Letting Go

Two days ago, I broke off a 40 year friendship with someone I used to refer to as my bestie. Its one of those things that makes you stop and evaluate your life. I have always been shy and socially awkward, which didn't bode well when it came to making friends. She has cerebral palsy, and despite her legs looking a little different, she was sassy/spunky and laughed easily and often. There were so many times we had each other laughing so hard that we couldn't breathe. We weathered all the drama of our school years together, graduating, getting jobs, finding our husbands and raising kids together. Even when I moved to Las Vegas, we stayed in touch, writing letters until we discovered Facebook. I eventually moved back to Wisconsin, about a 3 hour drive away from her, so we saw each other a few times a year. Somewhere along the line, she started to get depressed. She had a lot of issues with extended family, some marital stress and always seemed like she had bad luck when it came to multiple things going to pot at once. When I moved back to Wisconsin, I would go visit her and a lot of the time she would just be complaining and crying about her life. There wasn't a lot I could do but listen and let her know I was there. As time went on, she suffered some losses of loved ones, and some family relationships were severed due to arguments and stubbornness, and her mood got even darker. When I would go visit her, she was so depressed that cried almost the whole time. Gone were the days of making each other laugh until we couldn't breathe, the happy times spent reminiscing about all the crazy things we did, it seemed like no matter what I did or said, she was unhappy. She had stopped letting me in her house about 10 years ago, so I knew it was messy, but over the past few years I have learned that it is much worse than just "messy" it is now at a hoarders level. She shops to lift her mood and she has an emotional attachment to everything. During a girl's getaway a few years back, she saved the wrapper and paper bag that our breakfast scone came in. I found that unusual, but then when another of her friends explained her house situation, it made a lot of sense. She is very defensive/quick tempered and her extreme anxiety makes her think everyone is out to work against her oris not trustworthy. Her husband passed away 3 years ago, and she claims he and her two grown sons "never help" and their version of helping was to throw things away. This friend is used to getting her way, and she somehow got it in her mind that her friends should come to clean up her house for her. Because she hasn't taken care of her health, she is nearly immobile, so she can't physically do much to help herself. One of her friends lives halfway across the country, another is one state away, and I am the closest at 3 hours away. Instead of asking if we could come help, she said it was clear none of her friends care about her since we didn't offer to clean her house for her. These guilt trip tactics is how she operates and it has always worked in the past because we feel sorry for her. I told her it is really unreasonable for her to expect people from out of town/state to come clean her house for her. Especially when we can't stay with her because of the staus of the house. So there is time factor and traveling cost and hotel room and meals involved. She got really mad and accused me of only caring about myself. I told her that if her friendship is conditional on me cleaning up the mess she and her family made, then I guess it wasn't really friendship worth saving. She threw a fit and I stopped responding. There was a time when I would have gone and helped, despite knowing there is pet feces in there and God knows what else. I know the very task would have ended our friendship anyway because she would want to keep everything and I would want to throw it all away to give her a clean space. I just know, with her always negative mindset, she's not mentally ready to let go of all the stuff she has in that house, and whoever cleans that place will do all that work, and it will just be back to cluttered in a short time because she doesn't admit to having any mental health issues. Saying goodbye was almost inevitable in my mind. Its been quite some time since I have truly enjoyed spending time with her, she just has such a negativity bias that it's hard to be around her because it just makes me want to get away from her. When I was reading Mindy Pelz's book Age Like A Girl, about what our bodies go through during menopause, there is a part where she explains that what some people call brain fog is actually our brain naturally disconnecting some of the learned behaviors that served us in our mothering roles. In giving up some of this uber-nurturing behavior, we actually learn to establish boundaries for ourselves that often weren't there when we were being everything to everyone. Sometimes it is mistaken for snark, but it's really a way to protect our energy and mental health. It can be shocking for people who aren't used to you saying no to their requests. How to know who really cares about you, is by their reaction to you standing up for yourself. Most of the people in my life are understanding. I shouldn't even need an excuse to say no. And I should be able to say no and not lose a "friend" but that's how I know she was only in it for her own agenda. I still have all the good memories from happier days, and I didn't compromise my personal boundaries. I honestly don't know if I will every see her again. I hope she can get her house clean and maintain it. I hope she sees she's not OK and gets some mental health help. She has pretty much pushed everyone out of her life. It was a bittersweet feeling establishing my boundaries with her because it meant letting go of somethingthat really wasn't serving me. It's so easy to hang on out of habit or history, but we lose a little bit of ourselves the longer we do that. And this is true of anything we are hanging onto that no longer serves us, guilt, shame, anger, self-abuse and the list is almost endless, isn't it? If it takes us until menopause to learn to let go, that still gives us a lot of years of living genuinely happier. No one is going to look out for you better than you.