Standby and The Death of The Other Girl: Part 1 of 3

We have heard from Standby (the last ex of The Other Girl) again.

After a few correspondences, and him wanting answers, we told him he knew where to find them. 

"You know as well as I do that you don't want me reading that blog, Frank" he texted to us. Which made us angry because Frank was not here that day, and in fact, has not been around much these past few days.

We’re apprehensive to write about Standby much, especially after he said, “Not reading what you've written about me and your past friends has allowed me to defend you on several occasion, to the people you've hurt with it”

But we feel we must, it's the perfect beginning to starting to tell the story of the death of The Other Girl, and we have some things we want to set straight.

First, we want to address that the only thing that may have been hurtful was a single post about The Non-Bestie (TNB), The Other Girl’s best friend – the post was actually about how hard it had been for The Other Girl, and the reasons she had for not sharing any of Us with her friend(s).

Second, we’ve written about Standby himself, which we know has not been kind on many levels; we’ll get to that in a bit. 

We have no idea to whom he is referring; who these people we have supposedly hurt with our writing, besides him…and possibly The Non-Besti (TNB)...are – we have no clue. There are no entries regarding any people who he might have contact with that might seek answers from him. (For instance, Third Date Flunky – or any of the other men that The Other Girl wrote about last year – he does not know any of them). There are no entries written about ANY of The Other Girl's old friends…so we’re confused about who he is defending us to.

Third, we wanted to point out a curiosity. How can he be defending us if he is not reading this blog, having no information to back up any claims? He does not know what has happened, who we are, what we've been through in the past two and a half months, nothing.

We are stumped.

To get back to why the contact was initiated in the first place – because he should NOT be contacting us - you’ll have to read Cassandra’s blog entry from Saturday, regarding a mutual friend who was mentally ill…who, as it turns out, we now know, took her own life recently. (‘We Have Nothing To Lose’  http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/04/we-have-nothing-to-lose.html)

He had sent us a text Monday, two days after the first message about the woman, inquiring about the relocation of some items that The Other Girl had been storing in his garage, asking if he could pick up two CD’s of his that we still have in our possession; and asking if we had received the e-mail regarding this woman.

Obviously the answer to the question about the CD’s was “no”, because we don’t want to see him ever again. We also told him we’d be taking back a computer monitor The Other Girl had given him; we never would have given it to him – we told her when she did it that she would regret it, because we wanted it. We’ll be honest, some of what we said to him in reply to his messages was angry.

“I was under the impression that the monitor was given to me” he texted.

“We were under the impression that you weren’t an asshole. Guess everyone makes a mistake”, we replied.

He was angry about that. Asking why we are still holding on to the anger, after kicking him out of our life; and how can we still think he is an asshole, saying he felt he has served his penance. He also said that “to the end of my days I doubt I’ll be able to understand how you could be so hurtful just because we were unable to understand what you were going through”.

Hurtful? We could have been more hurtful than simply cutting people out of our life, and considering the things he had said to us…we did a pretty good job of NOT being hurtful to him.

Standby claimed that his purpose in sending us the message about this woman was to not make us sad, but was sent because he worries about us “going down the same path”; or more specifically we suppose, because he doesn’t know about anything within the pages of this blog, is worried about Frank and The Other Girl ending their life. He doesn’t have any understanding that The Other Girl is gone.

How does he not know she is gone and how can we think he’s a fucking asshole?

There were three events that had happened the last full day of The Other Girl’s life. We won’t go into detail about the other two at this point. The day she found out he’d read her blog, despite her telling him not to, was a catalyst in her death, and looked something like this.

The Other Girl was at work, it was Friday, February 11^th, 2011, and she was in her office working when she got a text from Standby.

We’ve imported part of the original post, in two sections, from: The "Death" of Standby and the "Birth" of a Villain, originally posted on Sunday, February 20^th, 2011 - http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/02/death-of-standby-and-birth-of-villain.html - Frank wrote about the events over a week after we disposed of The Other Girl. That first week without her had been very difficult for all of us, and some of us grieved her loss for even longer.

The first entry:

“In any case, the event that set off the following chain of messages was a text confession that The Villain (formerly Standby) messaged telling us he had broken a promise, and had read our blog.  Clearly he wasn’t happy with what he read; I don’t blame him, but I was being honest.  And I was being honest with him all along, she tried to tell him on more than one occasion - but she was scared.

