Last weekend we had the misfortune of having to attend a conference that The Other Girl had originally signed up for. Two months later, after I'd taken over her life, we had no choice but to attend; it was work related.
Initially we were worried because Standby was slated to attend; he had actually planned on attending with TOG...
The Pup was going to accompany us, but plans changed and we ended up attending on our own. We did our best to ignore his presence and once we spotted him, we turned and walked away. We had no doubt that he saw us, and it was confirmed by an e-mail we received later that evening.
We responded with: "got it""Hi [TOG],
Seeing you today, I immediately thought of our last communication, for which I would like to apologise. I have been concentrating on being more positive about the most important people and aspects in my life, but with my last text, I failed. It was mean-spirited and you should never get a message like that. Please take it as an expression of the passionate emotions that you have always brought out in me. Hopefully, from now on, those feelings will express themselves with more positivity and hope.
That whole conversation certainly helped me to realise that there are aspects of your past, which besides knowing about, I don't understand their full impact on you.
Without sounding to analytical, I hope you don't mind me saying that I think you're really going to have to concentrate on accepting positivity and positive people in your life. Your past experience has left you with a lot of mistrust and anger towards the people who care about you most. And like many in your situation, you gravitate towards, and look to gratify, people who don't treat you well and aren't out for your best interests.
But just as your mother is not in the same place she was twenty years ago, and is now much more 'motherly', I'm not trying to hurt you or betray your trust either.
If you don't want to talk about this with me right now, I understand. If that's the case, please just let me know you got the message. Of course, I would prefer a response, because I just plain miss you.
Take care,
[Standby]"
The following day he replied: "no response?"
We replied:
"what do you want from us? All we have to say to you is fuck off, just like that's all we have to say to everyone from [TOGS] past. You don't know the half of what we've been going through the last year...you refuse[d] to learn, to read, to pay attention. So you can fuck right off [Standby] <-this is where we used his full name.and then...
There. A response. Happy fucking Monday.
My life as you knew it, is a different landscape now...and there is no place for people who've trampled on us. You're one of them.Standbys reply:
and later..."I never meant on trample on you. I know that my words and actions have caused such negative feelings within you, especially towards me. I'm not proud of the things I've said and done these last few weeks. You may or may not have noticed that I have apologised for all of it. And you're right that this all started with a great big bruise to my ego, so you really shouldn't be surprised that I haven't read your blog since then. By your own admission, it wasn't very nice, regardless of it being true. I get that you're mad that I haven't read it and that's why I don't understand what you've been going through.
I'll read it, for a better understanding and with hope that maybe you someday won't have so very much anger towards me, and instead of shutting me out for not understanding, we can talk about it.
I still love you, [TOG]. I'm sorry I haven't been what you needed me to be."
"I have read both the Emergence of Frank and The Issue of Frank. There's not much I didn't know before about how Frank came to be. I'm still not 100% clear on why Frank showed up recently.
I suspect the part where you write that you're not angry anymore is ancient history. I know that all of this had made your life more difficult, and for that I once again apologise. I didn't strive to make things difficult. I took a punch to the stomach and reacted by letting you know that I didn't want to be romantically involved anymore. From what I read, that didn't seem illogical to me, though I know I could have gone about it better. Frank was more a part of your life than I had ever known her to be, and she wasn't at all fond of me. What would you have done?
I didn't want to be out of your life. When you told me later that night to leave you alone, it was the most heartbreaking of all.
I'm sure I've written more than you want to read from me right now. If you still feel that I've screwed up any future of our friendship, we should make arrangements for your bike, bed and other stuff to be removed from my place.
I'm so sorry it's come to this."And my final response:
"Throw away all the stuff if need be; we are not in place where we can even conceive of dealing with finding more storage, seeing as we have nobody, save Fabulous People. We don't talk to anybody anymore, except [names removed], from [TOG's] life. We've discussed it with The Mother, what to do with the things you have of [TOGs]...but we are at an impass for a couple of months.
