This has been edited and therefore popped to the top

Some folks are just the best damned liars I’ve ever met.  They really don’t mean to be, in fact I believe that they aren’t even aware that they aren’t being fully honest. If honesty is an onion they have peeled down to layer 4 and think, hey, this is full honesty but level 15 hasn’t hit them yet.

Mostly they simply aren’t truly and rigorously honest with themselves. Not yet, maybe one day. They tell you just enough truth that they read as real (and they can tell themselves and you that they are being honest) but there is so much left out, not enough peeling has been done, and so many carrots are dangled (at the time they mean every single one) that even though there are alarms in your head and some things just don’t feel right, you follow the carrots for awhile. You know you need more information and are intrigued enough to detect a bit further.

And then they then tell you that they warned you. And indeed they did.  But because you are friends, it is stunning to find out that there is absolutely no caring for you as a person.  They used you. And they might even feel slightly bad about that.  As if that makes it better.  You thought that you had some value as a human being at least, but really thought that you had value as someone who meant at least a little more than that.  And when you are told point blank that you were just convenient? Just a body?  You implode.  Because how could that be?

They don’t have to take full responsibility for their behavior, it’s just who they are, their nature, that you must take some responsibility for going for it anyway. Ah. Of course you (I) must take responsibility for my part but at least I don’t shrug it off as something I have no control over. I didn’t use them.  I had feelings for them as a person, as at least a human being. Some thing’s never change. And yet I wasn’t wrong about a lot of it. There was something there.  And to be honest, I think he actually DID lie about not having feelings for me.  But mostly his feelings are all about HIM.

On to the next one. Or, in his case, back to the last one, poor thing. Because, what a surprise, he got back together with his old GF.  A relationship that was causing them both pain and that they both broke.  They want to fix it.  Good luck with that.

And here you are, several days later, facing the fact that you both have the same recovery home group and that tonight is that home group meeting.  That you had promised, gave your word even, that you would do nothing to ruin the safety of that meeting for him.  But he made no such promise to you.  And now, your one safe place in the world that isn’t your bedroom?  Isn’t safe.  I am trying to wrap my mind and my heart around the fact that I get to go to this place and if called on, can’t be honest about how I’m feeling about things right now.  He’s going to be there tonight and if past behavior falls true, then he will be there with his ex and now current GF.  So I get to see them all happy and shit (or hey if there is justice, maybe they won’ t be all happy and shit) and pretend I don’t see it at all.  And then put away the coffee that he made.

*puke*

And yes, I’m going to do it. Face it. Get it over with.  I’m stronger than that.  I don’t run from challenges and difficulties. And if I give in and don’t go tonight I lose my meeting really.  I have no idea what things are going to look like tonight.  I vacillate between Ice Queen and Miss Indifference (with a little hidden Raging Bitch with a new athame that hasn’t been consecrated yet but is still the military dagger it was made to be cuz I’m cuh-razy).  I’m reminded of a scene from Firefly, episode Shinding:

MAL:

Sure. It would be humiliating,
having to lie there while the better
man refuses to spill your blood.
Mercy is the mark of a great man.

Very quickly, offhandedly, MAL stabs Atherton!

MAL (cont’d):

Guess I’m just a good man.

He stabs him again!

MAL (cont’d):

Well, I’m all right.

Really, I’m jesting. But mostly I’m sure I’ll just do what I can to go in when there are more folks (a little later) and try to focus on the people there who actually love me and and who are glad to see me and turn a blind eye to that corner where he always sits.

Nothing like screaming down the highway at 70 to clear the air, a hug from your High Priest, some linden tea, and a session with your High Priestess who also happens to be your acupuncture reiki healer.  Which, it turns out, just wasn’t enough.  I don’t feel much better at all.