Letters to women I thought were friends

[Blueberry]

To cb,

I know you seemed in a hurry to stop discussing in the summer and just get our friendship going again. The problem is: I feel so hurt at all your criticisms of me. I also feel dumbfounded that you could possibly think it's OK to just go and dump all that stuff on me, saying isn't that what friendship is for, when the going gets tough you can support each other? Well, not if you're doing your level best to support my parents and other FOO mbrs and another friend who is undermining my boundaries. I could just about handle it if you didn't agree with me on setting boundaries. It would be hard for me after all I've said about the massive dysfunction in my FOO, I admit that. It would be hard but I could probably just about manage it. But when you were actually supporting this other friend and trying to make me see it her way, though I never even asked you! I'm just flabbergasted. I don't even have emotions, I'm just blank. But I know if I looked in the emails I wrote to you and the other friend, I know I would start spluttering with rage.

Both of you are coming up with excuses for my FOO, you're trying to make their behaviour look less toxic, trying to show I haven't tried hard enough or something. sj is suggesting that better communication on my part could change the way FOO deals with me. I HAVE GIVEN FOO MORE THAN ENOUGH CHANCES ALREADY!!! I HAVE GIVEN FOO TOO MANY CHANCES!!! YOU and sj HAVE SEEN THE STATE I HAVE RETURNED HOME IN AFTER CONTACT WITH FOO. BUT YOU STILL THINK MY BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS FOO IS GOING OVERBOARD when all I am doing is PROTECTING MYSELF. I HAVE WASTED YEARS, DECADES OF MY LIFE GIVING FOO CHANCES. I have had enough, more than enough. I'm sort-of-sad to let your friendships go, but I'm sad to lose FOO as well, but I have to let people like you and people like FOO mbrs go because staying in any kind of close contact with you is DAMAGING me.

Now I understand after the last contact in person where you were moaning about the trains, that your remarks about the difficulties of sticking to corona regulations were just you moaning, but at the time I really thought you were explaining your reasons for disregarding the regulations. It seems that in all your missives and contact since whenever it started this year that I'm at fault. I did apologise for swearing during that one phone call though I was swearing at the situation rather than at you, but I don't recollect you apologising for anything. I could be wrong, I could go all through those emails and find you did. My impression is that you didn't, that you were trying to prove me wrong in so many instances. I feel sort of the way I did as a teenager in FOO - I'd rather have no talk at the table occasionally than be forced to converse the way FOO did. (I was asked on my birthday what I wanted to talk about since I objected to F and B1 going on about their usual subjects. 'I'd rather have no talk at all' I said.) Or in this case, I'd rather have no close friendships than have people thinking they know more than me about dealing with MY dysfunctional family and trying to steer me the way they want me to go. That is what sj is doing. And you cb are supporting her in that. Even though she's not even a friend of yours. As I said, I could just about manage you saying you don't agree with me about my actions on FOO or I could manage you saying you don't want to hear about any of it. On the contrary, you always used to ask questions and questions and I thought you were being empathetic but you weren't. I didn't always understand your treatment of other people but I let it be, I didn't criticise you for it. Sometimes I patiently waited hoping you might change your mind sometime, especially with things that indirectly affected me too. Whereas in some of all this, you have been criticising me for the way I am interacting with other people and setting limits/boundaries that have no affect on you whatsoever! Which means you are interfering. You are trying to prevent me from growing and changing and sometime or other that was going to cause an explosion - see the phone call where I started swearing. I did apologise for that, but also left a warning: Anybody who thinks it might be a good idea to criticise me for setting somebody else a limit is going to get an earful. I'm not putting up with interference of that sort anymore. I remain flabbergasted! How is that OK? How did you think that could be helpful? But you did. You wanted to make sure I didn't lose the friendship of sj because what would I do without it?? I will manage. But you, in leaning way out, not being grounded and centred in yourself, but looking out for somebody else - me?? sj?? hard to say who - have lost my friendship.

Undoubtedly it was time for me to remove myself from your friendship, I hadn't known all these things you hold against me, but I've learned them this year and it's too late to go back. That's the problem often when my friendships go awry. I've been putting up with the behaviour too long. I haven't said much or even anything before because it's so blinking difficult for me due to childhood trauma. That is something for me to work on, but I still don't see that it gives you an EXCUSE to treat me as you do when I'm giving pretty obvious signals for you to back down, e.g. my voice is loud and I start swearing. I suppose when I'm at a loss for words that's not an obvious signal for you though it is for me.

Yeah, I guess I need to work on communicating limits and boundaries to people I like before things get to the stage they get to. But I still don't see that that gives you an excuse to continue to think you know better than I do what is good for me. I didn't ask you for your opinion or help, you just piled it all on, completely unasked in fact. The problem with sj is: I have communicated limits before but she thinks she knows better than I do and so she didn't observe the limit and went way over my boundary.
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It's sad, like with FOO, but I need to save myself. Same sort of issue applies with FOO and both these no-longer-friends - they think they are emotionally healthier than me possibly because I have an official diagnosis and probably mainly because I don't function as well as an adult of my age would be expected to, but also because I don't lie down and put up with things anymore. In fact sometimes I create a total fuss where they think I should just put up with things e.g. with people like business neighbour. It's true, cb thinks I could have dealt differently with people in my building and not allowed things to escalate, also way back before said business neighbour was here.  This year, creating a total fuss was the only way to keep business neighbour and his plans at bay. Maybe none of it would have happened quite that way if I had managed to exude an air of 'here and no further' from day one in this building but I don't probably thanks to all that trauma in childhood so how I'm dealing with it now is how I'm dealing with it. If sj and cb lived here they could deal with it in their ways, but they don't. They're not even tenants anymore.

Most of the above is kind of stream-of-consciousness, so I'm sorry but almost no paragraph breaks. Don't feel capable of going back and putting any in either.

[rainydiary]

I read your letter.  Thank you for putting it out there.

[Blueberry]

Thank you for reading such a long post, rainydiary, and for commenting

It did do me some good to write it, helped to get some of the hurt and anger out. Helped me also get some more clarity on my way forwards.