Hate Speech

If you don't like emotional rants, skip reading this.  I am writing it for myself and I don't even know how much sense it is going to make to anybody else.

I don't know how some people can be so filled with hate.  I especially don't know how some people can be filled with hate that I apparently caused.

Today an envelope addressed to "SYKES" was delivered to our house while I was out, which Walt opened.  It was from Peggy and filled with such vile hatred that I can't believe it.

You know, it was two years ago that she decided to end all communication with me, including adding me to her junk folder so if I wrote to her, the email was returned with a notice that said "not at this address."  And yeah, I have done my best to find out why. And yeah, I've been kind of a pest about it, because I just couldn't understand why she's cut me out and besides, I was pissed.  I finally reached saturation and the end of my feelings of friendship for her, realizing the impossibility of it.  I sent her a post card with a poem on it and saying that she had broken my heart, unnecessarily, but that I was finally learning to live without her in my life and ended by saying "goodbye."

This post card was returned with RUBBISH written across it in big red letters and then the hateful letter, which says something (I've destroyed it; I'm finished) about how she had declared that I was never to contact her again, but I had done it. She used to think I was intelligent, but no more.  She now sees how stupid I am.

The print on the letter was about 120 point type.

like this  

It's funny, but instead of making me angry, or hurting me even more, I just didn't care. I just felt dead inside. She suggests that I am mentally unbalanced for continuing to contact her after she expressly said she doesn't want to hear from me any more (something she never ever said to ME, but said to a friend of hers, who passed it along to me, adding that she didn't know why either).

Maybe I am mentally unbalanced, as she says. But that's what happens when the person you considered one of your best friends cuts you off without a word of explanation. Also, why should I blindly follow her demands without knowing why she made them?  "Because I'm the Mom, that's why" ? 

As I've said before, she was not the first one to treat me this way.   Back in 1986 my then-best friend did the same thing and Peggy knew how much that had hurt me. She had also experienced the same thing herself, twice.   Two different people (that I know of) who had cut off communication with her, one without a word of explanation, one with, but hurtful.  So she knows how much it hurts.   She knows how much it hurt her and she knew how much I'd been hurt before.

Yet, she refused to give me the only thing I wanted from her:   an explanation  Obviously I did something unforgivable, because her last message to me had been to wish me a good trip to China and to let me know that we would talk when I got back.  Then nothing.  At that time we were going through my cousin Cathy's death, which was so incredibly painful.  And remembering how I had been there for Peggy when her mother died and when her two dogs died (which may have been even more emotionally upsetting), also when she parted company with the people who ran the ranch on which she helped care for orphaned kangaroos.  I have sat here on the telephone and listened to her cry when her heart was broken, and tried to be as helpful as I could be from 9,000+ miles away.

It never entered my mind that she would not be here for me when I was going through the same thing...and it certainly never entered my mind that she would turn around and do the same thing that she knew would hurt so much to me...and that she would do it when I was already hurting so badly from Cathy's impending death.

I suppose if nothing else, she helped me greatly today, to put the final nail in the coffin that was our 13 year friendship.  But what happens when something like this happens...twice...is that you reach the point where you have zero interest in making new friends and you certainly don't want to open your heart up to someone new.  Once burned, twice shy--and I've been twice burned.

But Peggy was the person to whom I could turn with anything that was bothering me, there to offer comfort and support and I sure as hell am not going to make that mistake again.  

Char is still in my life, for which I am very grateful, but we don't have that kind of relationship.  We share emotional moments, but not at the depth that Peggy and I did.

I want to say I hate Peggy Morrison.  I don't quite...but almost.  And the worst part is that it never had to be this way.  All she had to do was help me understand what made her turn against me. 

 

Dammit.

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In other news, I took my mother to have her TB test read today.  Unless something unusual happens, this is the VERY LAST medical visit she will have at Kaiser San Rafael.  Praise the Lord!