angiwyn - Tumblr blog

angiwyn · 3 years

Text

I don’t know how to tag this, but it is essentially a long ass vent about the breakdown of a friendship that became progressively more abusive.

I keep replaying the scenarios that lead to the crash of 20+ year friendship, wondering what I could have done to make it work. I think mostly because I never got closure for the events.

As I look back it was never a good situation. Anything I was interested in was infantilized or mocked unless it alined with their interests. Always used me to vent and expected me to solve their problems and validate their hostility towards their spouse and roommates and would always expound how they were there I’d I needed them...but if I tried to talk to them they’d disappear; it was always “I got distracted”, “I was playing a game”, “I went to cook dinner”, and the worst “I fell asleep”. They would always apologize, but never would change the behavior. It’s taken me this long to realize all along they were essentially punishing me for being anything but their door mat.

I think the breakdown started coming to a head just over two years ago. It was a shit year I was losing my job due to my store closing and less than a week after my last day my father died. (The day of his funeral they didn’t even call or text to be sure I was okay) I was a mess and broken. I had nothing left to give to anyone, nothing left for myself, and no matter how many times I explained this to them they just kept taking and taking and taking. It was breaking like this that made me realize I needed to take better care of myself and assert better boundaries. But anytime I’d do this they would claim I was selfish and abusive.

After several months I finally found a new job, in a completely different industry and had a lot to learn about it and the new job. I was working the front desk as well as customer service and could not use my phone unless at lunch or on break. I was constantly monitored (not a great job, bad boss, bad situation all over). But due to all of this I couldn’t constantly talk to and entertain this friend throughout the whole day, just after work. Around the same time they started changing their sleep schedule.

I worked 8-4:30, they worked 9-5 (from home), I had an hour commute and would be up by 6 to leave by 7 to get to work on time and would be home around 5:30, unless I needed to do shopping. They would wake up and log into their work email without getting out of bed then as soon as 5 hit, they’d immediately go to sleep until 9:30-10 at night, which is when I’d wind down for bed.

During this time they would accuse me of ignoring them and making them miserable and abandoned. I tried to explain our schedules were different and they knew I could use my phone at work. They just claimed our schedules had never been more similar; then ghosted me, running away to social media to cry “if someone’s just done with me they should just tell me.”

Up to this point I was just existing, trying to learn the new job and navigate the bad boss situation. But this was too much. They were expecting me to switch over to a 3rd shift sleep schedule while working a 1st shift job just so they could be entertained.

I was finally done, explained how hurtful it was not to have their support during my dad’s funeral and how I needed them to respect when I didn’t have the energy and emotion to spare to talk etc. o put down I to writing everything I’d been trying assert up to this point. Hours went by and they finally responded, “well I hope I didn’t make you feel that way”, then dissolved into a triad complaining about their spouse and roommate.

What the actual fuck…

That was finally to slap in the face wake up call that they were never going to acknowledge that I was allowed to exist in any capacity beyond a bin for all their troubles.

I didn’t want to throw the friendship away, but knew it couldn’t continue in the same way, things had to change and I could not be the only one expected to change.

I’ve tried to make all this make sense, and I’m sure it doesn’t, it all feels rather nonsensical and I’ve left some bits out because I frankly don’t want to relive them.

But after all this it’s been nearly a year since the fall out and I’m finally starting to feel a bit more like myself. Though I haven’t regained the majority of my creativity, don’t know if I will.

3 notes · View notes