Well, I warned you in Part 3 that I was liable to ramble off course, and I did. I left all sorts of stuff out, including Jesi’s entire time living here. lol. But we’ll address that in this post, and if there’s room, we’ll continue into the gushing-gratitude portion of our show. Or else we’ll have Part 5. Are you sick of this yet?

Jesi, part 2

Jesi began her third quarter of school already feeling defeated. In the end, she made the decision to drop out and move down here over Christmas. She’d become estranged from her parents and wanted out of the area. This was another situation I took at face value that I would question later, not its legitimacy but the personal aspects. When I later became the bad guy in her life (along with my mother), I wondered how much of the horrifying picture she painted of her own mother was truly accurate and how much was her inability to cope with the challenges of conflicts and disagreements.

She made one trip down here over Thanksgiving to bring a bunch of her belongings, and then brought the rest just before Christmas. I noticed immediately how she took small problems personally when we had trouble moving her enormous desk inside and it took some damage. We later repaired it, but at the time she was very upset. It was my first surprise with her behavior, and she hadn’t even moved in yet. I’m not going to post a laundry list of problems, hers or mine, because the details are only the symptoms of deeper issues. Hers are not my issue, but mine of course are, and in some cases it’s necessary to provide a context. I’ll do that with as little information as possible to preserve her privacy.

She moved in, sharing a bedroom with me. She had a twin bed and I had a full-size futon. Kara’s room was adjacent to ours, and the wall stops at 7 ft while the ceiling is peaked, so there was a big open space between our rooms. Privacy was a luxury no one saw much of. My desk was right beside hers, and we could see each others’ screens easily. Initially, this wasn’t a problem, but later it would cause friction.

So, we settled in with her stuff in boxes, filling the living room until, many months later, I put it away as best I could and set aside the boxes that couldn’t be unpacked for various reasons. We fell right into a routine, as Meridjet had warned – most of our focus was online, we spent no time doing spiritual Work, and most of our communication was hit and miss. I’d suggest something and she’d agree (or vice versa), and somehow it would die right there with nobody making the first move to actually do any of these ideas. We had fun when we went shopping or out to eat, but at home we had increasing levels of incompatibility. I was convinced that these were trivial and we would persevere.

A friend of mine, Kinjou, came to know Jesi through the Work the three of us (with our SCs) did together, and as time passed he became the middle man in a lot of expressed frustrations – mine, hers, ours. He repeatedly told me that some people just weren’t meant to live together and that perhaps we could be friends without being roommates. I disagreed, saying we’d get through it. I still believed in the higher calling of the whole thing. That summer, we spotted a beautiful wedding kimono on sale in our local witchy store, and we put it in layaway as a gift to Kinjou. We each paid half of its $200 price tag, a very reasonable price for such a garment, and eventually we paid it off and sent it to him.

In the meanwhile, Kinjou and Jesi started to talk on the phone a lot, text message each other, and chat in a private window. I was confused by this because we’d always been a group and now we weren’t. If I happened to glance over at her screen while she was typing to him, she’d hide the window by clicking her browser or whatever. I asked why. She said she wasn’t hiding. Kinjou said they only ever talked about trivial stuff and that I wasn’t missing anything. I got more concerned and convinced they were excluding me deliberately. This stimulated my insecurities and fear of losing another BFF, and I started to vent about it at various times, sometimes to Jesi and sometimes to Kinjou on the phone. They told me I was being paranoid and nothing was wrong.

Jesi’s car was totaled by some idiot at the gas station where she worked and she had to buy another car. She had a flat tire one day, and called me in a panic. I wasn’t sure what there was to panic about, but I went to her. I changed her tire, but she was upset and started threatening suicide. I tried telling her we’d get through this, together, that I was with her, and she’d just shake her head and say, “No, we won’t. I won’t.” I didn’t know how to respond to that sort of determined fatalism. It wasn’t like she used to act online when she could shake off the pain and keep going. Finally, as a last resort I declared I’d lend her the money for a new tire.

This began an apparent downward spiral in her emotional stability. She’d no doubt felt it much longer than I was aware, because my tendency to minimalize problems in my mind would mean she’d have to pretty much knock me over the head with it before I caught on. We took her to the ER once (it may have been twice), and to the county mental health center to open a case. She made too much money but had no insurance, and they sent her to get the local “Gold Card.” She never turned in her application, convinced it was futile, and never filled any of her prescriptions. She said there was no point, she’d just run out and wouldn’t be able to get more. I was incapable of effectively supporting her, and she got tired of me giving advice or trying to motivate her to take steps to help herself. We weren’t speaking each others’ language.

