PAST FRIENDS

ADVENTURES IN CHAOS

My gut warned against marrying the blowhard ignorant ass, such a contrast to his sweet neighborly parents and sister. He was an adopted child, and his sister was born two years later. My parents disliked him immensely which made the marriage even more difficult for me.

He was five years older and more worldly than I, having lived on his own in Michigan, Chicago, and other places. Life was exciting with him, going into the big city of Chicago where my mother had not allowed me to go, a trip to Wisconsin for auto races, seeing a concert with Sonny and Cher, and sitting outside Ravenna when Roberta Flack had a concert. We attended candlelit holiday parties put on by sophisticated women who knew the ins and outs of stylish entertaining. He was not sophisticated like his friends, rather quite the arrogant “boor,” yet people invited him, either because they went to school with him, or due to his Svengali personality and ability to suck others into the belief he was the best mentor and teacher. I saw another side that his associates didn’t, a dark strange side, one of verbal coercion, and egomaniac tendencies; he was fiscally irresponsible, full of gluttony, very disparaging, and a braggart. Those characteristics were subtly there, and my gut warned me, but again, I ignored it, married him, and so now I was trying to survive the embarrassment of the full version after marriage.

I found Mary Kay through my sister-in-law, and it was so much fun! Opportunity, new friends, conventions, travel, independence, prizes, glamour – all things I wanted and lacked in the ego-centric marriage. I saw beautiful and ordinary women making a lot of money, handing out prizes and encouragement. All the skincare and make-up were a joy to share with women in their homes. The feel, look, and fragrances in the lovely pink packaging enthralled everyone. Mary Kay had the right idea to help women achieve back then. I stocked my shelves and kept my inventory and business receipts. We learned about business, inventory, selling, skincare, consulting, and became confident.

This Svengali husband gave me the crappy vehicles we had. He didn’t care if I was safe driving around; no worries that a substandard Chevy Vega was likely to break down. His only concern was that he looked good in his sports car; he continued to change jobs and was unavailable in emergencies. I was supporting us with my Mary Kay business at eight-and-one-half months pregnant when he injured his knee and couldn’t do his house painting business. He declared bankruptcy right before I gave birth and embarrassed his parents in the small town where he grew up, owing money to several small businesses there, and not paying those bills in the bankruptcy or paying relatives who had done work for him in his painting business. His attitude was one of oh well, his knee was injured, he couldn’t work, the workers could go somewhere else and the businesses he owed money could claim a loss.

I followed suggestions by the high sales leaders, striving to become a Mary Kay Director. One day I put a “free facial” sign-up box in the hotel bathroom next to our apartment complex. One day a woman phoned me because she needed some Mary Kay. We became great friends; I will just call her M. She had grown up with lots of sisters and had kids of her own. Her son was younger than mine, but her daughter was older than my toddler daughter.

SEATTLE

Suddenly my second husband took a job in Seattle so we packed up what belongings we could into the U-Haul truck he drove, while I drove one auto, towing another. It happened M was divorced now and moving back to Washington state. She asked if we could take some of her belongings with us on our move and we agreed; we met her ex-husband at his home, and he loaded the items into our rented moving truck. There were numerous boxes, large and small, which he had labeled.

A cross-country trek to the Pacific Northwest from Chicagoland with a young son, and a nine-month-old daughter, was an adventure. Leaving the flat Midwest farmland and heading through Minnesota (the land of 10,000 lakes - but I didn’t see even one!), we didn’t stop for any of the sights along the long route. We were on a mission to get to Seattle. We left flatlands in Montana, then drove on curvy mountainous roads, roads scary to drive for someone who had never driven in the mountains. After passing Spokane, Washington, it was a long boring drive across the huge state of Washington, until we hit the Cascade Mountain range with glacier-covered peaks. We arrived at Snoqualmie Pass, trekking down through the pass, driving into a mountain tunnel, and reaching the bottom to glorious views of the Space Needle and sparkling blue Lake Washington. We rented a house on a well-known drive-to island and here I made new friends in karate classes. I was not yet twenty-seven.

When we took my girlfriend’s items to her at her place three hours away, they turned out to be only junk. Her ex-husband thought it was a great trick to play on her. It was not funny at all; it was heartbreaking because her elderly mother on social security had given us money for food during our voyage, in exchange for bringing M’s items to her.

LONG-TERM

M and I remained friends, many nights talking on the phone for hours since she lived such a distance away. She remarried and bore the new husband a son, making her family two sons and a daughter; sometimes we drove there to visit and would stay overnight, sharing meals and outings to the river or picking wild huckleberries. We were on different spectrums of politics and the environment. She was living in her little mountain community, over-involved in the drama of her small-town neighbors, an addiction really, with a husband I found later was abusive to her and the kids. She was smart, engaging, kindhearted and I loved her.

The friendship continued long-distance when I moved again, then divorced the Svengali, stayed single for five years, remarried, then moved back to Washington state. By this time her marriage was unraveling. She didn’t believe she could do things I knew she could do, and her husband was obviously wearing her down mentally and emotionally, ridiculing her, just as my ex had tried, and failed, to do to me.

She began misreading my emails and not accepting my explanations and requests to re-read them. She tore into me, and our friendship took a nosedive. A few years later, it happened again. I made an innocent comment, never meaning to offend her. Yet, I believe, due to the crazy verbal abuse and cruelty of her husband, she overreacted and lit into me. I apologized numerous times and explained what I meant. I continued to send her Christmas cards each year with no response. After many years, she sent me a note saying she had been an ass. I immediately forgave her, and we began our friendship again. Now she was separated from her husband and did not want him to know where she was so he could take the vehicle.

I stuck with her, offering advice, listening, being protective of her, taking her side, keeping her secrets, keeping her location private, encouraging her, and praising her intellect, trying to build her confidence.

M’s children were affected. The son had married someone M said was crazy and controlling; the daughter married a controlling man; the younger son had been abused by his dad.

FINISHED

The final time M took out her anger on me, I was done. She had impugned my integrity by intimating I did something my character would never have done. I was thoroughly insulted.

She didn’t hear from me again; I was finished trying to make amends, apologizing for imagined slights. I stopped emailing, calling, and sending her Christmas cards. I had apologized enough and for what? Imagined slights. Sometimes one must realize the other person is never going to hear you and it’s OK to let it go.

I didn’t miss the insanity of that friendship at all.

I do miss her smile, her kind and caring heart, so bruised and battered in that marriage, and I need to protect my own heart. M has been jumbled and tumbled like rocks in a river, all from the mean man she divorced and tried to hide from. I recovered from my own jumbling, but I guess I won’t know if she ever does.

NOPE

Years have passed and recently a message came through my computer from her. It was a message trying to verify if she had the right person, explaining who she was. I ignored it.

Heart thumping in my chest, I sat stunned; what should I do? My big heart wanted so badly to allow her in again. My learned experience said no; it would be another spiral, great highs at first and then slowly spiraling down the drain. My decision was no. I would not reply.

I looked at her Facebook page and there was a bloody dead animal which made my stomach knot; to make it worse, the poor creature was covered also with a sticker from QAnon beliefs.

Oh no.