Update On Last Week’s “Crisis”

I know I’ve been quiet a couple of days.  The truth is that there’s been some more arguing on the phone and in IMs and a couple of emails.  Mostly it’s been one-sided so-called “Tough Love” coming from N2; at least that’s what she calls it.

I feel kind of beat up and sore and raw right now.  It’s all been rather eye-openning.

Imagine finding out that the things your most afraid your friends will think about you are actually the things they think about you.  But they “love you anyway” or they wouldn’t be talking to you about it.  Quite frankly, I wouldn’t love me if I were all those horrible things she said I was.

And trust me, one of the things she said to me came very close to being on the list of things I might not have spoken to someone again for.  Right under the one PW used on me before we didn’t speak for 3 years.

And she said all these horrible things, but I’m “not a bad person.”  I’m just too negative and I make things too difficult for myself and I’m not reliable (because of my depression — though she refuses to accept that as a reason).

This is the one that I struggled with her on.  She said that I refuse to accept responsibility for anything being my fault, but when I accept responsibility for things being my fault, she doesn’t seem to hear that.  She says I blame everyone but myself.  When I try to explain the situation, I’m making excuses.  She doesn’t understand that someone can have an explanation and still know they are at fault and not be trying to excuse themselves from blame.  So therefore because I try to analyze everything to explain why things happened, I ‘m making excuses and therefore blaming everyone but myself.

When I tried to explain to her that I am a self-blamer for everything in the world, she didn’t buy it.  When I told her that I assume I’m always at fault and that one of my big issues is that I’m a failure and that I’ve disappointed my parents, I suddenly got the huge laundry list of how she failed her parents and how I couldn’t possibly be a bigger failure.  Like it’s some competition.  I didn’t even know how I was supposed to respond.  I mean, I was trying to point out that I always assume I’m at fault and that I’ve done something wrong and suddenly I can’t possibly have screwed up more than her?  How does that fit in?

And even stranger, one of the other people involved in the little Pow-wow that started all of this nonsense to begin with told me Thursday night that no one is 100% blameless in this — meaning everyone has to share the blame, all of us, right?  Not just me.  I’d really like to shove that down N2’s Tough Love spouting throat right about now.

Oh and the real kicker was being told that I’ve screwed up so bad that I’m going to have to “prove myself to them” all over again with these PBeMs.  Quite frankly I don’t know that I care enough to want to “prove myself” to anyone, particularly them.  I told N2 that I felt like they were going to need to prove themselves to me because right now I didn’t think they could be trusted again and as much as they say they’ve changed since the game we were in together last summer, I haven’t seen it.  So it’s not fair for them to insist that they’ve changed and tell me I can’t use that as an example to not trust them when they’re using stuff from last year to hold over my head now.  People change and I’ve been changing over the last month and if they can’t see that, then that’s their problem.

I finally did force her to listen to me talk about my Cognitive Therapy.  I was really getting pissed off.  She was just like my dad; she kept going on about how I dwell too much on things and how I need to just not think about things and I kept telling her that I suffer from General Anxiety Disorder and it’s not something I can just control; it’s a chemical imbalance.  I told her that I’ve been trying to tell her about my therapy group/classes for a month because that’s what it’s about — teaching me how to retrain my brain to deal with those kinds of thoughts and situations.  (I wish that we’d finished the class before I’d had to deal with last week. )  I kind of think she finally got it, I hope.  I explained that while normal people may be able to just make that decision not to think or dwell on something, I actually have to go through a process and I’m not done learning that process yet, which is why I’ve been trying to talk to her about it because I wanted to show her that I was in recovery and making important moves in my life to get well so that we wouldn’t continue to have the kind of issues we’ve had in the past.

Anyway, so I’m going to work on the being too negative thing….though I wish I knew if Janeane  Garofalo’s friends complain about her being too negative.  (Although to balance it out, apparantly I’m damned funny when I want to be…thing is I think being negative and funny are the same thing…)

Anyway, when I started this post I really didn’t mean to write all of this because I didn’t feel I was ready to share.  I hope it didn’t come off as blame-y or negative.  It’s going to take some time for me to heal emotionally from this, but it’s been a good reminder that I really need to make new friends, preferably ones with little need for drama.

(Also, I had a migraine from Wednesday until last night that finally went away.  Yay.  Obviously the trigger was stress and crying.)

tags: friendship, dysfunctional drama, wellness, depression, anxiety

3 comments

1. on April 17, 2006 at 8:45 am

   Tamara said:

   Oy, that is ridiculous. I’m glad you finally got through a bit. And that your migraine is gone. That’s always cause for a Yay!

2. on April 17, 2006 at 12:41 pm

   Anne said:

   Don’t listen to those who trigger you. Don’t listen to negativity. Don’t think you should. Don’t think you have to. You are working on things, you’ve no need to explain anything to anyone. You need a better class of friends…

3. on April 17, 2006 at 3:25 pm

   n. mallory said:

   Well, I will admit that some of the things that were said were not wrong. I mean, I did screw up. I do tend to be negative. I am defensive.

   However, I am working on it. I do actually have a real mental problem. I am in therapy. I actually know what my problems are. I accept them and acknowledge them. I wouldn’t be going to therapy if I didn’t want to change.

   And, yes, I need to find friends who don’t spend all of their time on the computer, which means I need to spend less time on the computer.

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