And now, I present to you…the transcript of the death of Standby.

FRANK:
“I am sorry if I am the reason you are feeling ill. I’d feel ill if I were you and reading that too…
I told you I am crazy
You didn’t believe me
I’m battling myself right now
I haven’t been able to tell anyone anything
I am sorry
For everything. All of me is sorry
I won’t be seeing you for awhile”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:
“That’s going to hurt, not seeing you
I am sorry too”

FRANK:
“There is nothing I can do to fix this. I am not well. I haven’t been. I don’t know what to do.”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“Why don’t you want to see me though?
there is always something we can do to fix this.”

FRANK:

“Please don’t text me again. I am not well. You’ve already seen enough of my crazy. Everybody has at this point.

Leave me alone.”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:
“No. You’ll always mean a lot to me and I’m willing to give you some space, but I won’t leave you alone. I’m sorry this isn’t going to work out for us, but I wrote on FB, all I want is my friend [our former name] back.”

FRANK:

“She not here anymore” [note: what Frank meant is she wasn’t present at that moment. Frank had briefly taken over The Body because The Other Girl was in so much pain]

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

 “I don’t believe that and never will. The [our former name] that I love is in there somewhere and very close at that. You can get rid of Frank easier than you think.”

FRANK:

“Leave me alone”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“Never [our former name]”

FRANK:

“You are making me angry. Please.”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“Ok. You know where I stand and how I feel about our friendship so contact me when you’re ready.”

When Frank was done with her correspondence with Standby she left The Other Girl to read the messages in her office.

The Other Girl let out a scream. She slammed her door shut, with her bosses (one of which, is FNA/The Jeans, if you hadn’t ever put the pieces together – we’ll explain why they were the same person with two names another day) standing outside the door. The Other Girl screamed, she screamed really loud. She screamed, “Fuck my life!” She cried; she kicked walls; she kicked a refrigerator and cupboards that were in her office. She crouched to her knees on the dirty floor, sobbing. She continued to yell, cry, kick, and scream. She was out of control with anger, sadness and fear, she was upset that the man she loved had broken a promise. She never wanted him to know about Frank, to read Frank’s writing. She was also upset because she knew she had lost him forever.

Frank stepped in, whipped open the door, yelled to FNA, “Drinks! Let’s go for drinks!” Frank closed the door, let The Other Girl cry a bit longer, cleaned us up, and headed out.

Wild eyed, radiating anger, we stormed down the street with FNA in tow, gesturing madly, unleashing everything, the story of what had just happened tumbling from our mouth, talking about other events of the day, mixed with news that The Mother was cancelling her trip to come see us. Had he not been there that day we would have been hit by a car, we were unable to see anything beyond the storm brewing. Our head was a hurricane of fragments spinning out of control. Our eyes that day felt like wild fire.

This event was in the center of two big painful events that had happened to The Other Girl that day, neither of which, surprisingly, was The Mother cancelling her visit. (which later she rescheduled after talking with us)

The following day, or even that night; at this point that weekend tends to be blurrier to some of us, Frank has more clarity on it…The Other Girl received this text in the midst of our work to destroy her:

"Frank, my knowing what TOG went through isn`t going to help bring her back. You`ve made it very clear that you`re not going to let her come back anyway. It`s also not going to make you make any smart decisions about your life, and it certainly isn`t going to make you a decent, or even a nicer, human being. So there goes my friend. Good luck to you. If you so chose, you can tell her that I`m sorry and that if she ever comes back, I`ll be happy to hear from her. I don`t need to hear from Frank anymore. I recognise that you only exist because of what TOG gone through, but I really don`t care. You`re mean...to everyone. I guaratee things with FNA aren`t going to work out and if you don`t change, you`re going to be alone forever, because you go out of your way to kill the soul of everyone who comes near you. Starting with TOG"

[Original posting: February 17, 2011 : http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/02/to-human-if-indeed-thats-what-you-are.html ]

The highlighted portions are the parts that ring through our head, to this day, a mere two and a half months later. We still remember the pain The Other Girl felt when she read them, in the midst of our destruction of her, words that enraged Frank, and some of the rest of us, as The Other Girl lay curled on the kitchen floor, screaming for her life, gasping for air long enough to call Fabulous People, asking them to come over; because she was afraid the neighbours were going to call the cops from all the screaming and high pitched squealing.

