If It Walks Likes a Bear, Talks Like a Bear & Takes Honey Like a Bear…

I just had an awful, terrible, sudden realization.

A little background: When I was in college I had a friend that I was completely enamored with. No, not in that way. She was just a very funny, interesting, smart and I thought she was the greatest thing in the world. The feelings seemed to be mutual. We spent a lot of time together because we had some of the same classes and we were in the same program. It was an easy-going kind of relationship, but we both had other friends and circles and I was dating someone, so it wasn’t like we saw each other very minute of the day.

It took me a very long time to realize just how one-sided our relationship was. In the moment, it was all great. We would go to a concert and have an awesome time. We would meet for dinner at the dorm. We would hang out in the library working on papers.
Despite all of the time we spent together and all of the fun things we would do together, it was always me making the effort and me making the plans and me keep the friendship floating. I realize that now, ten years later. In those moments, I didn’t see it that way.

We graduated from college and kept in loose touch. Or should I say I kept in loose touch. This was before email was ubiquitous, so we had phones with answering machines and letters to keep the friendship fires alive. It took effort, which I was willing to put in but she was not.

There were so many clues: I would be going to a bar near her apartment and call her to see if she wanted to join me and my friends and she would answer the phone, but refuse, even when the bar was literally on the first floor of her building. She always had some excuse at the ready: “Dude, I am so hung-over and I can’t get out of bed” or “Dude, I totally would but my cousin is on her way over and I have to wait here for her”. I bought all of the excuses, and kept trying. It just didn’t occur to me that this was a brush-off. Besides, I am tenacious and not one to walk away from any relationship, something I used to pride myself on but something that I now realize is very, very unhealthy.

I think I finally got it a couple of years after we graduated. I was on a road trip and passing through her town. I vacillated over whether or not to call her. And then decided, rather suddenly, to just do it. This was in the beginning of the cell phone era, so I called her from my car about an hour away from her way upstate New York home. I told her I was in the car and passing through her town and wanted to meet up with her. I could hear the panic in her voice. The stream of lies started, something about how she was leaving on a vacation with her parents right away. She even threw in a couple of aside to her parents, who were supposedly urging her to get off the hone and get in the car. That was the last time I spoke to her.

The whole experience, stretched over about five or six years, just confused me. She acted like she liked me, but the way the relationship fizzled out made me wonder. She put in enough effort to make me feel safe, I guess, but not enough, in the end, by a long shot. Now, looking back, I can see how I worked hard to keep our friendship going. And I and see how it was so easy for her to let go when we graduated.

History repeats itself. That is my awful, terrible, sudden realization. Am in the same relationship right now. It isn’t exactly a shock to me: I have know for long time that this is a one-sided friendship, and I have talked endlessly with Nicole about it, and how it is so unhealthy for me to continue to put effort into this friendship when only a modicum of effort is returned. But I don’t give up easily. Have I made that clear?

I can say that in all truth I give up, and it took me a while to get to this point. But it hit me like a freight train: I am repeating patterns that are unhealthy. Who, me? Perpetuating negative behaviors? Ha! What else is new? And I realize that this person is using me, and that makes me a little sick to my stomach. But I also realize and have to admit that I have allowed it to happen. I can’t leave a barrel of honey on my porch and be surprised when a bear shows up (unless that it just a cartoon myth, that bears like honey). Nicole would see me dragging that honey out, and she would admonish me for it and tell me how wrong it was. She even said once that she was dispaoited in me. But deep down, I sort of hoped the bear would see the honey, leave it and just knock on my door and want to hang out with me, not because of the honey, but because of me. Yes, I am continuing this bad bear metaphor. It might have been a test, but I hoped my friend would pass it. In closing: Bear doesn’t want me. Bear wants my honey. And no, honey is not a metaphor for what honey sometimes is a metaphor for. And I have no time for honey-grubbing bears.

The best part is, ignore my honey and I will give you truckloads of it, just because you are my friend.

This is such a poorly written and meandering kind of post, but I think it gets my point across. My bear friend doesn’t read this blog so I could be specific, but I guess I just don’t want to go there.

OK this has taken enough of my energy.

I saw Nellie Olsen (Allison Arngram) of LHOTP fame perform stand up last night and it was great! If you have to ask what LHOTP stands for then you probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it. But there was lots of inside references and jokes. And talks of a musical heading to Broadway! That is one musical that I would pay to see.

Pictured above, Madeline and Avery stretch their chubby, chunky delicious legs in my friend Corrie’s luscious backyard. You can’t tell from the pictures, but her husband is a bit of a horticulturist so the property is practically Eden. The girls were so excited they didn’t know which way to turn!