may 22

full disclosure

I didn't mean to be away this long. Nothing unusual happening. Work is fantastic, garden projects are in full swing. I'm madly in love with my husband, I'm rebuilding my relationship with my brother, deepening friendships with the women I've met in the last year and getting to know new people. Life is not perfect, but it is bliss.

Wow. I can't believe I just said that.

It does seem that long absences promote more sign-ups to the notify list . Welcome new people!

***

It finally happened to me. That moment when your online journal and your real life collide. Only a few people in my life know about this journal. Most of them don't read it. I'm not hiding it exactly; it's certainly not the only thing I don't share with my friends and since I don't talk shit about people (very often), or say anything that I wouldn't tell them to their faces (eventually), I don't feel conflicted about it.

But last week I was out with friends at a new wine bar. Bill, the information architect on our current project, was present with his lovely wife, Sam. I know Bill keeps an essay-style journal and he knows I'm an avid reader of journals, as is his wife. He brought this up and she and I started comparing favorites and realized we are both big fans of Beth's forum The Usual Suspects. She asked me what my journal's title was and, well, I told her.

I totally don't mind that they both have access to this journal now; I adore them both and I doubt there's much here that I wouldn't tell them anyway. I'm a pretty open book with people I know. Sometimes more than they're comfortable with. In fact, that's sort of a litmus test for me: if I can't tell the people I work with, it probably shouldn't be here. Still, it freaked me out for a little bit. I felt exposed. But I'm over it. The worst thing that can happen is that they'll think my writing sucks. That would be pretty bad, but I could live with it.

***

Given that whole last piece, it almost doesn't make sense that I'm going to talk about this here. But I will, because it's been a source of confusion and frustration but it's starting to come together.

I have a lot of women in my life who are in unhealthy relationships and want to confide in me for whatever reason. Some want honest advice, though they don't take it. Some of them just want to vent and expect me to listen and support them even if I think they're insane for sticking with the relationship. This has been going on for a few years.

I'm a good listener and I can offer no-nonsense advice. I'm sympathetic to the fact that we all have to ride out rough times in otherwise good long-term relationships and rarely advocate dumping a guy just because things aren't perfect. I tell these women what it looks like from my vantage point and what I think they should do. Keep in mind, they're usually asking. There's only one who doesn't ask, Beverly, and I'll get to her in a minute. She's the one that's on my mind right now.

I don't know if this makes me a bad friend, but I have a really hard time sticking with someone consistently makes self-destructive decisions or is prone to lying to themselves. I try and try but I'm usually doing the same thing they're doing with their men and sticking with them out of some twisted sense of loyalty even though my other friends warn me that it's a lost cause. Eventually it ends, usually because I just cut them off out of desperation.

I'm going though this with Beverly right now. Looking back at that entry where I reference her, I called her marriage "loveless" and that's not fair. There is a lot of love there, just lots of other shit that makes the fact that they probably do love each other irrelevant. I've known since before she married her husband, Lem, that it wouldn't work out. Too long a story to go into but it was obvious. In general, he just has a basic lack of commitment and he's incredibly self-centered. He may even harbor a resentment for women, but I'm not positive about that. Anyway, three years later, it's ending. Slowly and painfully.

I've been angry with her since she left Portland for Boston, left me and all her friends (but I'm a big baby so I'm especially angry that she left me) to marry this guy when I knew she was going to be miserable. She knew she was going to be miserable. But Lem could offer her a beautiful house, travel, financial security. She wanted these things desperately, especially the financial security. In her mind, it was worth the risk and of course, she could always get a divorce.

I'm not sure how much her lack of respect for the institution of marriage factors into my feelings about her right now. It's somewhat ironic that her main complaint about Lem is that he doesn't offer her intimacy when she went into the marriage with an exit plan. I just don't get the point of getting married if you don't at least think you might want to be with this person for the rest of your life.

My real problem with her is that I got sick of hearing about it. But I feel horribly guilty about this. She never whines, she doesn't get all self-pitying and she sure as anything spends a hell of a lot of time in therapy talking about the whole thing. And she has left him and moved to LA, although that isn't the official story yet. So, she is working on it. And she hasn't once asked me what I thought she should do, probably because she knew what I would say and didn't want to hear it.

Still, she always told me how awful everything always was. And this is where I had to pull back. It was painful to watch, painful to hear. I stopped emailing her. I stopped calling. It wasn't conscious; it's just that anytime I missed her and wanted to talk to her I made up an excuse to myself why I didn't have time or whatever and avoided her. I just couldn't hear it anymore without saying "Leave him. It's never going to get better than this and may very well get worse. Get out while you still can."

Beverly was in town last week. This is when she told me that it was probably ending although I had already guessed since she'd been living in LA for five months. Still, she was talking about her sense of loyalty and the deep connection between them and it sounded like she still hadn't made up her mind.

So I asked her: "Do you want me to be honest?"

"No," she said, already knowing what I would say. "Yes. No. Yes, but gently."

"It's time," I said. "You've endured enough. It's time to start being loyal to yourself." She pressed her lips together and her forehead rumpled. She looked deep into her glass of hot ginger juice.

There were more words between us and then I started to explain to her why I pulled away. That's when everything started to fall apart and she became angry and defensive and told me there were things in that relationship that I could never understand and that she stands by her choice and that this marriage allowed her to do things she couldn't have done otherwise, things that all have to do with money.

What I haven't said yet is how much I love Beverly. If I didn't I wouldn't bother. She makes everyone feel like they're the most important person in the world. Everyone loves her. When I met her four years ago I was young, so young, and depressed and lonely and didn't know what I was doing with my life and had been so scarred by women in college that I didn't trust any of them. I almost didn't have any friends and she decided we were life-long friends before I even knew that were more than co-workers. That felt like the best gift anyone had ever given me. It still does.

And this was the first time I'd ever made her angry at me. And I cried. And I tried to tell her how I feel so protective of her that I couldn't watch Lem do this to her anymore, and couldn't watch her take it, and I had to pull away, which doesn't make much sense and she pointed that out. I didn't know what else to say; I was confused and scared that I'd just wrecked the friendship and hurt this person that is so important to me. Her trip ended, she went back to LA and we've only had stilted conversation, mostly via email, since.

I know I have to tell her about all this and I now know why: disclosure and honesty and must-haves for me in any relationship. I know this because of Polly and A* and all the other people I've brought into my life in the last year and what they've taught me. But especially Polly. I know I can tell her just about anything and she'll know that she can tell me I'm full of shit or she can admit that I'm right and that I always tell her these things out of love. I also know when to keep my mouth shut because she needs to figure it out on her own, or she knows it already and doesn't need my nagging or that there's a chance I may be wrong. That's when I just ask questions (this is torturous for her because it takes me so long to get some things). And she does all this for me. And even though she can be lecturing and she can be wrong, I love that she cares enough to tell me.

This is what I want with Beverly: an understanding that we can say anything, ask anything, and know that it's up to each of us to take what we need and leave the rest. To not get defensive. To not harbor resentment. To speak from a place of love. She says she wants this, but I'm not convinced.

I have to trust that talking about this will make my friendship with Beverly better. I have to trust that we will come to an understanding. The other thing that I have to trust is that she will see that I've changed and grown since we first met, especially in this year that we've been out of contact, and that she'll still love and accept me. That I won't seem too harsh to her since I'm so different from the quiet and unsure person I was those years ago.

I hope I'm not totally wrong about all of this. I'm still not completely sure.

- may 22