A weird thing happened to me a few weeks ago. I was googling to try and find a former best friend of mine, and when I found information about her family, it was that her older brother had died suddenly that very week. I hadn't tried to google this friend in at least a year. So it was really strange that I did it just days after her brother's death.
I have to admit, this friend and I had always had some weird kind of ESP connections. It was spooky sometimes, and looking back I don't want to believe it anymore because that would be weird. I do remember multiple times as teenagers she and I would try and call each other up to talk, and we both had call waiting, but the line would be busy. So I'd hit redial. Busy signal again. I'd hit redial. Busy. Then I'd wait because at this point I knew that she was trying to call me at the same time. After a few seconds, redial, and BUSY again! This would go on for something like 15 minutes! And when one of us would finally get through, we would find out the other had been trying to call that whole time too.
I remember another incident when we were sitting eating lunch and she had some kind of apple soda she was drinking. I remember thinking, "I'd like to try that." So she poured a little into my glass. I took a sip and then realized I had never verbalized it. I said, "How did you know I wanted to try that?" and she said she just knew.
Why was I googling her? Well, after college, I guess we kind of lost touch for a while and our friendship, which had been VERY close as teenagers--probably the closest friendship in my life, was very strained.
I had started to get the distinct impression that I was putting more effort or value into the friendship than she was. But then when we would actually see each other every couple of years or so, it was always as if nothing had ever changed, nobody understood me as much. We'd even make plans for amazing travels and adventures to foreign countries, and I was ready to go! In fact I remember when I first met Ruggedly Handsome Husband, I was telling him and everyone I knew that I was going to be moving to Venezuela with this friend. But little did I know that was not to be my next adventure.
I remember trying to contact her and not hearing back from her for a few months. Then when we finally talked, she tells me she's not moving to Venezuela, and that she's getting married in a few months to the boyfriend she had broken up with a few months prior, around the time we were planning the Venezuela trip (which she hadn't bothered to tell me was off).
I was a little disappointed of course, and felt like I'd been left out of the loop, but I didn't say anything about that and I'm happy for her of course! I didn't let myself think that I'm not important enough for her to share these details in a timely fashion. She told me the date of the wedding which was just a few months later, and I don't remember the conversation, but I had the distinct impression that I was of course going to be invited. I mean, I was one of her best friends in the world!
In the meantime, I know that things are meant to be with me and the future Ruggedly Handsome Husband. He and I though are still very much in the early stages of the whirlwind romance (we know this is it for us, but it's too early to talk like that). So we're also trying to figure out how we're going to handle our relationship, because, although he moved in with me after 1 week of dating so we were living together for a couple months, he was returning to England to fulfill his lifelong goal of joining the military.
We decide that at least I'm going to go visit him at the end of the summer, after I go on a tour of Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic for work. We'll see how we feel about each other after that trip. But it's all very complicated because I have to make sure I'm back in the states in time to go to my friend's wedding in Pennsylvania.
To further complicate things, I had to move out of my apartment into another place with some friends, right before leaving for Europe. My life was hectic! So, I hadn't realized right away that it was definitely less than 6 weeks until the friend's wedding, so if I was going to have an invitation (even if I was on the "B" list of invitees) I should have received it by then. But I don't think I was really worried at this point anyway, because this friend was never one to follow convention. It would have been just like her to not send any invitations at all.
Well, I'd planned to arrive back in California, a few days before the wedding. I get back from the lovely European trip and find that there is still no invitation. Of course, because I had moved I had done a forwarding order with the post office, but I didn't always trust that it worked. So, I call the friend's parents' house in Pennsylvania and leave a message on the machine. I call again the next day, getting more frantic saying I needed to book my flight but still hadn't received the invitation and didn't know the details, but that I'd moved and been out of the country so might have missed receiving the information. I leave another frantic message, and another, and so on, and finally it's too late, it's the night before the wedding was to have happened.
I remember conversations with my mother after all this, and we speculated that maybe my friend never got married and that's why she hadn't contacted me (at the
time that was really the only good explanation). Maybe she was
embarrassed. It wouldn't have surprised me that she had not gotten
married. I was more prepared for that than for the actual truth.
A few months later, I receive a card--one of those custom stationary kind of things that new couples sometimes get to send their thank you cards after their wedding. It's from her. It's unbelievable. I don't remember it in detail, but I remember my mother was visiting and I was just in shock as I read the card because it was so nonchalant.
It was something along the lines of, "I guess you were trying to get in touch with me. I didn't think to tell you we would be in Maine [at her parent's second home]. The wedding was small with just family and friends, blah blah blah. I can be reached at... and blah blah blah. We've been travelling blah blah, we're moving to blah blah."
