People and opinions.

When my ex left me, she ran. She left me with the house (and two mortgages), 4 cats (2 of which were hers), 3 snakes (2 of which were hers) and my frog. She left me with a lot of crap. She told me to throw out all the liquor so she could stop drinking…fine, we did that together about a month before she left – then she left. That was kind of a bitch move. But, I’ve learned that she believes I was an alcoholic, and evidently still am.

C is talking to my ex-friend, who’s the person my ex left me for, essentially. Do I have proof she left me for this person? Not concrete, but a year before she left they went to Lollapalooza together. I was going to go with my ex, but financially it made more sense for me to cancel that trip and stay home – and so the ex-friend decided to go with her. That’s all fine and good, but while they were up there the ex took the ex-friend out to a fancy meal, and I’m fairly certain they hooked up…oh, and this was all on MY credit card. Here I am trying to save some money and my ex is out with my ex-friend (current friend and g/f at the time, of course), and spending money like it’s water…ya, she knew she was leaving me a long time before she did.

I drank my ass off for awhile there, and I know that. I accept that. I was depressed, trying to figure out what I could do to make our relationship work better, and it just wasn’t working. I didn’t know why. The ex and I agreed to go to counseling if our relationship ever got to a point where it was warranted – and I asked her about it and she flat out refused. I guess she had already made up her mind.

During the last few months of our living together, the ex was "diagnosed" as "bi-polar". Okay…lovely. I dealt with it, but she was up with my ex-friend out on our porch painting until all hours of the morning in her new "bi-polar" haze. She had another friend (also an ex-friend now) who was bi-polar…and she acted just like her. Chameleon. I saw this when we first started dating – the ease of which she had to change clothes and personalities at the drop of a hat…I found it rather appealing, actually. She was a complete femme with me, and I loved it…but, at work she was a butch hauling boxes around as that’s the side of the job that she enjoyed. Duality, change, flux, ease of moving in and out. That was my ex.

When she asked us to poor out the alcohol so she could deal with her supposed struggle with it (she rarely drank, and when we did go out and drink it was usually one or two cocktails she’d have, max) – and we didn’t drink much at home, together – and I generally went out and drank when I did go out…and she encouraged me to take my other friend (also an ex-friend) to go out and drink with because she didn’t want to go and didn’t want to hang out with me, okay…I got the hint, I went out with the other friend (I should have seen her pushing me away, but I didn’t want to believe it)…so, again, when she asked me to let go of the booze, that was fine – I was fine with that, especially if it meant we could start repairing whatever it was that was so horribly broken, I went along with all this. I went along with this because it was in her nature to change and flux and try new things and want to switch things up. She was a vegetarian at least two separate times in our 9+ year relationship – she’d just decide one day, "I don’t want to eat meat anymore", so fine, I went along with it. I went so far as to try a Tofurkey with her one year for Thanksgiving – ugh, that was horrid, but I was supportive.

Well, I didn’t realize that she had an "alcohol addiction" – how could I know this? She rarely drank, at least with me – we drank with another ex-friend (the one who’s bi-polar)…oh, and while I didn’t realize she struggled with alcohol addiction, she evidently also had a drug addiction I wasn’t aware of. Maybe that was her bi-polar meds she was put on (she’s not bi-polar, it turns out), or maybe she was doing Coke or Pot with the ex bi-polar friend? I think she did Coke…though, I didn’t know of her doing all this stuff with that friend, it would make a lot of sense if she was, and explain a lot of the erratic behavior. It also explains how she ended up with the ex-friend so easily – this friend was her voice of reason, the one who would hang out with her while I was trying to get some sleep so I could go to work (while the ex was on unemployment), the one who would whisper in her ear that she was better off without me, that she shouldn’t be with me. I know these things because I will admit I broke into her e-mail (my ex’s) and I saw their conversations about their sex-play and other things…and yet I was the monster. I was still in a relationship with this person and the ex-friend had come in and easily taken her away from me because I was the addict? Hmmmm…

Well, the point of all this is that C is talking to the ex-friend – and I was completely fine with that, and still am, but now I know, based on my asking her today (again, sixth sense, I knew something was said), about their conversation last night via text – yes, I was an addict, I am an addict, (all indirectly said) and two addicts in the house is not a good thing. C is an addict to many things – and combats them, one after the other – she realizes this, she’s getting help for this, and she’s put shopping and food at bay, now it’s alcohol. Both of us like alcohol and use it to it’s disadvantage – I’ll freely admit that as well. No, it’s not healthy, yes I realize I drink too much. Do I drink all the time? No. Do I wake up and drink? No. Do I let drinking take over my work and ability to earn money and have relationships and do other daily life things? No. Do I drink and drive? No…but, have, and refuse to do it if I’ve had more than a couple of drinks and realize I shouldn’t drive at all if it’s too soon after a drink…but, I digress…does alcohol control my life? No. Do I think it’s a problem? It’s becoming a problem in that I’m using it as a tool to work through crap and forget crap, and I don’t want to do that anymore, and I have to stop allowing that to happen. C has been doing the same thing and fully realizes that it needs to stop – it needs to stop being a cushion for calmness, because it just causes more problems in the end.

C’s therapist does not feel that we cannot live together; does not feel that we shouldn’t be in a relationship together, and this gives me a positive outlook – and her. <

/span>

Why does it bother me so much, then, that someone who I consider an ex-friend has told C what her opinion of me is? Because she did the same thing with my ex – she came in, told her that I was a horrible person, indirectly, and started worming her way in to become her savior. I don’t think C is going to leave me for this ex-friend, at all, but I do think this ex-friend could start to make her feel the opposite of what she feels…because I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen her do this with other people on other topics as well. It’s what she does.

I’ve never spoken ill of this person to C that I can recall, not until now…because she’s showing her true colors, and I want C to be aware of what could happen. I want her to know that she has some traits just like her ex – the "you should do what I think you should do, and here’s why, but I’m not going to tell you to do these things, I’ll just puppeteer them." Then again, maybe I’m being too harsh and maybe she’s not like this at all anymore…but, hindsight is 20/20, and I can see the past even more clearly now. This person wants you to like her, is very caring and gets you to like her, until you do something she doesn’t like and then she pulls away – and makes you want more, so you change up your situation. Because you want her to like you – because you want her to care. This is just like C’s mother…this is just like C’s ex…I just want C to be careful of this one, so that she doesn’t have a three-peat on her hand…and I would hate to lose her because of someone’s opinion of me from 7 years ago. 

While I’m not the same person, while I’ve grown exponentially, I am still cautious of those that have hurt me before. If a snake bites once, they’ll bite again. Snakes bite, it’s a fact of life.