Help! I hate my best friend's girlfriend!

What do I do, now that I have to lie to the one person I could always be honest with?

 I’ve been wanting to blog about this for awhile but I’ve had no idea how to approach this sensitive problem.  So I turned to the internet for help.

This is what I came up with.

I like it.  Especially the line graph, that’s eerily accurate.

My best friend is male and has known me for years.  He may be neurotypical, but I’ve never felt like I’ve had to explain myself to him for any reason.  Such friendships are rare these days.

Him getting a girlfriend – and changing the friendship dynamic – is something I was going to have to deal with at sometime.  The self entitled part of my personality doesn’t like it but realistically, it’s well within his right to do so, and I was just going to have to be supportive.

Well, recently that’s precisely what happened.  The BFF took me aside and told me about a girl he’d met, let’s call her Ali, and that he wanted the three of us to hang out.  He told me that she’s an older woman, attractive, and they had been hooking up.  He then showed me this text message:

Hey babe, buying scarves 4 all the bite marks u left on me xx ;)

Ewwwww.  Ok, WTF?  Even I know sharing sexy texts with your best mates is bad manners.  But it did at least give me a mild warning for what I would be subjected to the next day.

So, the next day at BFF’s place, I’m awaiting her arrival, hoping I make an ok impression.  Given that I would be spending a lot of time around this girl, it would make things awkward if she didn’t like me.

Then when she arrived I did, I’ll admit, nearly screw things up immediately.

Ali:  *sensuously* hey babe, like my new scarf?

Me:  *hysterical laughter*

The BFF shot me an alarmed look and I remembered I wasn’t supposed to know why that was funny…oops.

We were introduced and then she started talking.  All I could think was “please God, make it stop.”

Look, they say it takes one to know one, right?  I knew straight away that this girl was all sorts of issues.  Now I am the last person to place blame on someone for being mentally ill.  What I don’t like is when someone is mentally unstable, does nothing about it, and then inflicts their illness on others to get attention.

Ali’s conversation has a certain pattern – we talk about her being injured/ill/overwhelmed.  Then we hear about how she heroically over came set obstacle.  Then we hear an ‘interesting’ fact about something she’s good at.  It’s always on her – if conversation moves away from her, she brings it back somehow.  And it’s always the heavy stuff.  In the space of about 3 hours, I found this about her  -

-          she’s asthmatic

-          she was hospitalized for whooping cough for two weeks

-          She had surgery on her hip and couldn’t walk for six months

-          She’s dyslexic

-          She has OCD (allegedly)

-          She has celiac disease (allegedly)

-          She has ehland syndrome

-          She has chronic hiccups (allegedly)

-          She was once hospitalized for a nervous breakdown (oh I’m sorry, that is not something you should find out about someone you’ve just met!)

-          She has had various breaks and sprains that impacted her detrimentally (too many to name here)

Basically, the girl’s self esteem is so poor she needs attention and validation constantly.  See, this is also what I know about her, that the BFF told me because she never talks about these things.    She is 25, but still lives at home.  She moved back there shortly after her last nervous breakdown and still hasn’t left.   She went to business college after high school, and has had countless office jobs but never for more than a few months.  This is probably why she had to move states and apply for university – had to go by open foundation because her grades from school weren’t good enough.

Ali’s life has been hard, I can admit. By portraying herself as a tragic heroine she creates more positive image of herself than the reality  - due to her physical and mental illnesses she’s an adult who never really grew up and learned to be independant.  I know so many like her.  Heck, I was her. Like me, she’s probably angry at herself for not working things out like most people our age have.

 Yet still she refuses to acknowledge her limitations and she puts herself in situations where she can’t win, because you’ve gotta love a girl for trying, haven’t you?

Ummmm…no.  Like I said, I can’t blame Ali for her hardship, but I can blame her for creating drama.  Now, let’s think back to that slide show from the lovely folks at college humour.  I would change one thing on their presentation to suit my circumstances, on slide three.

“You make my friend angry with your bull**** shenanigans.”

“then I have to deal with him.”

More like,

“You make my friend worry with your bull**** shenanigans.”

“Then I have to deal with him.  Not.  Cool.”

I suppose I should address the ‘allegedly’ I put on the list of Ali’s ailments.