[Second Entry of The "Death" of Standby and the "Birth" of a Villain, originally posted on Sunday, February 20^th, 2011 - http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/02/death-of-standby-and-birth-of-villain.html]

A couple days later…[Added note: AFTER THE DEATH OF THE OTHER GIRL]

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“I apologize for breaking the silence. I just need to know if I’m going to run into either of you at [insert musician friends name]’s show tonight, else I won’t go”

FRANK:

“Either one?" [I tried to call him after this]

NO ANSWER

FRANK:

“Yeah…don’t explain yourself. Don’t worry about running into me anywhere. I hardly leave my apartment but for going to work.”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“I was away from my phone. I’m sorry. I wasn’t not responding.

I’m trying to get used to the idea of Frank, but I don’t know how to refer to you now. That’s what I meant by either one.”

FRANK:

“Fine. You don’t need to worry about seeing me unless you are in the [insert area of city] I don’t plan to leave the vicinity unaccompanied.
You can stay as far away from me as you want.”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“What about the conference?”

FRANK:

“Just don’t come near me. You clearly couldn’t ask the questions you needed answers to the first time and I don’t feel comfortable around anyone who won’t talk to ME.”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“I am not sure what you mean by me not asking questions. And I’m more than willing to let you talk. I’ve been trying to respect your request that I leave you alone. Believe me when I tell you that I’ve wanted to make contact pretty much constantly since Friday.”

FRANK:

“Well, you clearly had questions if you felt like being the very last person in her life she could trust

To break their promises

And lie”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“You’re right, [our former name], in that I broke a promise to you, but I didn’t lie about it. I told you straight away and apologised”

FRANK:

“And accused her of lying, which she never did”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“I really do want to talk to you. I want us to be friends again. I want to accept who you are. I admit that the last one is going to be challenging, because I don’t think Frank and I like each other very much right now. But I really hope we can change all that someday soon. Please let’s aim for that. Please.

And in terms of asking more questions I would never have thought to ask if you were mocking me and making me look like an ass on the internet for all to see. Insert my interjection here, NOBODY KNOWS WHO HE IS, save two people who really could give a fuck - unless he shared my link, in which case, DOUBLE ASSHOLE

FRANK:

Fuck off, yeah, it’s all about you.

Nobody knows it was u

Nobody knows it was her

Nobody we knew was reading it Can't say that now, can we

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

Was I pushing you around?

FRANK:

You weren’t listening when she was trying to ask for help

You know what, read it all…start with the journal, read her story

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

You told me otherwise Didn't fucking stop him, and might I say, we had a conversation just prior to this where we discussed mental illness diagnoses and talked about my/her past, and all the abuse in my/her past

FRANK:

“Yeah, well, she wasn’t good at asking for help

I am, and now I know who to ask

And how to do it

Read the blog top to bottom

Get to know what she went through, some of it is vacuous but read it.

Read the poetry

Understand
Then talk to me again, in the meantime keep pitying your selfish pride.”

He was upset because The Other Girl and Frank had been seeing him and FNA at the same time; despite the fact that they (The Other Girl, Frank and Standby) had discussed it. Frank told him (though he thought he had been talking to only The Other Girl) that she had feelings for FNA, and she wasn’t willing to give him up. This was all talked about before he even read this blog, back in February; what Standby had been upset about was both the way in which Frank had written about him, and her talk of adoration for FNA within her writing.

The Other Girl had been in love with Standby. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Frank did not love Standby at all. She liked having sex with him, but Frank’s heart was tied to FNA, for many, many, reasons.

Does he expect that what he said about Frank, that she "goes out of her way to kill every who comes near [her]", that The other Girl's lingering pain caused by someone with whom we have no ties, is something we even desire to forgive?

The last thing he said was, “It’s all very disconcerting, making a decision to leave an entire life behind like that. Was it some kind of self preservation tactic? Do you somehow feel we all ganged up on [The Other Girl]? How do you just stop caring about the people who cared about you?”

How do we care about people that only a dead girl cared about?

~ Written by: We...without the help of Frank.