Sticks and Stars

There’s this woman in my life and I’m at a loss as to how to handle her. Or rather, I’m not at a loss at all, my solution is to not handle her, to step away from the friendship we seemed to be forming (and indeed, that’s what I’ve done), but I don’t feel exactly right about it, like maybe I’m just being too sensitive or defensive or something.

I’m never good at making these kinds of determinations. There have been plenty of times that I’ve gotten unnecessarily upset about an interpersonal relationship due to excessive sensitivity on my part, but there are also plenty of times when I’ve convinced myself that I really had no reason to feel upset until years later when I looked back and thought, jesus, why did I tolerate that for so long??

I always feel like this woman is judging me. I’ll happily comment on how, say, I just bought my son a pair of like-new shoes from a consignment shop for only $5 and she’ll reply by telling me that’s great…but that she buys all of her kid’s shoes from some local cobbler and how it’s $80 per pair but it’s really important to her to support local businesses/local artisans/free range leather/what the fuck ever.

Of course, it would be fine if it was just one thing, I know that everyone picks their battles and her local artisan cobbler might be my co-op organic dairy, but I sometimes feel like everything that comes out of my mouth garners a response from her that shows how whatever she does is far more virtuous than my pathetic choices. One time I was lamenting how much I wished I could have some time to myself but how hard it was to find a babysitter who’d accept $10 an hour. She responded that it was even harder for her because she insists on paying her babysitters a living wage and wouldn’t feel comfortable offering less than $16 an hour. Another time she asked me about using Netflix. I explained the whole process and why it works well for us and she replied by informing me that she prefers to buy her movies from Goodwill and then donate them back when she’s done so that she can support nonprofits.

I guess the thing is that even if I am being oversensitive, the end result is that I still feel bad. I spend a lot of time privately and quietly reveling in my happy little life. I have a good job that I love with a very promising career path, I have a beautiful home, I have two awesome little boys who I am parenting well, I have money in the bank. I have my shit together! All by myself, I gathered my shit and got it together and I am successful. I really can’t tell you how proud I feel about that, and how I love to roll it around in my mouth and savor it. But when I’m with this woman, I don’t feel successful. I just feel…less. And so even if her comments are entirely innocent, what really matters, at least to me, is how I feel on the other side of them.

The straw moment came a couple of weeks ago when I invited her and her kid over for a special dinner. I bought lots of special ingredients and even a bottle of wine because I wanted it to be nice, not just our usual happen-to-be-in-the-neighborhood-wanna-have-a-playdate. But at the last minute she canceled because she didn’t feel comfortable with how our kids were playing together lately…and she went on to comment about how her kid plays with another kid from their class and never has any trouble, which made me feel like it was clear in her eyes where the problem lay. And indeed, our kids do have conflict, but it’s often because my son will say something to her kid like, “You are a stinky underwear head!” and her kid will burst into loud wailing inconsolable tears in response. I’m not saying that my kid should be insulting other kids, but I do think her kid’s responses are a bit excessive.

But anyway, so she canceled at the last minute, which made me feel bad, but then she called the next day and asked if they could come over and hang out for a while while they were waiting to go to a meeting. That just made me feel confused and somewhat insulted, that they couldn’t hang out with us when we made special plans, but they could if they just needed some time filler.

Mostly this whole thing doesn’t bother me so much except that I was happy to be moving toward a casual hang out friendship, the kind where you invite each other over on the spur of the moment and, even more importantly for single parents, the kind where you drop your kids off with each other so that you can do things like get your hair cut or buy new bras instead of having to take half a day off work because that’s the only other time you have reliable childcare. I have so many friends who are just an email or a phone call away, I just wish I could have some of those same friends in my city.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 29th, 2009 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.