Cleaning Out the Bitches

It's spring right? So I did a little spring cleaning today. It wasn't my kitchen or my bathroom or my junk piles that got the scrubbing. Not even of my wardrobe was the target. Today, I cleaned all the bitches out of my life. Yep, and I feel like I just took the most heavenly bubble bath. In fact, I wish I had more bitches to throw out.

The story about this particular Bitch is a long one. We started out friends and roomates in college. Then something got between us (which I never fully understood) and we had a horrific, terrible falling out. One thing I learned about this person is that if you EVER get on her bad side, you would be shunned and treated with disdain by her for life. So, somehow, I ended up there and she never let me forget it.

I don't want to go into the messy details but she finally came out and told me she was bi-sexual. Apparently, I wasn't "sensitive" or "respectful" enough towards what might have been her feelings towards me even though I had no reason to suspect we were anything but friends in her eyes. How the hell was I supposed to know how she felt when she was determined to keep it a secret?

We haven't been the same since. Since I moved away, I had hoped we could salvage our friendship. She made this impossible. i promised to send her a photo I took of her once I moved. Well in my move across the country, it got misplaced. She resented me for a year because of this. (um, grow up?). I offered many olive branches towards her- I guess part of me missed what we had and part of me just couldn't stand the thought of someone not liking me. I eventually went on with my life, thinking of her less and less. When I got married, she reacted by exclaiming how much my marriage would affect her- how much she would have to deal with it. When she found out I was pregnant she unloaded to me about how much me having a baby will push her further out of my life and how she would now have to deal with this new issue. Everything I did seemed to boil down to her. These happy things in my life were becoming a source of guilt as she continued to make me the target of her problems.

Well today, I finally stood up for myself. I decided that I could not afford to let people like her become bruises in my life. I could no longer give her the power to tormet me. I have to thank my pregnancy hormones for giving me the courage to stand up for myself and telling her what I should have told her years ago- to go away.

You know what she said? She told me that if I ever found another friend like her, that I didn't deserve it. First of all, after our major fall out she never was a "real" friend again. Even before then, I realize now how our friendship was based on convenience and utility. She was never that great of a friend. Not the kind of person you can count on to help you out when you really needed it, only when it was convenient or comfortable for her. Besides, I found my husband and he replaced her friendship long ago.

Then she told me that it was a pity that death would destroy all I hold dear. Talk about being morbid and dramatic. She was clearly trying to get to me (she knows I fear the unknown about the afterlife and my mortality). I get it, she's totally jealous. She's conflicted on the inside and torn between her two sexual identities. She is jealous of the happiness I found in a long term relationship.

I'm glad I cleaned this Bitch out of my life. Life is too short and too precious to allow people in who make us miserable. I will miss what we once had, even if it was a convenience relationship, because we did have a lot of fun. But I don't need her or miss her anymore. I don't need to always be the "kind" one or the "giving" one. I don't need to be liked by everyone on the planet.

As I drove home from class tonight, I felt a totally new sense of peace. I sang along to Jack Johnson (with the bass turned up) and a smile spread across my face that lasted for 90 miles. Why? After all the insult and injury. Because I finally stood up for myself. I broke through my weakness. I threw out something that I had been clinging to and had caused me nothing but grief these past couple years. I finally realized that I really didn't need her or her approval. I felt new, fresh, clean, independent, and a million times more confident.