Diary of a Recovering Idiot

Chapter 10 - Friends and Friendship

I have found that as I become older, I'm becoming a lot wiser about the way of the world and people. That brings me to the word 'friend'. Frankly, I'm starting to be of the opinion that we throw around the terminology much too freely. If I were to challenge anyone to count their true friends, and I mean the ones that have been with them through it all, I know when everyone really starts to think and count, the truth of the numbers will shock them.

Don't worry I'm in the same boat, with my number coming up to a shocking three. So few, you must be asking? At my age they should be much more you would think, but my relationship with Walter caused a lot of people I knew to distance themselves from me. This has now left me with a limited number of friends, even acquaintances because I failed to realize the type of person my husband really was.

Two of my three friends expressed shock when I told them that my husband said he wanted a divorce. My other friend said I should have beaten him to the punch because I took too much crap from him for much too long. She is my oldest friend and always told me like it is, and I liked that a lot about her. Sadly the truth is, I dismissed too many of the things she had to say. If I had listened, my life would have been different. She was one of the people who told me she wasn't too sure about Walter, something about, "their spirits not meeting". Her words not mine. Other people would have said, "I don't like him", but I think she was trying to be diplomatic while telling me the truth. Well, I guess whatever she was feeling had merit because look at what he did.

My other friends, sadly, are much too wishy-washy. Harsh to say about your friends, but they knew they were not, as the kids would say, BFFs. They were too now and then, but I guess the same could be said about me. Though I could just try to heap all the blame on Walter, point to his attitude as a reason everyone when running in the other direction from me. I know a lot of it has to come back to me. I let it happen.

When I started going out with Walter, I became the most unreliable person in the world. In a nanosecond, I would cancel any and all plans I had with my friends and go off with him and sometimes I wouldn't even be polite enough to cancel. Friends shouldn't do that to each other but that became my new modus operandi and it was horrible.

That, coupled with Walter's appalling attitude, that I was completely blind to, forced many of the friends and people I knew to run in the other direction. The few that did try to stick around had to be thick skinned. As a result of Walters's nature, a lot of them started talking about him behind my back, coming together to try to find a way to tell me about him. It didn't work. When I heard about them talking I started to cut them off.

That was one thing I didn't abide, people who indulged in behind the back gossip about me. At least, what I thought was gossip. Faced with that attitude, what were the friends I had supposed to do? I wasn't listening to anything they had to say and they talked among themselves to try to figure out a solution of how to approach me. They were of the opinion they were wasting their time so they jumped ship...fast.

There is a saying "you're as smart as your smartest friend". This is true because as friends you share knowledge of the different things that affect your lives, to help each other. Each experience becomes communal, traded among each other so that each can avoid repeating the mistakes of the other. It works and it works well with friends who have each other's interest at heart. If you play your 'powfulfoolish' like I did and don't like to listen, then you'll end up just like me. For those of you wondering what is 'powfulfoolish', it is the act of being all-knowing when truly you don't have a clue. Being wrong about something but continuing to be adamant you are right. That person was me to a T.

Now there are the 'friends' that you would not even wish on an enemy because they are just poison. No, let me just change that to people you know. Smiling up in your face like they care about you, but truthfully, they are only out for their best interest. Case and example, and tell me if you don't know this to be true. When you go to a job you try to go in there with an open mind, to meet new people with the aim to maybe make a new friend. For me, I learned the hard way that you need to keep a part of yourself guarded or you will be taken advantage of in some of the worst ways. Who isn't trying to take your husband, was trying to use you for whatever method of gain they can think of...not very friend-like at all.

I was under the twisted impression that by helping my co-workers and being nice to them while they were being kind of nice to me, was a sure sign that they were my friends. Not even close! It seems I was totally out of touch with how devious people really were. You would have thought after all these years I would have figured that out, but seeing how I missed the whole Walter deception, this went past me like a runaway bullet train.

When I did find out what my co-workers really thought of me, it was because I overheard them talking about me while in the bathroom. It was the worst type of cruel, and I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach with a sledgehammer. Every spoken word took my breath till I could hardly breathe in that tiny, rectangle cubicle. They laughed about how stupid I was not to know my husband had so many women it was like he was trying to beat king Solomon's record. Not to mention that I looked worse than a homeless vagrant. Laughing, they said the only thing I was good for was doing their work when they wanted to get out of the office early to pamper themselves at the salon or do some shopping.

From what I discovered I knew I had to be more cautious about the company I kept, so I began to chisel away the fodder from my life. I realized that even though I thought someone was my friend, in truth I wasn't their's and where does that leave me? Let's just say operation virus scan is in effect and all the bad elements are getting permanently deleted from my life. They don't understand the changes that have been happening, and these coupled with the 'NOs', when they want to trick me into doing their work, has them scrambling in confusion trying to understand what is going on with me.

They have been asking to try to discover what I'm thinking but it not helping because I'm keeping my business to myself. What they discover they would have to get it out of the other donkey's mouth. Right now it is about trying to develop strong friendships with the people I trust and develop radar against the evil people out there. It is slow work, but in the end, it will be worth it if I want a full life with lifelong friends.