What brought this on was partially a dream about a confrontation between my former friends Jessica, Jennifer, and I, and partially a conversation with a friend of mine about them (probably what brought on the dream.) I've been trying not to think about this very much because when I do, I get angry. I don't even like to talk about it because of how upset it makes me that two people I once considered best friends have treated me so poorly. But I probably need to get this down so I can get some of it out of my system.
I do not and have never taken kindly to having my sanity questioned. Mostly because I've only ever really felt insane and out of control about one thing in my life... And it wasn't Dan, Jessica, or Jennifer. Dan, as far as I'm concerned, is irrelevant. I was only attracted to him because he was there and have since (actually, almost immediately after) realized so. He was a fuck-up in the highest degree with no reasonable chance at ever forming meaningful attachment to anyone, and it didn't take me long to realize it. The aftermath of "Dan," however, has much more to do with the quality and caliber of people who once called themselves my friends than it did or does with him. He's detritus to me, a passing, regrettable fancy whose life and interactions with mine have ultimately proven unimportant. Dan, who Jennifer can only barely tolerate most of the time, whose company she's chosen over someone who's done so much for her and on her behalf, is not what this is about. It's not that she's still in contact with him that even bothers me, it's that she so callously insulted me to him that bothered me. It makes me honestly wonder how many times she's bad-mouthed me to other people, how many times she and Jessica have made fun of me or otherwise belittled me when I have never done nor would consider doing so to either of them. But, in spite of this, Dan didn't make me crazy. Even realizing that my friends were backstabbing self-absorbed assholes didn't make me crazy. The only thing (person, instance) in my life that I've ever questioned my reaction to was Darren, and that is and remains the only time in my life I've felt "out of control." I know the feeling well, and I know this isn't and wasn't it- not even close.
I suppose the starting point of all this has to have been JB. JB who Jennifer had it in her ridiculously jealous head I had some sort of interest in. I do not, have not, and most likely never will have anything other than ill-concealed contempt for that pathetic excuse for a human being. I pretended, briefly, to be his friend- on Jennifer's behalf. Any contact I had with JB up to and including the point of our (Jennifer's and my) break of contact was on her behalf and I never, at any point had anything other than her interests on my mind. My point was to prove that JB was an unfaithful bastard incapable of forming meaningful romantic attachment to her. I did that and then some. That Jennifer assigned some purposes to my behavior other than what it was speaks volumes more of her own mental instability and unwillingness to trust than mine. I certainly didn't enjoy, at any point, my conversations with JB. Not even when I talked to him after I dissolved my friendship with Jennifer. His usefulness was of a different nature- a body for a trivia team, perhaps holding some unimportant, esoteric nerdy knowledge I do not possess. I have been, was always, and never intended to become more than a distant acquaintance to him. I have no use for him, I know his type far too well and I don't need them in my life in any position of substance. I neither tried to hide nor intentionally flaunted my contact with him outside of my former relationship with Jennifer. When her sister, Jessica asked me who I was going to trivia with, I answered her truthfully without any form of embellishment.
Therein is where our own (that being, Jessica's and my) troubles began. Apparently answering such a question truthfully,in Jessica's psychotic frame of mind, was tantamount to flaunting some deeply secret liason with her sister's former love interest... (Which, first of all, he wasn't. At least, according to him. And never intended to be.) So, apparently by meeting JB for trivia (which, it turns out, didn't even happen. I just wasn't aware of it at the time), I'd done some unforgiveable betrayal to Jennifer (who, by all counts, at that point, I'd already made clear I wanted no further contact with anyway). If I had had it in mind to betray Jennifer, it's certainly not like she wasn't owed a betrayal on my behalf. After what she did to me, it would've been fair... But I'd already done her a like kindness, so that was far from my intention. My intentions were just as I've said they were. Apparently after finding out about my secret betrayal, Jennifer couldn't wait to write JB some ridiculous mea culpa in the form of a "birthday card" to try to rope him back in. I'm sure she thought that, in doing so, she was somehow hurting me... Reality is, I couldn't give a fuck. I'm sure she'll give him another chance and maybe, after he's fucked her and given her some disease or got her pregnant or killed her cat, she'll finally realize that I was right all along. Though it's really unlikely since it's hard for her to admit that anyone else can be right. Or, I suppose more accurately, that her "finely tuned sense of other people's intentions" is pretty much bullshit. That's why she keeps latching on to men she doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell with.
That all said, the fact that Jessica chose to question my mental stability is where things really went to hell. For one thing, in an e-mail I composed, I accused her of several things- which I'm choosing, for the sake of brevity (not that this will be that brief, but it's much shorter this way), not to go into. She denied them all, calling me paranoid. By the end of our round of discussions, she'd admitted that every single one of them was true, thereby making herself either wishy-washy as hell, or simply put, a liar. I wouldn't put either one past her, to be honest. She'd admitted in diary entries, e-mails, and conversations that she questioned her own mental well-being, stating that she thought she needed therapy. I hardly think she was in a place to be making judgment calls about anyone else's psychoses. She continually ignored and flagrantly challenged my own insistence that I was, mentally speaking, just fine. And still am. For reasons I've yet to work out, she thinks I think all my friends are "plotting against me." (Never have I suggested or implied by belief in any such thing. I don't think I'm important enough that people sit around thinking up ways to hurt me. I think she and Jennifer are independently thoughtless self-absorbed people and the fact that they're sisters means they united against me because of their loyalty to one another. No plotting necessary.) I assume, based on her reaction to my statement that Jennifer and Dan could get married and have kids if they wanted, that Jessica thought I'm secretly jealous of Jennifer's relationship with Dan, that I think they have some secret affair going on. I was being sarcastic, as I've always been, and Jessica took it literally. I'm pretty certain Jennifer doesn't want to have any form of sexual contact with Dan. Considering that he's been with a dog, I think that's probably a pretty solid decision on her part. But I don't have some paranoid delusion that they're in love and the fact that Jessica thought I was serious about that makes me think she's got paranoia of her own. Much the way she assumed that my comments about some "Christians" needing to learn how they were supposed to act were directed at her and Jennifer. God knows, they're not the only Christians who are backstabbing liars, but she chose to assume that I was talking about her. (I guess if the shoe fits, you can certainly put it on.) Much the way she accused me of "thinking I'm better than her" in some way that I've yet to work out and she's not yet managed to satisfactorily explain. So far, her recordable level of paranoia is looking leaps and bounds greater than my own. But then, I've always known I wasn't paranoid.
