On Betrayal

I think betrayal is the worst thing a person can ever feel or experience.  Especially when the person who betrayed them was their best friend, their sister, their closest ally, their bosom friend (Anne Shirley, woop!). Besides the betrayal of a spouse, the betrayal of "your person" is the deepest a cut can go.  And when that friendship has history, say 8 years, the wound is all the more deep and all the more unwilling/unable to heal.  Especially when you include the factors:

1. That person became relatively quiet when you needed them the most.  I mean, it's expected for communication to be difficult in very different time zones and lifestyles... and cultures, but still.  Friends are friends no matter the time zone.

2. That person treats you with condescension and spite out of the blue. This especially hurts when you have never been so cruelly spoken to by someone who has not spent 40 years rotting their mind out with drugs.

3. That person gets engaged and invites everyone from your old circle of friends to the wedding to be bridesmaids, and yet, you are not even informed.  

4.  Everyone else, even those who know the story, still love them.  

Now, I have a heightened sense of justice... perhaps that's due to all the stuff I've been through judicially where a towel has been thrown over justice. Or it may be due to some special gift from God.  I also have a great sense of loyalty.  Perhaps it's because I don't exactly have a family... or because one should always remain true to their adopted family.  Whatever the case, I am still hurt, and the wound keeps weeping.

There's a great temptation to take everything I was ever given, or anything that evokes strong memories (and what doesn't, when you've known this person all your teen years?) and rip it to shreds.  Then burn the shred.  Then send the shreds to them in the mail.  Ok, maybe not. (First of all, I'm simply not that stalkerish and conniving; Secondly, I don't want to burn anything down or kill any wildlife; Thirdly, I'd rather not get dirty).

There's also a rather large temptation to simply delete the past and cut myself off from all influences of it, from all the people from it.  Then I wouldn't have to be confronted with this bastard issue everytime we get together.  To start new. Start fresh. But no good friend could be that pigheaded and do something so mean.  It would be perpetuating the hurt.  And I could never sleep if I thought I had caused someone pain; least of all a mere spliter of the amount I've felt.  

Right now the only option is to let go.  This may sound petty and over-dramatic to the average reader, but try growing up solo in a world full of living, breathing novels. Having the fact that you're screwed up and aren't from a cookie cutter family thrown in your face every moment. And then having the one person who you know will be there for you no matter what, suddenly turn into a rabid bitch.  And so, as good friend has told me time and again.  Breathe. Just Breathe. 

So, I'm going to do that.  Breathing and all.  And the good friends, the right friends, the covenant friends, will stick no matter what. Or so wisdom tells me.