Why Have A Secret Blog If You Aren't Going To Bitch About People On It?

Note: this is long, boring and poorly written. Go here instead, to be entertained an informed by an enthusiastic dinosaur.

Ok, you might have read my reaction to my best friend splitting up with her boyfriend here. Back then I was all ‘Single girls are gonna rock out with our cocks out and paint this goddamn town red, foshizzle!!!’ Or something. But, as time has passed the initial relief of not having to put up with the boyfriend dramas has worn off. And the resentment of what I put up with for two and a half years is really starting to sink in.

Things were going pretty well until a few weeks when one of my lovely gal pals hosted a party. Much alcohol and merriment ensued, excellent barbequed food was consumed, drinking games enjoyed, there was a pav (a party isn’t really a party unless there’s a pavlova), some charming boys attended, and I got the chance to catch up with some long lost buddies from high school. All good. However, when one particular male friend was leaving, I was encouraged by my friend Teagan (by this stage, very drunk) and Annie (my best friend, had not been drinking) to follow him and kiss him. Basically, I’ve had a bit of history with this guy but currently I’m not at all interested in him and I told my friends this, thinking that would be the end of it. They continued to push, saying ‘kiss him, just do it’ and when I said ‘I’m capable of making my own decisions and I don’t want to’ they still wouldn’t relent. Then Annie gives me a verbal slap in the face by saying ‘Well, I’m not going to listen to you whinging tomorrow about how much you regret not kissing him.’

That cut like a knife. For two reasons:

Firstly, it suggests that I am incapable of making my own decisions and would be immediately remorseful that I didn’t stick my tongue down his throat like I was told to. Newsflash: I’m entitled to pash or not pash whomever I choose. If I say I don’t want to mack someone, then chances are I don’t want to mack them. End of story. Your peer pressure and ‘kiss him, go on KISS HIM’ are reminiscent of 14 year-olds behind the bus stop after school. We’re adults now, move on.

Secondly, and most importantly, even if I did regret it the next day, the one person I should be able to count on to listen to my whinging is my best friend. For fuxake, I listened to her dramas for years. Years. And she wasn’t prepared to give me One. Fucking. Day. So I told her what I thought of that. And we had a huge, public fight. Yep, classy, I know, but I wasn’t just going to let that one go. In the end she started crying and, much like a man, I cannot deal with tears. They unnerve me and make me lose my fighting spirit. So we made an uneasy truce and skolled cheap wine to forget about it.

But I guess the whole situation was indicative of what our friendship has become, and what I feel like I’ve become to her. I’m being taken for granted. And it fucking hurts. But I probably should have seen it coming. It follows the pattern of the way our friendship changed when she hooked up with her man. Suddenly I became the fall-back plan. Boyfriend away for the weekend? No worries, I’ll hang out with Mel instead. Had a massive fight and ‘broken up’? I’ll see if Mel wants to take me out and cheer me up. Oh, hang on, we just got back together… sorry Mel, I’ll have to give the shenanigans a miss this weekend, Shane and I are going to do couple stuff.

It was a recurring theme and I really should have nipped it in the bud sooner. But I have other friends, awesome friends who were always happy to drink and dance and cause trouble with me so I just started spending a lot more time with them. And having a lot more fun. In fact, a large part of the reason why I’m moving next weekend is to be closer to them so we can involve ourselves in even more debauchery. These girls love me, I know that for sure, and I’ve never felt like I was a contingency plan to them. They want to hang out with me because I’m twelve kinds of awesome not because the person they really want to be spending time with is unavailable.

So I’m starting to realise that Annie’s new singledom isn’t going to be as great as I initially thought. See, she wants all my time now. As is often the case with long time pals, we have a lot of mutual friends and the last few weekends have been heavy on parties and social occasions involving our wider circle of friends. Consequently, we have been spending a lot of time together. And I desperately want my distance. But she doesn’t want to spend a weekend alone (she hasn’t spent any time by herself since the break-up) because she doesn’t want to be reminded that the single life can be lonely. Well, tough shit sweetheart. The single life IS lonely at times. Sometimes it’s lonely and depressing and confidence crushing. I’m not going to constantly entertain her so that she doesn’t have to open her eyes and see the reality of her decision.

Selfish as it sounds, I want to keep my friends and our mutual friends separate. When I go out with my posse of girls I don’t want to feel obligated to invite her. If she doesn’t have anything to do that Saturday night, too bad. It’s not my job to fill in all the time she used to spend with her man. I cultivated my own friendships in that time and there’s no way I would give them up just because she’s bored or lonely. It’s not that I’m trying to be spiteful, I’m not motivated by thoughts like ‘she ditched me, now that she’s single I’m going to do the same to her’, it’s more a case of wanting to feel appreciated and gravitating towards the people who make me feel the best about myself.

Annie and I have been friends for ten years so I don’t think it’s just going to fall to pieces, but there was definitely a shift when she entered what Cosmo would call ‘The Boyfriend Cave’ (fuck you Cosmo and your fucking dating catchphrases) and that can’t be repaired by saying ‘hey, I’m single now, lets go back to the way we were’. Like I said, I have a lot of resentment towards her because she really hurt me and fucked me over on a lot of occasions. She ditched my Mum’s 50^th party at the last minute because she and Shane got back together and he wanted to go camping that night. So they went camping. She fought with him via phone every single day on our girly road trip earlier this year. Including my birthday. The same thing happened at the festival we went to for New Years Eve. And practically every night we were out together. Fun, hey?

Writing it all down makes me feel like a total sucker for putting up with her shit for so long. I think any sane person would have cut their losses and ended the friendship a long time ago. I guess deep down inside I hold this hope that things will return to the way they used to be and everything will be puppy dogs and rainbows again. But that isn’t going to happen. And it makes me sad.