I am so frustrated. I have known a person since I was 16 years old. He was one of my best friends for SOOOOO long and for a time, I called him a Brother. Granted, people change, but with his many changes in life (he tries on different masks at different times, so I’m not even sure any more which or if any are the real him?) it’s come to my attention that his opinions of me & my opinions (which he used to respect sooo highly!) have changed right along with his masks.
When I was 16, I was raised seriously Catholic. My parents lost a child before me, and God & their Church helped them survive it, so I can respect them going gung ho into a faith that made them better in the end and kept them functional for their 2 surviving children. They were only ever pushy about their faith to their kids, not other people, and as my father has since explained, he wants me to believe in SOMETHING. The what/where/who/how is far less important to him. But to believe in nothing, to have no faith in anything at all, is a sure way to end up alone and drowning in despair. Which I do agree with now, at 32 years old. And yes, I do believe in something. Not the ‘God of my father’, but I have faith, nonetheless.
But at the time, they were pretty strict with their raising of me, between the religious stuff and them simply refusing to lose another child to life’s randomness and/or a teenager’s naive decision making skills. Again, I can respect that now that I’m a mother too.
This friend of mine, let’s call him Chuck for the sake of conversation… ;) He wasn’t raised anywhere near the way I was. He had no dad pretty much, mom worked her ass off, his Gramma tried with he & his 2 younger brothers, but he was alone a LOT.
But at 16, we were as close as teens can be (without sex). We dated twice during high school, actually, but that’s a whole second part of this story… (I never slept with him, thank you very much!)
But Chuck asked me “why” I believe in God, and challenged me that I shouldn’t believe in something “just because my parents told me to”.
At the time, (and it’s still true), I responded that my sister had died and I refused to believe she was just rotting away in the ground. To this day, after 32 years, I still feel her with me sometimes, when I need support most and feel most alone, it’s like if I turn around fast enough, I’ll see her standing behind me, helping to hold me up. I literally feel like someone else, her specifically, in the room with me. And there have been times that I am honestly shocked, as logical a being as I am, to NOT find her where I felt her, just outside the bounds of my peripheral vision.
So I answered him, that because of this, and because I do believe this world has some sense of balance to it (given a long enough time line, though, and most aren’t willing to wait that long to believe), that THAT is why I believe in God. NOT because my parents “make” me.
He kept on at me, trying to convince me that there is no God, for years, and for years, I never relented.
Fast forward a decade or so, and now this friend is a pretty “reformed” Christian! Blows me away, that he went from super hard-core-vegan goth rebel who hates any form of authority & you’re a lesser being for submitting to “the man” personality, to this button-up tie-wearing cubicle-working white collar preachy Christian? To me, that’s a pretty big leap, even if it took about a decade to get himself there.
So now, he acts as if nothing I ever say could be coming from an intelligent thought. Even though he suddenly believes in the God of my father, now. He even once denied to my face that he ever didn’t! I gave him what-for on that one! Liar.
But now, with this new change of his, I must be an idiot all of a sudden. Because I disagree with his bigotry of anyone LGBT (heads up to my good friend who fits within that description and knows who I’m referencing here today! DO NOT come out to THIS person EVER or you’ll just get ig’nance back), that because I disagree with his stance that rape victims should be forced to have the baby (and I really, really, really do disagree) cuz all abortion is 100% wrong, that because I disagree with him I must just be some ditzy dumb girl who just believes whatever she reads or is told, who just jumps on any bandwagon with no thought behind it, who doesn’t really care about anything but her own selfish interests now. Funny, because when you ask him why he believes what he now believes, he always ends up quoting his pastor to me… Instead of a real answer. Well, that or he ends up attacking what I said instead of answering my question. Hmmm….
It baffles me that he could assume such things, having known me as long as he has, having respected me for as long as he had.
I cannot tell you how many times, while I was engaged and then married to my husband (it’s been 9 years of marriage next month, we have an amazing daughter and hubbs is still truly the love of my life, not everyone can say that…), that he attempted to convince me that I should leave the man I love for him. That despite him deciding to end both our attempted relationships (IN HIGH SCHOOL) himself, that I should give him one more chance.
I cannot count how many times I heard him say “but the third time is the charm”. I occasionally would reply, sorry hun but it’s not ‘3 strikes you’re out’ with relationships with me, you only get 2 tries and you gave up what you had both times. (I mean, you should have seen how badly he broke my heart the first time, and who he DUMPED ME FOR??!?! Dumbass.)
I’m thinking perhaps he’s angry with me for THAT, for being the one who got away, for being really intelligent and NOT HIS. His blatant animosity towards me peaked when he got serious with the girlfriend he was dating while still begging for me to take him back…
I asked him once if he truly loved her, was passionate to be beside her daily, that kind of thing. Because from the outside looking in, I didn’t see it, but that I believed it could still be there as many people simply don’t make those feelings as public as others do. But that I wanted him to tell me he loved her deeply, and then I would believe it and support them fully (this was back when my opinion mattered to him).
Since that comment, he has pushed me away, hard. He has been argumentative and often times, just plain mean to me. Judging me for assumptions he made, that sort of thing.
And I wonder, did my comment strike a chord, my old friend? Did I say something you really did NOT want to hear, and from someone who knows you & really does care? Or at least, did. Now I see him as this faker, who has two faces depending on the audience or his mood or his setting. I have lost all respect for him, his opinions, even though he is still a highly intelligent human being.
But he’s changed too many times and now I wonder if he even knows who he himself is, since it is so very hard for me to see the real him any more either. Perhaps he has the same problem.
I hold out hope for him, knowing how great he once was. I’m not sure if she is to blame, or it’s just plain him, but either way, I am pretty much just saddened by it all.
I mourn the loss of a good human being in this world, one who could have made this place just a little bit better. And I grieve that I mourn someone who hasn’t even really died. At least not physically.
But I suppose that is the shadowy dark side…
…of change.
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