Dear You, in Phoenix

You came into my life when I needed a friend something fierce. You invited me into your circle, into your life, and suddenly I had so many new friends and I finally felt like I was in a place I fit, a place I belonged. You helped me loosen up a little, let my hair down, remember how to have a meaningless, ridiculous good time. We talked so much and I felt like we were confiding in each other, building something that could turn into a really amazing friendship.

The more I got to know you, the more you scared me. You’re unstable and angry and horrifically self-destructive. I started seeing a lot of my old self in you and I thought maybe my knowledge and experience could help you in some way, lift you above all the bullshit, teach you some coping mechanisms that I’ve learned over my many years of intensive therapy and research and self-help study. I thought… I really believed that you would respect my age and wisdom, that you would let me in and give serious consideration to what I have to say.

I was wrong. You don’t want help. You seem to wallow in misery like a pig in shit.

No, that’s not exactly right. You use your wallowing as a weapon. You public wallow, you use it to garner attention and empathy and compassion from others. You seem to want someone, anyone, to feel sorry for you and save you from… well, the only thing you need saving from is yourself. You create your own misery and then try to pass the buck to someone else to fix it for you. You fuck up constantly and you apologize but your apologies are empty because your behavior never changes.

You are the very definition of a toxic person.

You don’t consider anyone around you when you start spewing your feel-sorry-for-me suicidal-tendency bullshit. You wanna go drug yourself to oblivion? Go ahead, bro. I ain’t gonna stop you. It’s your body, your life, your death. What am I supposed to say? Oh no, please don’t, everyone would be so sad, blahblahblah. The truth is, yeah, we’d all be pretty sad. It’s a sad thing to watch someone blow themselves to smithereens. But your self-destruction is not my responsibility, and it’s not hers or hers or his or anyone else’s. It’s all on you. You want to get dumped by a girl (oh no, that’s never happened to anyone before, ever!) and kill yourself over it? Go the fuck ahead. Because when you start spewing that kind of shit around someone like me, someone with PTSD and all kinds of suicidal thoughts and tendencies running around in my skull, when you want to trigger someone you call your favorite person in the world to the point where I can barely breathe or stand up straight, to the point I’m dizzy and shaking and hyperventilating, you go right the fuck ahead and off yourself, you selfish fuck. I’ll buy the crystal meth for you.

One way or another, this shit has to stop. You have to stop. You’re a manipulative abuser. You think I don’t see what you’re doing, but I do. You think what? I’ll feel sorry for you and comfort you and be your friend and hug you and make you feel all better and eventually, what? Fuck you? Let you fuck your pain away in me? I’m no one’s surrogate, thank you very much. I’ve been down this road far too many times with far too many abusive loser ass men to go down it again. It doesn’t matter that you were my friend, it doesn’t matter that you made me feel happy and included and like I belonged. It doesn’t even matter that I do still care about you, love you, even. None of that matters now because you’ve crossed the line with me one too many times. Fuck, more like 15 too many times. I have come too far in my own journey to let myself get dragged back down into the cesspool that you’re swimming in. I am worth more than this, I deserve more than this, and I’d rather never feel like I belonged anywhere again than feel like I do when I’m around you.

You’re selfish and cruel. I told you that your friend attempted to coerce me into sexual activity, that he was forcibly moving me along to my car to do I don’t know what with me and you interrupted me and said, “I don’t want to hear it, it’s not my business.” When I didn’t stop talking, you laughed and said, “And yet, I’m still hearing it, why am I still hearing it?” Because your friend is a rapist. Or, at the very least, an attempted rapist. An attempted sexual assaulter? Whatever. He was way the fuck out of line with me and you laughed about it and didn’t want to hear it. How am I your favorite person in the world when you don’t even care if your “best friend” tried to sexually assault me? No wonder she dumped you again.

I’m done making excuses for you, I’m done tolerating your bad behavior and your shitty excuse for friendship. I’m done being taken advantage of by someone who has no respect for me, who only seems to talk to me when he wants something. You ever noticed that? You don’t listen when I speak, man. I feel like you don’t want to hear what I have to say about anything, ever, like my thoughts, feelings, and opinions are worth less than yours.

Well, I am most certainly not less than you. I am a badass single mother winning the fuck out of life and you’re just… a sad drunk who creates rotten situations for yourself and then cries like it’s someone else’s fault. Tired of being dumped? Stop being a fucking alcoholic. Stop getting raging drunk and being a vicious fucking monster when you are. Stop using alcohol as an excuse to cover for you shitty choices and bad behavior. You are who you are at all times. The alcohol just allows you to show it more.

You’re a shitty person. The end. A shitty, shitty person. And I don’t have room for shitty, shitty people in my life anymore.

Last updated June 18, 2019