The only thing we wanted you to realize is that it had nothing to do with you, none of it; that [TOG] was trying to reach out (you heard her say she felt like she was dying, she felt ill...look at all the weight she lost...were the only ways she knew to reach out). She spiraled out of control, she needed help, but just like everyone else, it was all about them; and so here I am, because I remain the only person she's ever been able to count on for help, until very recently, and you were not one of those people. She tried to tell you she wasn't ready, she knew, finally, in the new year, that I was here...and that we were in no place to form real relationships with anybody. But you couldn't wait until I helped her. And then I had to send her away.
What brought me here? Could have been TOG talking with The Father [in January 2010], about all the crap that had happened and trying to get answers, and him not acknowledging anything and trying to make god the answer...a god, which as you know, TOG never believed in [for obvious reasons], nor do I; it could have been Significant Other, lying to her for weeks, and it may have been small, but it was just another person who told her he loved her, but then couldn't be honest about a small thing [February 2010]; it could have been friends not being there, sharing her secrets [and the fucking year, 2010 ] and her realization that her biggest secret would have to stay buried forever if she stayed with those people, who were helping her keep me away from helping her, unbeknown to them.
I imagine you'll never understand us at this point, and the fact that you were so resistant to do so in the first place indicates to ME that you are not for our new life, as we release all the pain onto pages and try to rebuild, and find peace.
I'd like to say sorry. But we're really not. When we saw you at the conference, and we did, both days. All we felt was...nothing...but irritation.
Know this, that [TOG] loved you. She would have spent her whole life with you. But I couldn't have that for her. You didn't know me, and I knew you wouldn't like me."
Oh honey... He is desperately opening that door open for you. I've read most of your blog, and I can understand quite a bit of it... I know you are angry with him here, but you can forgive and not forget. You can get to a point where you only allow in a persons positivity and they have to be comfortable with your boundaries on the negativity. No one is perfect... Not a damn one of us... We all can be really shitty... You just have to know your boundaries with those people.
ReplyDeletexoxo d.
Have you read where he told us we kill souls?
ReplyDeletehttp://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/02/to-human-if-indeed-thats-what-you-are.html
If not, read that and we'd like to hear what you have to say. He's said unforgivable things to us...because he is only concerned for himself.
Yes, I read that one as well, but I'd like to point out that you (plural) have said some nasty things as well... It's kind of a pot meet kettle deal. You can't expect people to give you more than what you're willing to give.
ReplyDeleteRelationships have A LOT to do with reciprocity. You treat yourself and others the way way you wanted to be treated... The respect you show for yourself comes through and people treat you differently. That's why Frank works sometimes and doesn't others. You have to find balance between the too. Can't be black or white. Sorry loves.
We guess because he wasn’t aware of Frank until The Other Girl was fully aware of it; She had thought We were over and gone, that Standby only understood it as rejection, and responded as such. Given our fragile mental state, as a trio, at the time, it was not good.
ReplyDeleteWe also saw flags when we thought about his last girlfriend, who had mental disabilities and who, to our knowledge, has not left her apartment in months. We were not willing to risk losing our job, in the face of someone who had recently told us that he didn’t really believe doctors when we talked about a blod test having to do with possible dementia.
He didn’t like me. And after telling us we kill the souls of others…we decided that you don’t say things like that to someone who just got done sharing an entire history of mental, physical and sexual abuse, not a week before; maybe that hadn’t been specified in the story…but that’s what happened.
We respect your view on this. You might not fully understand us. That’s fine. We know what was done to us, we know the situation and we know the reaction was out of hurt because in his mind the only thing he saw happening is he didn’t get chosen, when in fact there were about a million other things going on that we were trying to deal with. It had nothing to do with him or FNA. It had everything to do with The Other Girl finally having to come to terms, after a year of struggle, with the fact that she was never going to be able to run from her “disabilities” while trying to overcome massive amounts of pain. She wasn’t strong enough to do all that, and maintain the kind of relationship that Standby was looking for, or endure the kind of friendships she has created for herself.
Thanks for reading, we hope whatever brought you here to our blog was an attempt to understand something, we hope you read more and try to understand further; because this issue, while relevant to the last few months of our life, is irrelevant in the face of our past, and our future of dealing with mental illness and chronic pain.