I know that this will come as a surprise to many of you, given that I am
the president of a social group which calls themselves Heartless
Bitches, but I have a significant well of patience for my friends and
lovers. (Just ask any of my ex boyfriends). Yes, I know you find that
hard to believe - someone like me having any patience at all... But that
well of patience, though deep, is FINITE. There are limits. And one of
the limits is head games. I will help a friend out, bend over backwards,
support them to the end - even if they shoot themselves in the foot
repeatedly... provided they don't try to play head games with me. In
fact, it is precisely that type of behavior that turns my heart to ice.
INSTANTLY. I suspect there are other HBs out there who can identify with my position.
A few months back, I got a phone call, while I was at work, from a friend in crisis.
She was talking suicidal, "my life isn't worth living" talk. This was
not the first time she had called me at work, in crisis, with this kind
of talk. In the past, I had left work, met her, talked her down, etc.
Unfortunately, this was one too many times in crisis, and it was NOT a
day when I could get away from the office - our CEO was in town, and I
had meetings that afternoon. I did my best to try and "talk her down"
over the phone, wondering if I could get a hold of another person I know
to see if he could go to her.
She'd been flipping in and out of crisis for the last 2 or 3 years, with
one thing and another. I did my best to be supportive. She had certainly
been there for me in the past, (though I had never been suicidal)...
Unfortunately, she was in full blown "raging from victim stance" mode.
Things were going wrong again, and she believed it meant she was
incapable of making good decisions. She went on about how she didn't
have enough friends or a "community" (locally), and other people had
more than she did, and why did everything go wrong for her, and why did
it all have to be so "haaaaaard"?
I did my best to contradict the distress. (Which is to explain why it's
not really as bad as she sees it, and no, she's not a bad person - she's
smart, capable, etc...)
I did my best to reassure her that she WAS capable of making good
decisions for herself- she just had to WANT to. She had to figure out
why she was sabotaging herself. But the truth of the matter is that I
couldn't be this friend's "counsellor" in times like this. She needed
professional help. I suggested she find a therapist. But she either
didn't have the money or didn't want to go to one that would be covered
by our health plan. Three months prior she had the chance to see someone
that wouldn't have cost her any money, but she rejected that option
because there was a 3 month waiting list, and lo! here it was three months
later, she's in crisis, and no professional available.
But that wasn't what REALLY set me off. What killed it for me, was that
she tried to play the drama triangle with me. There were no more
REAL persecutors in her life. Her current situation was squarely HER
responsibility. When you are playing the victim, you need a
persecutor. I was trying to be supportive, but everything I said, she
twisted to be a criticism. When she said that someone she knew had
everything, family, career, prosperity, and yet she worked so HARD and
had nothing, I tried to reassure her that it probably wasn't *easy* for
that person either.... To which she said, "So what you are saying is
that I am lazy and if I worked harder I could have that kind of life
too"???!!!"
Though that most assuredly was NOT what I was saying, that was the
corker for me. I'd had enough. She was in the classic "Victim" role of
Karpman's drama
triangle, and since I wasn't willing to be her rescuer, and she
didn't have anyone else to be the persecutor, she was trying to drag me
in to be her persecutor. Well if she wanted a persecutor, I'd give her
one, because I refuse to play the triangle game, and in my experience,
the Persecutor is the only way out. When you refuse to play, you always
become the persecutor.
So I gave her an earful, "NO. That's NOT what I was saying. But here's
what I AM saying. Your problem is that you OBSESS over things over which
you have NO control, and over the things that you DO have control, you
very often take the easy, or instant-gratification way out. For example,
you had a chance to get a therapist but you didn't want to wait three
months. Well now, three months have passed and you are in crisis and you
didn't take the appointment and now you have no options." At that point,
her story changed to it was because he was an MD and she rejected the
traditional medical establishment, and not because it was three months
away to the appointment. The moment I called her on anything, the story
changed. Her latest crisis was spawned in part because a project she had
undertaken was harder than she had anticipated, and it might mean that
she had to miss out on a trip to see a boyfriend out of town. She felt
ENTITLED to have fun and have a break. It was unfair that she might have
to give this up or put more work in. This is another sign of the victim
role - the sense that the world, or someone OWES them something. That
life should be FAIR. But it isn't. That's life. You want something, you
SUCK IT UP and go after it and don't whine along the way about how
HAAAAARD it is. You want to reject the medical establishment, then don't
whine about the situation you are in, and expect your friends to play therapist
because you rejected those options.
And it's not like she didn't have options. She just chose the ones that fucked her up. She was just as
capable of making good choices, but I began to suspect she needed the
drama of the bad ones.
I didn't.
When she wasn't suicidal, her latest talk was about leaving and starting
over somewhere else. Nothing like running away, rather than staying and
facing your life and your choices.
And as far as making choices. I don't have a problem with people making different
choices from the ones I would make. What I DO have a problem with is WHINING about the consequences of
those choices, doing NOTHING constructive to change your life (short of
running away), repeatedly making the same BAD CHOICES, and insisting you
have no control over your actions and no ability to change them.
Needless to say, she hung up on me. I tried to call the only other
person I knew who might be able to intervene, but he wasn't available.
I'd been feeling increasingly frustrated with her because she seemed to
be spiraling down into victim land, and I'm no miracle worker. She
needed professional help, and had structured her life and her choices so
that she couldn't get it. I remember my bf at the time
got frustrated by her perpetual foot-shooting behavior, "Why does she bother
to ask for your advice? She never takes it." And it was true. I never
gave advice without her asking for it, but when she did ask "what should
I do?", she consistently disregarded suggestions for a wise(er) course of
action. Of course then, every time she was in crisis she would berate
herself over her inability to make good decisions. I just don't buy
that. She has always had OPTIONS.
So many people who are REAL victims don't have OPTIONS. She just picked
things that would fuck her up, AGAINST the advice of friends. To sit
there after the fact, beating yourself up for doing that sort of thing
is just some kind of emotional masochism. If you want to be an emotional
masochist, fine. Just don't drag me into it. That kind of voyeurism
doesn't appeal to me. I just don't have the energy or patience for
people who suffer from soap-opera syndrome. I stuck by her for so
long, because I thought she was just at a bad point in her life, and
that she could and WANTED to work through it and get to a healthier
place. But it became clear was getting something out of being miserable.
She must have, or she wouldn't have kept throwing herself back into the
shithole with such vigor and perseverance.
Of late it seemed that when she was feeling up, she was out of town with
other "friends", and the only time she called was with problems and
issues. I could have dealt with that, but after being the only person
left supporting her in this town, to be treated as if I was a persecutor
when I had been nothing but *supportive*, well, I'd had
enough of the drama.
When I saw her posting to her blog the next day, I thought to myself,
"Well, I guess she didn't kill herself." And I moved on.
Yeah. I'm Heartless.
-Natalie
