friends and friendships for granted, and of remaining true to each other and to who and what we are.  She is awesome and I love her.

Just today, a comment on another Facebook thread in which I'd been participating with some other college friends revealed that one of them wasn't who I thought he was, didn't have the ideas I thought he did, and didn't respond to me and my ideas in the way I'd expected.  I felt vaguely upset for about 5 seconds, and then I thought, "Well fuck him very much too," but only with about as much vehemence as one would think, "Well damn, I dropped a pencil on the floor."  I unfriended him, blocked him, and went on with my day.  Hell, he's Ex-Best-Friend's husband's close friend, so why am I even surprised?  But seriously, am I the only bloody person from that particular circle who grew the fuck up?  We're 30 years old, for heaven's sake!

The man I love and trust so much it terrifies me (like most cliches, it's true) thinks my approach to all this is too harsh. He's likely right; he's older and smarter and right about most things (thank you honey, again and again, for all the wise counsel).  I think I understand why I'm handling things this way, though.

As I've blogged about before, my mother (one of the most loving, generous people God ever made) is terminally ill with Lewy Body Dementia.  It's a progressive, degenerative illness, so only after things got truly horrible and the doctor figured out a diagnosis did we look back and realize that she's been sick since 2003 or 2004, maybe earlier.

During that time, she started to . . . slip . . . a little bit.  She said and did things that just didn't make sense.  And that kind of thing offends more than just about anything not directly connected with the New York Yankees.  If I'm at a restaurant, and I say, "I'd like the turkey sandwich to go, please" and then the person says, "Will that be for here or to go?" it takes all my restraint to avoid grabbing the nearest condiment dispenser and emptying it on their head.  Why did I say "to go" if I didn't mean it?  Am I going to lie about lunch just to mess with your head?  Listen to the fucking conversation and proceed accordingly!  Drives me batty.  

I usually manage to  smile tightly, repeat myself, pay, and leave, but it's a close run thing.

Every conversation with my mother was like that.  And I became steadily more angry and resentful.  We'd sit down and talk things over, and I'd explain how much I didn't like non sequitur responses.  How they made me angry, and frankly hurt my feelings.  I couldn't understand why I begged her over and over not to say and do things that upset me, and she wouldn't stop.  I couldn't trust that she'd do what she planned to do, or that she'd respond to what someone said in a logical way.  

When we got the diagnosis, though, one of the things the doctor told my dad was, "People with this disease will do and say things that are inappropriate.  They don't do it on purpose; they don't have any choice left."  Once I wrapped my head around that, years of resentment melted away.  My mom was never trying to hurt my feelings.  She was never trying to make me or my dad angry, or make things harder for us or herself.  She was ill, and she had no choice.  She never betrayed me.  She never betrayed us.

Now, I don't have access to their medical records, but I'm pretty darn sure that my three recently-ex-friends are neurologically able to control their behavior.  If they're not going to behave how they ought to, if they're not going to treat me how they should, how I need them to, if they're not going to sit down, shut up, grow up, and be consistent, and there's not a damn good excuse on the order of atrophy of a brain lobe . . . I'm done.  I'm just done here. 

It seems wrong to say I've been betrayed.  It seems like I'm making light of cheated-on spouses, embezzled-from employers, and many other folks who are the victims of willful, evil, harmful actions.

But still, somehow, I feel betrayed.  

I do believe there's an upside here, which I'm slowly starting to see.  That will be Part 2.

 *Lest this post go too far in the direction of trying to make me appear blameless and saint-like, I freely and somewhat shamefacedly confess that one of my less enlightened coping strategies is thinking something like this: Yes, the end of this friendship is a sad thing, and it is also going to cause me pain or at least annoyance and discomfort for a good many years to come when I think back on the many moments and memories we shared.  However, I was their Maid of Honor.  I am all over their motherfucking wedding pictures.  Every time they think about their wedding, it won't be without memories and photographic evidence of someone they didn't exactly do right by in the intervening years.  College memories in which you can also focus on lots of other people?  The person standing to the non-spouse side of you at your one and only wedding?  Oooooh, which is more awkward?  Britomart 1, Jackasses Who Won't Grow Up 0, game over!!!!!!

**The bitch is also a Saints fan.  If New Orleans wins the Super Bowl, The Sound of Ultimate Suffering (TM Inigo Montoya) that you hear rending the universe in two will be coming from me.

***And she's a left-wing, feminist Muslim; we disagree on a lot.  However, at bottom, there's a consistent set of values, standards, and human kindness.  I don't need people to be my clones, but I do need them to be grounded in things that are real and permanent.