Eight years ago, when I was getting divorced and new to being a single mom, I met a friend who became my best friend. Over the next six years she was one of the most supportive and encouraging people in my life. She always made me feel good about myself. She was the kind of friend that would bring you ice cream in the middle of the night if you were having a moment. The true epitome of what you would expect of a best friend. Our children also became very close, and we have many holidays that we spent together.
She comes from a very troubled background. Her father committed suicide, and her mother died of cancer, right after she gave birth to her daughter and she fell into postpartum depression. There was a codependency between her and her mother because her mother owned the house she lived in, and her mother depended on her working to pay rent so that she could also live and afford things. Once her mother was out of the picture and no longer applied pressure and coupled with depression…. She decided to bring in a roommate To fill that codependency void and to be a grandma to her baby.
This roommate with someone I severely disagreed with. This person had a very troubled past and while I am very supportive of transgender people, this person would pretend to be a grandma sometimes, but then be a 55-year-old man other times, and that was a little too strange for me, especially given the troubled past, and the fact that this person also had an 18-year-old girlfriend that they had taken care of as a “grandma” as much as I was not trying to judge, I was judging hard… but it was hard for me because the friend that I love and trusted seemed to also want to trust this suspicious person that I did not trust. That was the first wedge.
Then a high school friend of hers got out of jail, and it was a friend that she used to do drugs with years and years ago. I never would have expected that she would fall back into those habits and I encouraged her to stay away from that girl. Yet, when the horrible roommate screwed her over, she brings in the friend that just got out of jail. I felt like I’m screaming into the void telling her to keep these people out of her life that they are not her real friends and she doesn’t hear me. She thinks that they’re helping her through her hard time and she’s helping them and it’s a win-win and I see it for what it is, my friend who has struggled to build a good life for herself, and barely hanging onto it, being drug down into the trenches.
And that’s exactly what happened. She ended up losing the home that she lived in. She gave away her children to aunts and uncle’s. One in foster care… She decided she wanted to be a vagabond who would go around begging and live her life at festivals and doing drugs. She left their home, homeless people came in and destroyed it, and her partner and father of her child drank himself to death, literally, while she was away partying. I literally over the course of the past two years watched my best friend’s beautiful family and gorgeous life dissolve into what I would consider the most horrible thing I’ve had to witness.
She is now in jail For drugs and theft and spent her 40th birthday in jail. This is absolutely devastating to me. I’ve stepped back as her friend and I’ve kept myself away, because I hold very high standards for the people I allow in my life, and when she began to behave that way I told her she was not allowed to be around me and I was hoping it would wake her up and tell her that she was lowering her standards.
I feel in an immense guilt because I feel like I don’t know what I should do I’ve tried to talk sense into her, but she’s erratic and acting manic. She came to my house drunk some thing I find completely unacceptable especially around children and she knows it.
My heart is broken because I want to call her. I want to visit her I want to help her and I don’t know what to do. How did such a beautiful person who helped me heal who is so smart, emotionally intelligent and KNOWS IT, she went to college to be a social worker. She knows what living her life in “turd town” looks like…. how is she not stopping herself?! Do I help her or do I stay away? We haven’t spoke since I told her to leave me alone when she came to my house drunk but my heart is so broken for her for our children for our families.
I feel crushed because I feel like I should still be emotionally supporting her, that I should still be trying to love her through this, because she loved me so wonderfully through my hardest point and I feel like she STILL deserves the beautiful life. there are so many years left to make amends for the damage done but real healing has to happen and I don’t know how to get that through to her how to know when it is REAL. She’s turned into a con.
So my choices are, is she in my life or out?
