I confess; I did a bad thing. It was a long time ago, yet unburdening myself is a never-ending process. Plus, I have a few new insights into this error, this sin, this betrayal of self and other. In the end – and I am much closer to my actual, permanent end than I am to my beginning – it’s the self-betrayals that really sting, that are mistakes from which we cannot always entirely bounce back; self-betrayals engender regret of the deepest kind – because self-betrayals are the worst, the absolute worst, reflecting the way we feel and think about as well as defend – or not – ourselves. Ouch.
London. A year abroad as a junior in college; during that first semester I had two roommates, Nina and Gay. Nina was a dance major, Gay was a theatre major like myself. She and I had been fast friends for almost two whole years at that point, including the previous summer spent on Nantucket Island waiting tables and paying way too much in rent. We’d begun the summer chamber-maiding at a B&B called The Brass Lantern, but it was a tricky situation. Gay was restless and in search of more money and fewer restrictions. Fewer toilets to clean, too.
At that time I was very much a follower, trailing my bolder, more confident friend in her decision making process. I was also as far from home as I had been until, of course, we flew to the U.K. that fall. Another place to live, a different job on the island? Okay! Sure. I’m in, I guess.
You see, she’d fallen in love. It was intense from the get-go; she was soon spending 98% of her time with the guy, who was a decade or more older than we were (I turned 20 that summer). He, Mr. Thing, decided I was the enemy (oh ffs, not this again!!) from the get-go as well. I said, “Hey, he doesn’t know me – maybe if we had lunch or dinner together a few times, he’d see I’m not anyone’s enemy!!” I thought that was reasonable. I still think so.
He refused, and because I am my own worst enemy at times, instead of saying to them both, “If Mister Thing won’t have a meal with me, and insists on treating me like his worst enemy, you can – the both of yaz – fuck all the way off” – instead of that perfectly reasonable response I did my best to be the unobtrusive, inoffensive nothing life with my own mother (who also treated me like the enemy) had conditioned me to be.
MISTAKE.
We went to England. Mr. Thing, who was clearly the jealous, insecure type, stayed behind. Thank goodness. But I didn’t say so. The Police were just breaking through with their first hits, which played on the bus from Heathrow into London. Gosh. What an adventure! I was, oddly, a pig in shit throughout the entire time I was there, but my best friend? She was not having fun, and our relationship, already on the rocks because of Mr. Thing (obviously, she missed him terribly), seemed in danger. What can I do? What should I do?
And. What did I do? Gentle readers, I snuck into her room one day when she was out, and I read her journal. Unforgivable! Terrible! Horrible! What a grotesque betrayal of her trust!!
But then I got to the part where she wrote about reading my journal. Even now, all these years later, that fact makes me laugh so hard, I cannot begin to tell you. And then I read this, as she had written words to this effect, “I read Moj’s journal and there as nothing in it about me!! What is that about? Why isn’t she writing about me, vitally important me, me, me!!! I can’t believe it!! It’s so hurtful!” And y’know what, my dear readers – that is yet another point in which I should have confronted Miss Thing and told her to fuck all the way off.
But, I didn’t.
Self-betrayal. Learned while sucking on my mother’s poisoned teat.
In fact and in retrospect, there were many times I should have ended that friendship – many. And several times I did try, breaking it off, refusing to play along. But oh, am I loyal. Oh, do I stick with it, holding on for dear life as if the universe doesn’t have or wouldn’t have my back, providing me with other friends, less self-involved, narcissistic, fell in love with an immature baby-man friends – which the universe did many years later, in my 30s when I met my actual, to-this-day peer girlfriends, and again even later in life, when I reconnected with a few of the fan-fucking-tastic women I knew as a child.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved this woman. She was and I suspect still is brilliant, funny, kind, quirky, deep, curious, filled with humor; all of those qualities also caused me to stay friends with her for years – about 20 in all, while her boyfriend and later husband – treated me like dog shit. Not. Okay. Did he come around, eventually? Sure. But I never should’ve done it, stayed friends, stayed in touch, ate his shit. It was a betrayal of self, and I forgive myself for it, because I did the best I could.
And I regret, deeply, not expressing myself, my anger, to him. Taking the high road is good but exhausting, like the time I sincerely toasted him at his 50th birthday party; he was so surprised I didn’t slam him, he said, and I thought, oh right, because you’re that petty you would have done it, and you’re also that clueless about who I am, even after all these years. Is failing to say that another form of betrayal? Not at his 50th, although in another setting, at another time, yes. 100%.
And because even my mother’s least loved third child reaches her limit eventually, my inner rage, the fire burning hot, never allowed breath and burning, waited, waited, waited for that last bit of straw on the camel’s back to burn red hot, which it finally did a few years ago. And y’know what? No regrets. Not one.
As for the grave error and mistake of reading her journal? Oh please. I forgave myself for that almost instantly. She confessed to me not long afterward that she’d read mine, and I went all high horse on her sorry ass. Gosh, I was young and dumb. Still, we were both doing the best we could. Still, I should’ve dumped her the minute she hooked up with that hostile, controlling, sorry sunnofabitch, her true love, her hero, her chosen burden – not mine.
Maybe in my next life?