There will be times when you’ll have to ask yourself “What’s best for ME?”. I have a problem with this myself, but I’ve gotten better.
I’ll tell you a story about how I was pushed around helplessly when I should have stood up for myself. I’ve told this before because I’m still angry and need to clear my mind of it now and then, but I think it fits here.
See, when I was fourteen I met this girl, A-L, during a late evening with the confiramtion gang. She said I looked as lonely as she felt, standing aside. Actually, I was enjoying some peace and quite, trying to stay away from the idiots in my group. But anyway, she was nice that time, we talked for several hours straight.
I should have started to feel worried when I slipped on some ice and fell on my back. We both laughed - but the important thing was that she did nothing trying to help me get back up.
It started there. For a couple of months, I still thought she was nice.
Then one day we decided to go to the shop and buy some candy.
On the way there we chatted, but I drifted off for a moment and didn’t really listen. When I snapped back she was silent, so I thought that she was done with whatever she had talked about and changed the subject. She looked surprised at first and muttered something, answering snappily whenever I said something more. When we got to the store - and note, <i>not before we were in the middle of the damn store</i>, not during the ten minute walk there when there were no people around - did she break down crying and screaming that I didn’t listen to her. Also that she’d kill herself if I ever betrayed her like all her other friends had done.
What would I do? I was shocked to the bone of course.
There it started. Three and half a year I stood by her side, asked her how it went with her sick and twisted stories about pedophiles and nymphomaniacs to support her, didn’t argue with her, never spoke against her, did what she wanted to do even if I wasn’t interested.
While she didn’t care one bit about my stories, pushed her views down my throat (for example her holier than thou “I don’t have anything against racists. It’s racism that I don’t like. It’s wrong to call a charity concert “Artists agains Racists”!”. Right, point maybe. But she made it sound like the racists were good little boys and that it was their ideology that went out beating up people), made me feel shitty if I don’t agreed at once, smirked at my ideas and in the end made me paranoid. I STILL freeze when I see blond women at her height.
Another example of her lovely personality where I should have said stop:
She was sleeping over at her sister’s, who lived fifteen minutes away from my house. In the evening, the sister was playing a puzzle game and Jing were helping her. At almost the same time, Jing and A-L pointed at two different things to do, whereupon the sister said, impatiently “Calm down, I can’t do everything at the same time.”
A-L froze for a second, then packed her bags, grabbed her pillows and stormed out into the rainy, ice-cold November night. Jing and me followed.
She was dead-set on going home. And she was not going to come with us home and ask mum and dad to drive us, either. She was going to walk, and that was it.
So we came with her, because we couldn’t just leave her like that, now could we? <I>One bloody Swedish mile through town</I>, that’s ten kilometers, 10000 meters. Rain, close to zero degrees. And the last two kilometers we almost had to carry her because she started freaking at what her parents would say when they realized we had walked all the way.
The worst part was that Jing didn’t want to go but I talked her into it. She was a lot more clear-sighted than I was.
Why did I put myself and Jing through this shit for three and half a year? Because I thought that A-L needed me. And she had said she’d kill herself. She even showed me wounds she had cut on her wrists at one time when I happened to come an hour too late to her house than we had decided.
Bullshit. I needed some goddamn backbone too, and I started to grow one in the end.
She called me last spring, trying to pick up our “friendship” again. I replied and gave her one chance by going to see her, but I never called back after that. She had grown up a bit but I wasn’t going to get caught again.
Then she sent a very beautifully composed mail practically saying “I tried so hard, but I didn’t feel welcome. You two will always have a special place in my heart, but now I want a divorce.” Not exactly like that, but it was the gist of it.
I went through all that shit, for what? She wasn’t family, she wasn’t nice to me, the only thing she had was a threat that I’d kill her if I left. Great. I won’t let this happen again, and you have to think about what YOUR needs are too, Chris. Your brother has a disease, but he’ll live. A-L had terrible self-consciousness, and she said she was prepared to kill herself. That gives them <b>no</b> right to control and bitch at either of us.
