Wishing it was hormonal

The biggest loss of my divorce was not my husband. I wanted him to leave. I was happy once he did. The biggest loss was that of friends.

Most of my friends were friends through marriage. I have never been one to collect lots of friends on my own. I was never one of those girls who would have a weekly "girls' night out" and drink pastel cocktails while giggling about the bartender's cute tush.

There have been five women in my life who I could call steady friends, best friends, and now there are four.

Two of those women have had their own challenges brought on because of my divorce. Their own husbands are good friends with my ex-husband. T has handled it graciously and with care. The other chose not to. I don't know why either. I was in the same position with her during her divorce, and my Ex and I lay down the law right away. Her Ex was not to be mentioned, he wasn't welcome in our house, and I didn't want to know if the two men spoke or saw each other.

Maybe it was different because she was the one that was left. Maybe she felt more empathy towards my Ex. Maybe I'm giving her more credit than she deserves because it hurts too much to think about how easily I was discarded by her.

There was a day when she said to me, "You just aren't sad enough."

I am changing my life for the better, and she wanted me to be more sad.

I think what she was really saying was, "You aren't sad enough anymore to make me feel better about my life."

It's too bad she left me when she did. It was just a couple of months before my father's biggest slide downwards into Lewy Body Dementia and my mother's diagnosis of metastatic ovarian cancer. If she wanted to see sad, I can do sad now.

The interesting thing to me is that she and I were friends during a period of time that my family claims I was not myself. That is one of the things they love about Guy. They see more of me, the way I used to be, now that I am with him. As soon as I started coming out from under the weight of a marriage that was drowning me, my friendship with her started to crumble.

Most of the time, this doesn't bother me. I miss her, but I don't miss the way she treated me the last few months of our friendship. Today though, I came across a set of photos on Flickr. I was looking for some pictures of T's little girl's birthday party this past Saturday. Instead I found a set of pictures where T and her family drove to VA to visit my former friend and her husband. Again, the husbands are friends.

It didn't matter though. My mother has always said that I am loyal to a fault. If someone wrongs one of my friends, then I will write that person off for life. I am a bridge burner in my personal life, and during the period of time when I tried to get better at it, I just ended up collecting a whole lot of people who drained the energy out of me. I have torched a bunch of bridges over the past 2 years, and I usually feel much better for it.

The problem is that sometimes I can't understand why my friends don't have the same trait. Looking at the pictures of T sitting there smiling and having a terrific time with this woman who had hurt me so deeply, frankly, it cut me to the bone.

Logically, I understand that it isn't fair of me to expect all of my friends to act the same way I would. Emotionally, it doesn't matter. All I can think is that if someone treated T the way this woman treated me, I would never be able to maintain any level of friendship with them, no matter what. And that hurts. While I would like to blame this on hormones, I don't think I can. I would really like to not have this bother me, but I don't know how to just turn it off.

It didn't bother me when T and her husband sent out an email about something my Ex had sent their little girl for her birthday. I know they are still friends, and I wouldn't expect anything different. I wasn't abused or tortured in my first marriage, just deceived and disappointed. My Ex did not hurt me half as much as this woman did, and the pain he did cause was not intentional.

Of course I am too scared to talk to her about it because I will most likely say the wrong things and make everything thing worse. I know I can't handle losing her as a friend too.

Maybe it is hormonal. God I hope so.