The year waned and our communication deteriorated. I’d try to talk, but would find it necessary to soliloquize until I finally uncovered what the issue was in my mind before I finally felt I was effectively communicating. She took these rambles as lectures. She almost never spoke during them, and for a long time I went on believing she was listening with an open mind when in fact she was building resentment. Over time, the ineffectualness of this method of “communicating” finally sunk in for me, but I didn’t know what my options were. I would let frustration build til I threw a fit, then start really lecturing. She started to get up and leave the house whenever this happened. She needed peace of mind. I needed to communicate, and on several occasions begged her for advice on how to best do this. But it was too late, and she had shut me out.

January came and she made her longtime planned visit to Kinjou in New York. She was there 12 days, like she was when she visited me. I knew she’d come back and want to move there. I had been surprised when she was adamant about making the trip in spite of financial issues. I was far more oblivious than I ever would have believed.

I went to pick her up at the airport on her return. I’d told her I’d pick her up where I dropped her off, but as it turned out, I had to go to another area of the airport. There wasn’t anywhere to park for a few minutes, but I didn’t want her to wonder where to find us, so I left Kara in the car and went inside to find Jesi. Her plane landed, the passengers disembarked, and no Jesi. Finally, after the pilot left, Jesi came out of the gate. She had stopped for the restroom. Her mood was muted. It struck an odd chord, but I dismissed it. We went outside, and naturally since I’d been inside so long I had a parking ticket. $65.00. She never once offered to help pay for it. I never asked, either, because somehow, I knew it was all over.

The few days later, we had an argument. There wasn’t much emotion in it, but she got my attention when she said, “You have this habit of xyxy [I can't even remember now what it was], and it’s unacceptable to me.” It was something communication related, I think. I stopped, and looked at her. I said, “Okay, I’m willing to work on that. But you have the habit of yzyz, and that’s unacceptable to me.” She replied, “I’m sorry, but I’m giving all I can.” I was like, huh? I said, “You can’t ask for compromise and then refuse to meet in the middle. You can’t have it both ways. Maybe you should find somewhere else to go.” She replied that she had somewhere available, and I said, “New York. I saw that coming.” She said, “Sheta, we’re in love.” You could’ve knocked me over with a feather.

Initially, I felt relief. Finally, I knew what all the secrecy was about. Then I was confused. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked. She said, “We thought you’d be upset.” I asked how long, and she said they’d been involved about six months. Though I realized they’d somehow managed to justify six months of deception to an alleged friend without apparent remorse, it didn’t occur to me until much, much later just how fundamentally disrespectful it really was. I was just glad I hadn’t been paranoid without cause.

During the last couple of weeks of her residence here, which immediately followed the confession, she started to throw fits and slam shit around, muttering under her breath about things that pissed her off. It got ugly several times, and when I got mad at her passive aggressiveness, she snarled at me without attempting courtesy on even the most basic level. I finally had enough, and told her that if she wasn’t going to even try to be civil til she could move in May, that she might as well just get the fuck out. She said she’d be gone by the weekend. Her boss later told me that Jesi had come home from NY on cloud 9 and was seeking a reason to go back asap. I guess I provided that reason. I offered several times throughout the week to let her stay if she’d try to get along, but she said that she was done trying to get along, and that she’d felt disrespected since she arrived.

I think her main reason for disillusionment was my daughter, who has exhibited deplorable hygiene for the last two years and who is very emotionally immature for her age. She acts 14 or 15, and will be 20 in March. Jesi grew to despise her, and while I can’t fault her reasoning, I can only do so much to control an adult child intent on defying me. I was caught in the middle of them and balanced as best as I could. They both wanted me on their side every single disagreement, and after a while all I wanted was to make them shut up. Some irony there, perhaps.

This recounting of events is bare bones and leaves out a great many things – faults and mistakes on both sides, acts of kindness of both sides, support and caring and friendship and laughter. But these are the events that served to make me question my methods of interpersonal relations, communication, and worse of all, my severe tendency to assume that I understood another person or even myself. I learned that many aspects of myself I’d thought were better actually weren’t anywhere near it, and in the painful 15 months that she and I put each other through, I found the strength to take a more honest look at myself.