I think she’s…well, not lying.  I believe she’s exaggerating within believable limits, if you will, to make some of her issues sound more serious.  If I didn’t have a medical background - and have some of these problems myself – I probably wouldn’t pick it up.  Although the fact that most of her problems seem to be self diagnosed should tip my friend off that Ali’s biggest health issue is her hypochondria (or Munchausen syndrome, I can’t tell at this point.)

But the BFF eats this all up and worries about her.  Then I have to listen to him worry.  Again, not.  Cool.

Later, I took the time to think about my feelings, and to figure out if my rising distaste for this girl was fair.  Was it just jealousy that I have to ‘share’ BFF with her?  Are my standards for a suitable girl for him just too high?  Or am I intimidated by her, that she openly and eagerly talks about her mental health battle, yet I don’t feel as though I can (and should) share mine?

I don’t know what our other friends think, and I’m too afraid to ask in case I am just being petty.  But one thing is for sure – I have to deal with her somehow, in a constructive way that doesn’t create tension with her or BFF.

Now, if I could just figure out how to be constructive.

Voyager

I experience the C in OCD

I’m aware that I haven’t talked at all about my OCD on this blog yet.   The main reason for this is that I really don’t have the words to explain it.  The things I feel compelled to do might seem mundane but to me, these intrusive images, compulsions and the feelings of anxiety if I can’t carry them out are very upsetting.  I feel the less I talk about it, the less I think about it, the better.  This is important for my diagnosis, mind you.   People with OCD are aware of the unreasonable nature of their thoughts and actions, separating this from being just another feature of Asperger syndrome.

So within this just-ignore-it-and-it-might-go-away tactic I live by, not acknowledging my compulsions means that I do indulge them with in reason to settle the violence in my head. Usually this doesn’t cause me too much grief.

Then this morning I lost my tape measure.

Allow me to elaborate…I have many compulsions, one of which is to measure my waist.  I might do this between five to fifteen times a day, when I get up, when I’ve been to the toilet, after my conditioning regime, before and after I eat…basically, any time I feel (unrealistically) that I’ve done something that may make a difference to my waistline.

Anyway, when I woke up this morning I opened my bedside drawer to find…no tape measure.  I sat there, confused.  I measured myself last night, didn’t I?  Then what?  Did I throw it on my desk…no.  In my underwear drawer…no.   Or did it disappear into the black hole under my bed?

My reasonable self was telling me to get on with business so I started to tidy my room, hoping it will show up.  But one tidy room and no tape measure later, I came to the conclusion that I will have to do without it for the foreseeable future.  A bizarre but not unfamiliar uneasiness is growing in my mind, but I had assignments that had to get done somehow.

In the end, I didn’t accomplish a lot that day.   I can’t even talk about the things that were going through my head but let me assure you they weren’t pleasant. I couldn’t concentrate on my studies.  Every time I sat down and opened my books, I would spring up five minutes later and start pacing.  I did a lot of pacing.  My roommate noted that I looked ‘wired’ and offered me a beer.  I burst into tears, first because I couldn’t measure its effects, then at myself for having such a moronic thought.

I found my tape measure cleaning out my craft shelf that night and silenced my thoughts by measuring up a storm.  I can’t describe the cleansing feeling this had on my head – suddenly I was thinking clearly and logically again. I laughed with my roommate about my emotional blowout that day, which I blamed on ‘womens troubles.’ (I’m not kidding – he totally bought it too!)  It’s ridiculous that I continue to let these compulsions control me, I know.  Unfortunately with OCD, as I said before, knowing this is part of the problem – not the solution.

Voyager

Thoughts on an Aspergian friend - Limited by ourselves

Recently my Mum ran into the mother of a friend from school.  I hadn’t seen her for awhile, but at the time we and our parents had bonded over the fact that we were both on the spectrum.

We were similar in a lot of ways.  We had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome around the same time in year seven.  Both of us were gifted academically but struggled with our concentration and motivation.  We had no idea how to deal other teenagers, and were each others only friend, ostracised and bullied by all other students and teachers.  Then from about year nine onward, we drifted apart.  Personality wise, we were chalk and cheese.  She was happy to languish in her anxiety and depression problems.  She never wanted to go out, talk about positive things or put effort in her schoolwork or relationships.  She saw no reason to be giving back to the world that had hurt her so much.  As for me, I wanted to try and fit in, learn how to study properly and create a network of neurotypical friends.  She saw my foray into the world of ‘normal’ people as a betrayal and I thought she was being a coward.  After high school, we lost contact.

