Monday Musings

Weird.  Some things never change.

I had a friend, back in the Dark Ages, when we were 19 & 20 years old.  I thought she was cool, fun, funny and smart.  I had a girl crush on her.  We really had a moment where it felt as though we were falling in love.  We didn't speak about it, of course, until it was all over and too late.

Then she moved in with my ex-boyfriend.  I was jealous.  I said some very rude and cruel things to her.  They were experiencing their love (not to last long, of course, as he moved from best friend to best friend) and he shared some of our 'greatest hits' in the pain department with her.  She decided I was a terrible person and she told me so.  My behavior contributed to this. The friendship was over.  It broke my heart, truly.  I could care less about him at this point, but I wanted my friendship with her.  I wanted our friendship long after she broke it off in a cruel and blunt way.

We had and continue to have a few mutual friends.  They love her to death.  I can understand. 

I've had some interactions with her in the intervening decades, and each time I felt dismissed.  Utterly small.  I can't talk with her candidly about it because I know she'd shoot me down and call me names, perhaps, "Snowflake."  I have to accept that, for whatever reasons, she just really does not like me.  At all.  That's a bitter pill.  I wish I didn't feel so drawn to her.  I have no reason to feel drawn to her -- we have not been compatriots for four bloody decades!!  What is this thing I'm feeling?

I so wish that, way back then, I could have handled the whole thing much differently.  If I could take back my bad behavior, and all that.  I was a seriously insecure person, and did not take rejection (real or perceived) at all well.  Each romantic break-up caused me to behave badly and to debase myself shamelessly.  I hurt people and caused them pain and confusion.  If only I could have risen above it all and been self-contained and mature.  But I did not have it in me at that tender age.  I regret that.

I have recently experienced, again, a small little dismissal by her majesty, and I'm really pissed off that I'm pissed off.  Enough already.  I donated to a project of hers last year, a kind of peace offering on my part.  And because I believed in her project.  Still, she rejects me.

Okay. Okay!  I get it!  I have it in me, now, to be above it all (at least publicly).  I'm going to disengage and remind myself that this is nothing new, but I can move past it and don't have to react like I did 40 years ago.  I've moved along.  I've grown up.

So why does it still bite?