For me--in writing this blog--it's a personal challenge to be authentic, but also more raw and real and vulnerable than I feel should be on, say, Facebook. Even more, its always been intended to be a challenge to write more than I otherwise would, and to risk my allowing public access to my writing. Not that a whole ton of people read my stuff, but it's authentically there, regardless.
All of that aside, a friend did just this morning tell me she reads some of these posts. And, in the course of telling me that she reads my blog, she claimed I had made public a personal email from a third person. In fact, I referenced a comment from that third party email in one of my blog posts months ago. However, my reference to the single comment out of many in a long, long, email was only a reference in passing, and I did not even mention it had come from an email, let alone who the author of the comment was.
Ironically, my friend seemed critical of my not having stated the source of the comment, while at the same time critical of the fact that I had mentioned it at all. What's the point of all of this?
Well, the third person; the original sender of the email; was a mutual friend. In the email, that friend seeks to explain why she's been ignoring my efforts at contact with her for several weeks previous to the email in question. But, along with her stories of how crazy her life is and how she just doesn't have time to consider me, or our friendship, because of her crazy life, she also devotes about six paragraphs to disparaging my character. The only real tangible message (once I waded through her indulging her urge to burn me in effigy) was that she wasn't going to be able to continue to deal with being my friend.
So, regardless of what either of those two people believe about "the letter," when I received it, the message I got was that my (now former) friend was done being my friend. And, frankly, I wouldn't send a character-disparaging email to a person I was breaking off a friendship with, even. So I personally couldn't reconcile wanting to wound somebody (me) AND also cut things off with me.
However, if I had been the one messaging a friend that I was frustrated with, I would have wanted to protect the friendship I valued from further damage, and would have withheld my comments until we could speak in person, giving us each a chance to speak our truths and our points of view. And in this instance, I was extremely frustrated with this friend, (and that was after being angry had mellowed).
Moreover, the friend who yesterday took umbrage at my having ever made a vague reference to the email also revealed she knew it was from the email my friend sent because "[she] read the email before [Susan] sent it." She proceeded to tell me that mentioning the email was "a passive aggressive move," and that I should just "talk to [the friend]."
SIDE NOTE:
Passive-aggressive behavior is characterized by a pattern of indirect resistance to the demands or requests of others and an avoidance of direct confrontation.
So, while I wanted to argue with the friend about the actual definition of the meaning of a passive aggressive act, or the examples of passive aggressive behavior, I held my tongue.
However, here, on my own forum, I am pausing to point out the sheer irony of this person--these two persons, actually--labeling me as passive aggressive when the actual avoidance of confrontation came directly the friend who refused my neutral acts of reaching out and keeping the lines of communication open in favor of a scathing, "I've always secretly had a problem with you" goodbye letter.
My act of keeping the circumstances and the people anonymous and not offering any detail was the evidence of my efforts NOT to be directing my comments at the author of the quote. Clearly the second friend seeks to find fault with me (and I'm beginning to feel a distinct lack of her claimed "neutrality" here) simply for my own venting of my confusion and hurt feeling, on my own forum, without even knowing that either of them ever read my blog.
Ok, I digress. As this second friend, whom I might find myself referring to as "the middleman" henceforth, proceeds to claim my behavior was "passive aggressive" and that I should have just "talked to [the first friend]" I do, in fact, remind the middleman that I was told by the letter writer that I was not to contact her.
The middleman goes on to claim that, "she just asked for a little time." I argued that claim, telling her that was not, in fact, what the letter writer had said. That, in fact, the letter writer had made it clear that she no longer desired a friendship with me. When the middleman argued further, telling me that she had "read the letter," I said, "I'll send you the letter, I have it in my email."
The middleman did not like that line of discussion and changed her attack, quite suddenly. "Well, [She] is over there," (gesturing to where they were spending the weekend, about 100 feet away from where WE were spending the weekend). "Why don't you just go over and talk to her?"
Momentarily stunned, I responded that I'd spent about three weeks reaching out to the letter writer after the original incident that lead to all of this. Three weeks of sending occasional texts and messages; messages that were more friendly than I felt (because I knew that being angry would not help preserve the friendship). Three weeks of letting her know that although we had not seen eye to eye in the heat of that one moment, I knew I didn't want to let things linger on bad feelings, and that I wanted to talk. I reminded the middleman that in those three weeks, the letter writer had literally not even acknowledged I was alive. Until she emailed me a "Dear (friend) John" letter.
I also reminded the middleman that it was the letter writer who, while she cut me out of her life, she proceeded to cozy up to friends of mine she had met only one time, for not more than an hour or two, and that the letter writer continued to swirl around in my life, not there, but not gone. It was the letter writer who was finding passive aggressive ways to punish me for all her perceived "wrongs." I had at one point cried out to nobody in particular to "Just unfriend me, already," and that cry had her--the letter writer-- at its heart. When, finally, she had unfriended me, many months later, and, actually, only a month or so prior to this very conversation, she had not merely unfriended me, she had blocked me entirely.
And now, here was the letter writer, in a place we both now claimed as our "cherished getaway location," not even willing or able to look me in the eye, but instead sending the middleman to snap her fingers at me and notify me that my presence was expected in front of Her Highness the Letter Writer.
My answer, you can guess: "Let her know if she feels ready to talk to me again, I'm right here, 100 feet away."
Sadly, the middleman--who at one time I felt was a friend, yet who truly never included me in anything unless there was an agenda under it all--made a last ultimatum, "Ok, this is your last chance! Don't say I didn't tell you."
And the middleman left. Clearly, there was no real desire to rekindle, or even to reach out with an olive branch, as the letter writer has never so much as looked my way or acknowledged me since. The middleman has not uttered a single word to me since that day in spite of claiming she was "not taking sides," and that she was "...remaining neutral."
I forwarded the middleman the email that was the focus of this discussion, only minutes after she departed. In it, the final line reads, "At this point in time ... I am going to keep some distance. I hope all works out for you..."
Although I know I certainly cleared up the disagreement about what the letter writer intended--to end the friendship--the middleman, predictably, ignored the proof under her nose. I came to realize that she wasn't there to help us find the truth, she was there to support the letter writer in her belief that I am unreasonable and not worthy of their "friendship." In performing this task, she also gave herself permission to stop making any further efforts to be my friend.
I have a funny, and admittedly snarky follow-on story that provides ME with a great deal of closure, in spite of it's terribly snarky nature. I think--no, I am sure--I will post the story here soon, and hopefully, y'all can forgive me a weak moment of ever-so-slightly "karma is a bitch" glee.
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