The biggest annoyance of all was her claim that people "walk on eggshells around me." Jessica, Jennifer, nor anyone else in our group of friends has ever walked on eggshells in my presence. Of us all, I am, as far as controlling my anger and being good natured and not moody, the best of the bunch, and anyone who denies that is completely full of shit. I challenged her to please give one instance in which I blew up about anything, and she never did. I assume that's because she couldn't think of one... probably because no such thing exists. I am far more stable, emotionally, than Jessica ever considered being. I don't take everything anyone says and try to warp it into a personal attack on myself or my family. I don't throw potentially lethal objects at people. I don't throw tantrums with firearms in my hands. I never have. It's not something I do. With my family, I yell. Sometimes I throw things (NOT heavy objects like baseball bats, and NOT at people) or punch walls if I'm particularly angry. But with my friends, not even that. I have a feeling, up until now, my friends would be hard pressed to think of a time I've been really mad at them, even when they deserved it.
So what is, if anything, wrong with me? I spend too much time alone, I admit it. I do not, as Jessica seems to have somehow surmised, spend too much time online. In truth, I spend very little time online, and certainly not in communicating with random people I meet there. I have dial-up internet at this point and honestly don't have the patience to sit around for hours waiting for pages to load and chats to lag. In the time that all this "spending too much time online" was supposed to be occurring, I've communicated with two people I didn't already know- two men I met on an online dating site and effectively gave them both the brush off. I read, I watch movies, and I job hunt. I clean my house. Sometimes, I go shopping. Online, I check e-mail and Facebook, sometimes Twitter, and that's about the culmination of what I do "online." Whatever I do, I find my own company far preferable to that of people who stab me in the back and attempt to derail my extremely valid anger as psychotic episodes simply because much of their own anger is a result of psychosis. Miranda, a mutual friend of Jessica, Jennifer, and myself seems to think that we just "need some time." The truth is, the longer this goes without the apologies I'm owed, the less likely there is to ever be an amicable resolution. I currently have nothing but resentment and contempt for both Jessica and Jennifer, and I do not forsee that changing. Ever. Honestly told, I don't miss them. There's no degree of lying to myself or anyone else in that. I miss having people nearby to do things with, but the fact of the matter is, I'd prefer to do things with just about anyone BUT the two of them. I don't trust them, have no good or positive feelings toward them, and generally think that my life is better off without them in it. Even if, by some miracale, they were to manage to make me want to be friends with them again, I'm not sure I'd do things with them the way we did... Because apparently, even though I've payed for gas and driven to meet them, they expect me to be beholden to them because my parents don't allow me to drive all over the countryside. (Not something that's in my control, I'm afraid. I don't know why they're this way, as they let my brother go pretty much anywhere...) The fact that they've belittled my driving (nevermind that they both, on a regular basis, run over curbs, run red lights and run off the road... none of which are things I do with anything like frequency- or that they've had more wrecks, dings, pings and scrapes than I've ever thought about) certainly hasn't made me want to offer to do the transporting any.
By logging into her facebook account, I did nothing to Jennifer that Jessica hadn't done to me, and I forgave her for it with barely an apology. Twice. (I haven't forgotten the incident where she took pictures of my room, invading my privacy without anything LIKE my permission, in case the incident where she read my private message on Facebook (which I also never gave her permission to do) wasn't enough.) The fact of the matter is, again, I forgave her for both of those things. My sins are no worse than hers, and I won't accept that they are. I won't do any extra penance for something as inoccuous as what I did was. That Jennifer has offered a half-assed apology, excluding most of what she did wrong "because she said it because she was worried about me" (I'm not sure how threatening someone with legal ramifications that don't exist is considered showing concern) does not absolve her. Partial apologies are not accepted. I honestly can't say whether I'd even accept any apologies offered at this point, and I'm certainly not accepting blame for anything that I haven't already. I apologized for my part in all this long ago and that's all I owed anyone... in retrospect, more than I owed Jennifer and more than she deserved. I owe Jessica no form of apology at all, and don't and won't offer any. The possibility that one or both of them might someday soon try to communicate with me honestly makes me sick to my stomach as I can't think of two people I'd less like to see or speak to. Having such a possible reunion looming over my head just makes me angry all over again, especially in light of the accusations of further bullshit I'm sure they're likely to throw at me. When the two of them can be wrong and admit they were wrong without trying to convince me it's my fault in any way, form, or fashion, then perhaps I will be willing to talk to them. Until then, I hope they just forget me and I'll continue forgetting them. I've already forgotten why I was ever friends with people like that.