wanttobehealthy

I'm feeling torn up about a series of dysfunctional interactions with a friend and am just very sad at the realization that this is someone I really can't have in my life right now and I just needed to talk about it here.

In a way, I am in this place because I am healthier than I've been in the past and for that I am glad. We were friends who bonded at times over our collective misery with our lives and that's not really a basis for a solid or healthy friendship.

The bottom line is that I am seeing in her SO many of the same BS reasons I gave for SO long for staying in my miserable marriage and life and I am having a REALLLLLLY hard time not wanting to scream at her "what are you doing?????"

Rather than say that to her, I am confessing it all here to get it out in hopes it helps me think more level headed... I am just watching her in a tailspin and can't continue and I think that my solution right now is to have no contact because I can't be a friend to her as she self destructs and it is a really hard realization to have come to...

She is in a similar marriage to what mine was and as I removed myself from mine, she and I have had limited contact in the past year. I guess when I no longer was able to blame everything wrong in my life on my AH or others, and took control of my own life, she felt that she had nothing more to relate to with me and really backed away.

Our kids are friends and that distancing has been hard for them and it's not something I can explain...

Last Fri she called me terribly upset and asked if I could meet her. I was kid free that evening so I did since I care about her and was worried.

She was at a restaurant in town and drunk when I got there and bawling and a mess. She would not leave with me, wouldn't stop drinking, wouldn't give me her keys, etc... I sat and talked to her for a long time and watched her flirt with any man who walked past, behave really badly and embarass herself. Finally I told her I had to go and would either call her husband to come get her or take her keys to drive her home. She let me drive her home finally and I made it home very very late and was very very upset with the whole experience...

The reason she was out drinking was bc her husband (according to her) had called her mom and said that she was selfish, a bad mother etc... because she had been asking her husband to help more and had apparantly told him if he didn't start pitching in she'd take the kids and leave. He locked her out of the house, called her mom and had her mom call her. Her mom proceeded to believe her husbands version of events and called her names, told her she was a bad mother and said that if she left her husband she (the mom) would help the husband get custody...

If I hadn't had an experience almost identical to this w my own crazy mom this fall I wouldn't believe it could happen. So I understand her pain and hurt and despair- but the way she handled it I don't get and I can't tolerate...

The next day we saw each other at an event at our kids school and she told me to forget what she'd said and not mention the night before and that she was fine.... I was stunned but shrugged it off and went about my day....

Last night she texted me to ask how I was and how things were. I replied and talked about our kids a bit and asked her how she was.

This was her reply (and for some reason it has completely set me off and unsettled me)

I realize I don't get to own my life and choices because I love my kids more than I love myself. I hate what others have said and done and what I in turn have said and done - its just nuts- but I will deal with it and stay because what choice do I have, right?

I didn't reply that she does have a choice because we have been down that road and she just tells me I don't get it and that she has to do what is best for her kids (meaning she can't have the lifestyle she and they are accustomed to if she leaves).

I don't know if I am upset because I hate myself for having said those same things and subjected my kids for SO long to such horrors because I refused to leave or if I am mad at her for lying to herself so blatantly about having no control over her own life or if I am sad or all three...

Again, I am grateful to here and al anon and therapy for seeing it for what it is and for not being in that same spot anymore..... But it sometimes is lonely being healthy because I have lost a lot of friends once I stopped living such a lie in my own life...

Thanks for listening to my ramble... Just needed to get it out-- I guess I am just trying to sort out what it is that is so bothersome about that text... Or maybe it doesn't matter-- it bothers me, her behavior is dangerous and she dragged me into it Fri (I stayed willingly so I own that) and I can't really have that in my life... I guess I am grieving a bit that a friend I have known since my DD7 was a baby and had our kids grow up together, is someone I don't think I can have in my life right now and I am sad at having to have another goodbye and having to try and make it be okay for my kids yet again...