DIARY OF A FAILED FRIENDSHIP: 1

HOW IT STARTED

How did we meet?
A Facebook group.
The children of military fathers.

The lifestyle we shared:
… Frequent moves.
… Leaving friends.
… Leaving homes.
… Conformity.
… Perfect wives, perfect children.
… No room for deviation.
… It was security,
……. or suffocating,
……. depending on your temperament.

Because our childhoods were similar,
… she saw me as a potential ally.
… I was safe.

She sent me a message.
“Maybe we could talk on the phone?”

“Not tonight,” I said.
I was dealing with a family crisis, but didn’t explain it.
It wasn’t a good time,
… was all I offered.
“Maybe another time,” I messaged back. .

The next day she posted something very sad on Facebook.
Her life was in the toilet.
I messaged, “You need a friend. I will be your friend.”

She gave me her number and I called.
It was late.
… Even later for her.
…… Different time zones.
But she stays up late.
So do I.
Women of the night.

That’s how it began.

Bit by bit she poured out her life.
Each time, just a little more.
She was testing the water.

“Do you mind that I swear … a lot?”
… she asked.

“No, I don’t mind.”

She wasn’t going to shock me.

She told me about her father.
He didn’t agree with her politically.
He cut her off completely.

And her mother was dead.

Almost immediately, I realized I was her parents’ age.
Before she could confess more, I had to tell her so.
She thought she was talking to a potential friend/sister.
… Which might have changed what she was telling me.

Was she going to disclose so much to a parental figure?

I understood her.
… But, being a generation apart,
… we were not going to be sisters.

Once that fact was out there,
… I let her know she could still tell me everything.
I knew she needed someone to talk to.
She’d been saving this up.
She was in pain.
Yes, I would listen to her.
Yes, I understood her childhood in ways her other friends did not.
… Because they didn’t know our culture.

She had so, so much to say. A lifetime of shit to say.

So it began.
… The late night phone calls, accompanied by cigarettes and alcohol
… (hers, not mine).

What I learned.

Her father had been controlling.
He kept her away from her friends.
She wasn’t allowed to go to parties.

Her mother was an alcoholic and addicted to prescription meds.
Some days she wouldn’t get out of bed.
Other days she did,
… but she was so mentally out of it, she was an embarrassment.
She was not the ideal military wife.
… And that mattered.

My friend’s family was massively dysfunctional.
… But to protect her father’s career, it was hidden.
… Or so they hoped.

Maybe those around her family did know something was wrong,
but they wouldn’t or couldn’t intervene.
… They had their own careers to protect.
… And her childhood friends didn’t come to her house.
… She lived a hidden life.

She was emotionally isolated.
She had no one to turn to.
Her parents abandoned her during crises.

So she dropped out of college.
Got pregnant.
Had an abusive husband.
Left him, but had three kids to raise.
Got cancer.
Became suicidal.
Struggled as a single mother.
Family was no help.
Then they shunned her.
Then, her children shunned her, too.

She still had her friends.
… But either they didn’t know how bad it was.
…… Or they didn’t do much to help.

So that left me.
I couldn’t turn my back on her, like everyone else had.
… Not after she poured her life out to me.
… I’m not that kind of person.