I knew that we graduated from our respective university degrees at the same time, and I was worried about her.  I can’t see her having the presence of mind to search for jobs, practice for interviews or take the time to write a professional looking resume.  It doesn’t help that she has graduated from a program that has very few jobs available, and I just don’t know how she would handle the corporate world.

As Mum relayed back to me what her mum had said, it seemed my fears were accurate.  Turns out her lack of pro-activity was not just a phase.  Seven months out of the degree, she is unemployed, living at her parents’ house, with no car, no money of her own, and no friends.  The problem, her mum lamented, is that she really isn’t qualified for her dream job.  Her grades were not good enough to get into the post graduate program that she needs.  But she won’t consider another direction, or get a lower position to work her way up.  She did take a counselling job, but she kept getting in trouble for discussing her own mental health problems with clients.  She was told to adhere to the guidelines set out for her, she refused and they let her go.  Her view of life is just too rigid.  Modifying her behaviour would help her out of her rut but she won’t change.  If I’m a Voyager, she’s more of a Houseboat.

Let’s look at where I am comparatively for a minute.  While I feel like I’ve learned some life lessons that she has yet to realise, I would not say I’m faring a whole lot better than her.  Since my early teens I’ve tried denying I had a problem, desperate to live the ‘neurotypical dream.’  The result was a breakdown in which I was forced to face the reality of my disability, and get realistic about my future.  The Houseboat – yes, I’m making that stick – needs to start thinking this way too, hopefully sans nervous breakdown

Having Asperger syndrome might have seemed quirky and subtle while we were at school but both of our futures are in question now.  All of the other kids with AS that I know are still in school, so I can’t compare any further.  In the meantime, I worry.  We may be intelligent, and certainly capable of being valuable employees.  But are our impaired social skills preventing this intelligence from being applied to finding and keeping a job?

I want to change to become easily communicative.  I want to change her so she wants to change her outlook.  But longing to be normal has done no good for me in the past.  All I can do is hope that somehow, someday, we’ll find a way to be ok.

Voyager

Now, Voyager!

Realising you need to change is often a harsh awakening, but that's just momentary.  Enforcing the change is often a long, uphill process.

Welcome to the journey of defeating the dog.  I realised I needed to change last year.  I have four defined conditions - anxiety/panic disorder, asperger syndrome, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.  As a result, the first 20 odd years of my life have been a tumultuous tale of confusion, discouragement and unhappiness.  As far as mental distress goes, I got pretty far.  Several doctors, psychologists and hospital stays later, I found myself exhausted with life.

After my last discharge from hospital however, exhaustion gave way to movtivation, finally.  I was motivated by the fact that quite frankly, I was a loser.  I was in my twenties but I was not living like a mature adult.  My hospital stays had left me a bitter, angry person more than willing to take this anger out on the innocent bystander for the slightest offence.  I was fat and my memory was shot to shit so I couldn't work or concentrate on my studies.  I had to live at home with my family who were resentful of me for all my disability, illness and money wasted on medical bills had put them through (their words, not mine.)

I could have put up with this. I could have drifted through life, uneducated, unemployed, proved my family, the kids at school and the self rightous hospital staff right.  But as Oprah Winfrey said, success is the best revenge.  So I started trying to life like an adult.  I returned to uni, moved out of home and joined a few sports clubs to get fit and get out of the house.

This is just the beginning though.  Depression and anxiety don't magically go away when you leave hospital or come off your meds.  OCD isn't gone when you learn to control it.  Asperger syndrome never stops sabotaging you, never!  My journey will have many parts.  I need to get a job when my studies are over, make friends and keep the friends I have happy.  I have to navigate a world that I don't understand and am afraid off when all I really want is to hide in my room watching anime for all eternity.  But the responsible adult does not do this.

I'm going to try.  It will be difficult but I've got no choice.  So journey on - whether you are neurotypical or also 'unique-minded' the world doesn't stop just because you do.

Voyager