Since when was I not a part of these special friends that would have made the inner circle's cut? I was insulted. My mother and roommates all agreed I should be. It was just so cold. I felt like a total idiot, and my mother reminded me this wasn't the first time this friend had sucked me into her life like this to then let me down.
Even now, thinking back to the desperate frantic messages I was leaving at her parents' home days before the wedding, I feel like such a fool! Her mother never liked me--she always thought that I was a bad influence on her daughter (when in reality I think we brought it out in each other). Her mother was convinced I was going to turn out bad. Well, her mother was a complete depressed bitch anyway. Her own biological kids were so fucked up, and also her adopted kids had their share of issues (the best friend was adopted, as was her youngest brother, but there were 2 biological kids in the family too). I could never understand why the father, who I really liked, was still with the bitchy mother.
So just the thought of the mother hearing my desperation makes me cringe, because what if I misunderstood when the friend first told me about the wedding date? What if she had never intended to invite me? What if I wasn't included in the idea of close friends and relatives? It had not occurred to me that I would not be part of it. It just was not conceivable that I would not have been a part of it. It had never occurred to me that she was just telling me the wedding date as a piece of information, but not to invite me. I don't remember the phonecall when she first told me the wedding date, but maybe she did tell me I was invited then? I really can't remember, only that I was absolutely certain I was invited.
After my mother reminded me this was not the first time I had felt betrayed by this friend, I made a pact with myself that this was the last straw. I was not going to be a pawn in her way of dealing with her insecurities. In the past, I was always VERY quick to excuse these incidents because I knew so much about her tragic past, what her life was like before she was adopted from Colombia at the age of 8, and what she had gone through, and the guilt she had at being one of the orphans "saved" from the horrible life she had been living in Bogota. I was so ready to excuse these things about her, and understand that she had a fear of separation, a fear of being too close, all at the same time. She was pushing and pulling at the same time. I decided this was it, this time, I was going to see it for what it was--she was sucking me in to her life to make herself feel better about herself, but as soon as I was out of sight back in a different city, I was out of mind to her.
And I have not been in contact with her since. I specifically made a conscious effort not to try and contact her when I got engaged or while planning my wedding. I have not tried to contact her since those frantic phonecalls before her wedding. So she doesn't know I'm married.
But, every once in a while, I do wonder what is going on with her life. So every once in a while, I try to google her. I can't remember her husband's last name though. But it would be like her to keep her maiden name. I have not found her at all by doing any google searches. But probably around a year or so ago, I did google and find her parents who have now moved permanently to the house in Maine as they'd always planned.
So, a few months ago, while avoiding doing any work while at work, I decided to try and see if I could find her, and this is when, only through googling her parents did I find out her older brother had just died.
It blew me away. Now, I have to say the older brother was probably a sociopath, so it was kind of weird. And I know that the friend had issues with the brother. She had told me that he had molested her in the past, saying, "It's ok because we're not really related." So I didn't know what her emotions were around him at the time of his death, nor what the family would be feeling, and how things stood with them, whether this had ever come out--or whether things were strained because of any of his other sociopathic behaviors.
I contemplated sending a letter care of her parents address after I found out this news. I mean, I wasn't even really sure why I was so hurt anymore--hadn't enough time passed? But I also didn't know what to say, because maybe she wasn't sorry about his death? And why was this the reason I felt I should contact her again? I had grown to really dislike her brother a long time ago.
I'm curious, but don't know that I'm ready to be strung along by her to be disappointed in what I think is good friendship again. I don't know that I ever want to. I think a stubborn part of me feels that if she wants to show me how much I mean to her, then she should make the effort. Yet, I also know that a) she doesn't know I'm married so doesn't know my married name; b) my parents have moved away from the Boston area, back to California, so she doesn't even have that link to find me--even when I try to do a google search on my parents names, there are lots of red herrings that would make it pretty difficult for her to find them if she doesn't know the city and state they moved to; and c) if she does a google on me with my maiden name, I don't think she'd find me either.
For years, I actually kind of took pleasure in the fact that she wouldn't know how to contact me. I have after all been married now for 4 1/2 years and I never told her.
Every once in a while, I also think that if fate wants me to be in contact with her, it will happen again. For instance, I know she has an uncle that used to live in Santa Barbara, and may even still. So, perhaps if it's meant to be, we will some day meet up with each other again serendipitously.
My contact with her throughout my late teens and my twenties seemed to bring me more pain than anything positive. Though we were best friends as teenagers, I think that was such a painful time in my life, even though at that time not caused by her, maybe it's just not meant to be anymore. Maybe I'm better off without her in my life. I can't say I've missed her as much as I've just been curious. The only other things I feel are hurt and stupid.
I'd be interested in any comments any of you dear readers have--what would you do in this situation?
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