I know that my descriptions above are going to piss off Kinjou and probably Jesi, but I can’t help that and I can’t make this post as some sort of post-apocalyptic ass-kissing attempt at making up. I’m not posting this to hurt, but I know it will. I’m not posting it for revenge, or to paint an ugly picture. The details are ugly because it took ugliness to penetrate my beatific belief that my special friend existed only as a mirror of me. In the end, that’s what it comes down to – I stopped seeing another human being before she ever moved here, and I only saw someone I could depend on, someone who could depend on me… someone who wasn’t supposed to color outside the lines or think for herself. And for that I am profoundly sorry.

There’s a lot of pain in my memories, and I may not be able to talk to Jesi again for a very long time, even if she ever wanted to talk to me. But until I reach a place where I can forgive her and myself for our tempestuous relationship, the best I can do is learn from my mistakes and try to use the lessons to become a better person. So mixed with the pain, there is gratitude, and I am capable of recognizing that even difficult situations bring gifts. I’d spare her what I could, but not at the expense of her own growth. In any case, it’s not for me to choose.

She’s been gone 8 1/2 months, which seems impossible. It feels like maybe half that time, but a lot has happened. It’s weird to think it’s been that long. I hope she is happy, that Kinjou is happy, and that they are happy together. I’m not done processing this friendship, but it’s already caused more change in me than any other relationship except Meridjet.

Hope and Inspiration

Friends – Honorable Mentions

It’s only fitting that I include a few other people in this collective look back, as they each had a significant role in my life since Meridjet started on his intense campaign to make me understand what I’ve been doing to myself and other people. Significant in one way or another:

• Mats: My first online friend. We met in 1998 and since then, he’s been my primary source of free art. lol. Seriously, though, he made me laugh a lot during the dark period before Meridjet’s return in 1999, and just after. Mats is endlessly patient and very distractible, so between us we only manage a few emails a year anymore.
• Nina: After Mana (from part one), Nina was the first friend that Meridjet fiercely loved. She was only 17 when we met her, and stuck with us until she went off to college and found more exciting things to do. We tried to get her to visit, but her parents were convinced I was a psycho child-stalker or something.
• Nick: Nick is another very old friend. We met in 1999, and have been varying degrees of close since. He tends to disappear offline for months on end, but remains very dear to me. We’ve been through several situations that could be called “challenging,” and still remain friends.
• Tim J.: Tim was the first mentor I had in magick, and exhibited endless patience with me and my horrific immaturity. He finally faded away, though his from the SC list doesn’t bounce. I always assumed he overdosed on my self-absorption, but I’m sure that’s flattering myself. Tim has been one of only a couple of friends who were older than me.
• Megan: Megan is challenging to me in that she disappears at times when I think things are going great. I haven’t had much contact with her since she last re-emerged, but I’ve thought about her a lot.
• Kinjou: Kinjou was introduced to me, behind his back and by Madison, as a psycho stalker ex-lover with bad hygiene and a horrible temper. I can vouch for the temper part, but the rest is bullshit, and the temper is almost always justified. He is one of the gentlest people I’ve ever known, and usually makes a supreme effort toward courtesy and fairness. This makes it one hell of a mystery to me why he elected to hide his romance with Jesi for so long. I miss him.

There are newer friends – Tim S. from the chat post the other night, Cally, Christina and Soli – people I know a little or a lot, but all of whom have come into my life during this funky transformational period. Who knows what they’re thinking? I appreciate each of them for different reasons. But the real star of the show is Tracey.

I wrote about Tracey in earlier sections of this series, but she has taught me more about my effect on my friends, and about what a true friend is, than anyone else. If Jesi was a wake-up call, Tracey was that small still voice that whispered gently in my ear. And she deserves her own section of this series, so we’ll close here and begin with her for the final part, part 5. I apologize for the endless “to be continued”s, but I do get wordy. lol. And I’m really spent for the night, so unless I get a second wind, you’ll have to tune back in later for the last part.

Thanks for reading.

2 Responses to “Retrospective/Personal Philosophy Series, part 4”

1. Soli says:

   24 November 2008 at 11:39 am

   Wow, I was not expecting the shout out, thank you.

   It sounds like you’re starting to figure a lot of this stuff out, which is never an easy task. Well done, keep it up.

   Reply
2. sheta says:

   2 December 2008 at 8:20 pm

   @Soli: I often begin to tap you on IM and then don’t… I’m kind of shy sometimes, oddly. I would like to know you better.

   And thanks.

   Reply