Category Archives: friendship

Will you be my friend?

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Decades later I am still stuck in that moment at the Girl Scout hut when I determined that Carlene W. was the nicest girl in our troop. I wanted to be her friend, and being the direct person I’ve always been, I sat down right next to her during refreshment time with our Hi-C fruit punch and Nutter Butters and popped the question.

“Carlene, will you be my friend?”

Carlene just looked at me with the deer-in-the-headlights look that people have when they are too stunned for words. She stammered out a “sure” but I knew even then that it wasn’t genuine, and suddenly a saw a side of Carlene I did not like, an uncomfortable and aloof side. Carlene had always been nice to me, pleasant, not mean, and I had construed that to mean that we could be friends. We had nothing in common, no interests, aside from Girl Scouts, and we certainly did not live in the same neighborhood. As she lived near the country club, and her dad was the school principal. I lived in a mold-infested house between the housing projects and an arroyo that one should not enter alone after dark.

I didn’t understand that friends were made through mutuality of some sort, could be anything, but mutuality was essential.

Of course, Carlene and I never became friends, but the well-mannered girl that she was also meant that she was kind enough not to tell the rest of the world about my awkward request.

And today I find myself with the desire to ask that random nice person if they will be my friend, and then I remember Carlene and common sense takes over again.

I have a few friends scattered here and there, but I try very hard not to overly tax anyone. The friendships I have, even the small ones, are protected and treasured like the first apples of the season that you run over your face for their dewyness and newness and you just want apple picking to last forever.

Even when I acquire a work friend I’m elated inside. My insides get confused, and think I’ve acquired a dog or become engaged.

A few months back when I started the job I have now I knew I would get along well with my colleague as I had met him at a training years ago. Sure enough, we make a good team. I found myself wanting to go to lunch with him. Such a pedestrian thing, lunch, but I had thoughts of Carlene in my head any time I conjured up the idea of asking him to lunch.

And one day, I did it. I tried to be as casual as possible, and I asked the question, “Would you like to go the XYZ Cafe for lunch today?”

And he replied, “Sure, I’m always up for lunch at the XYZ.”

I walked back to my cube as I replied, “Good, I’m ready whenever, my afternoon has no meetings.” I had to walk away as I replied because I felt myself go teary as he said yes. These days every friendship is a miracle to me.

That was a few months ago. Now we take turns paying for lunch at the XYZ Cafe. We don’t socialize outside of work, though we know quite a bit about each others lives. He knows I have PTSD, though he does not know about the DID. Very few people know about the DID. It’s a small very-manageable friendship with lunch 1-2 times a week, and the Monday morning catch-up of our weekends. It’s small, but still important to me. Perhaps more important than it should be, but that’s what happens when you don’t have a lot of people in your life. You treasure those you do have, no matter how small.

The small friendships matter to me. Other people may call them acquaintances, but I don’t.

For example, I look forward every weekend to seeing Sue, the lady with the red hoodie, at the laundry drop-off place who washes my clothes every week. She’s missing a few teeth, and she’s generally very disgruntled with life. But somehow my cheeriness grew on her, and she cuts me a break on the laundry drop-off price, and is always friendly with me. When I ran in a race at the start of the summer she told me she was worried about me all day because of the record heat. When I go on vacation she’s always happy to see me when I return.

No, we don’t have each other’s phone number, and I don’t even know her last name. But I consider her my friend.

I go to AA, and a version of “Will you be my friend?” lives on in the ubiquitous phone number exchange. It’s an accepted practice to approach others in AA and ask for their phone number. I have yet to ask anyone for their phone number. I’ve been given numbers, but I can’t bring myself to do the asking yet.

Carlene still lives on in my head.

It all adds up

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The Fourth of July was tough. However, I survived it. The day after The Fourth I became aware of the people that are in my life. The previous day I couldn’t see any of this. I could hardly see any light at all. But then I started hearing from various people in my life that I overlooked in the midst of my challenging day.

I had a couple of texts from a friend checking in on me telling me that she loved me, and was thinking of me. I got teary just reading the text. Then I heard from an old friend, and we talked on the phone for a bit. There was another friend that was emailing with me while he was on vacation just to stay in touch with me because he knew I was struggling. Those experiences got me thinking of the people who reach out in small ways: the random person at an AA meeting that spoke to me, a coworker who wished me well on my vacation, etc. I realized and finally felt that I was not alone in this life, that there are people that care about me.

It’s important for me to have this realization because in my darkest moments I convince myself that I do not matter to anyone in this life, and that my life is hardly worth living.

Just know that when you reach out to someone, no matter how small, it all adds up to getting that person to feeling like they matter in this world.

Everything we do adds up.

As I said before, I am a bad friend …

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It has taken me five days to compose this post. That’s how hard it’s been to write about this.

In a previous post I recounted the ways in which I am a bad friend. Well, I had a revealing conversation today that gave more evidence of that. A friend of mine asked me how my Memorial Day weekend was, and she could tell it was not a good weekend for me. I told her that it was a hard weekend because I found myself recounting previous Memorial Days when she and I were closer, and I missed it. I then went on tell her that I felt she and the rest of the group of friends abandoned me when I really needed them.

She then shocked me by telling me that was not the case, that she, in fact, called me frequently during the time after I had my traumatic incident. She then went into detail about lengthy conversations we had on the phone, and I recall none of it. She has no reason to lie to me, and she gave too many details for it to be a lie. Plus, it’s not like her to tell anything but the truth.

And in that vein, of always telling the truth, while I was still grappling with the fact that she did, in fact, keep in contact with me, she called out the elephant in the room. She said to me, ” You never visited after my son was born. You only held him once. You disappeared as soon as my son was born, and I never understood why that happened.”

So there it was, just like that, she called it out. After nearly 5 years of walking around the elephant one of us finally called it out. I decided to go with it, and tell her after all this time why I did what I did.

Nearly five years ago I hit rock bottom. I was drinking and carelessly putting myself in unsafe situations. This behavior culminated in a sexual assault from someone I knew, and that person held a job in high esteem. My friend says that I she and I had long conversations about this attack where she implored me to report it. I do not recall these conversations, but the fact the she knew so many details indicates that we did have these conversations. I can only attribute my memory loss to my DID.

Shortly after my assault my friend adopted a newborn baby. My hitting rock bottom and crawling into the rooms nearly dovetailed with the arrival of her son. And I couldn’t deal, couldn’t and wouldn’t go see the baby. All of a sudden I had an aversion to her baby. It flummoxed me because I love babies. But I could not come near this baby without getting twitchy and freaked out.

The baby was not at fault for my body’s reactions. My friend was not at fault for my body’s reactions. Although I knew that, I was powerless to change my reactions. I could not function around this poor child, and found myself avoiding going to her house to see him. I avoided this new lovely child because of the reaction my body had around this precious being. But the fallout was my friendship with this person whom I cherished. That friendship took a very bad hit, and then, eventually, the friendship was no longer alive. There were no words exchanged about it, it just became a long goodbye.

Now it is all out in the open, and the realization of the impact of my conditions on friendships has hit me hard. I have a better understanding as to why I’m largely alone. It’s hard to swallow, but it makes sense.