Not exactly her friend. Her sponsee. Michelle was a stickler for the rules that suited her take on reality. Per Michelle (genuflect) sponsor/sponsees could not be friends.
I've had several sponsors. Some were friends, some were not.
With my handicap at making friends, I can't afford to split such hairs. The Asperger's thing again. Tell me there's nothing wrong with me. Professionals have been telling me there's nothing wrong with me, in between times I've been institutionalized and medicated for that nothing that was never wrong with me...
It seems I spend half my life trying to convince people there is something wrong with me and I need help, and the other half trying to convince them I am fine and just to leave me alone.
Anyway, Let's call her Lois..came to the house a few times to do sponsor/sponsee things with Michelle. I let them have space. I barely said "hello." Then we had to evacuate for a hurricane and Michelle invites Lois along to "help". As we are driving up the Keys away from danger, Michelle, Lois, and I chat. I find Lois is a "kindred spirit" as Anne of Green Gables would say. A rare person who "gets" you: your flights of fancy--your punchline-free jokes--your love of the pattern a bridge's boards make on the ripples of a stream. You don't need to explain. She nods. You know exactly what she's remarking about: a brilliant bit of red ( )in a sea of grey-green leaves. You say: insect. She absorbs the filmy iridescent dragonfly.
She sees the tension between Michelle and me that I miss. I've become numb to it. I tell Lois, who is 20 years older than I and obviously exhausted that I will bring up the luggage, the cats, the oxygen bottles...it takes a while but I do.
When Michelle asks for the car keys as if I've absconded with them, instead of unloading her shit, I lose it and throw them at her. She is astonished. Lois is pleased.
Later we talk and Lois tells me she can't understand why I put up with Michelle. I've been told this before and I still don't understand. I committed to Michelle. I make excuses for her bad humor.
Somehow I believe her good humor will return.
But I don't know that she ever had a good humor. I thought she treated me fine in the beginning. But even then people were warning me about her.
I assumed it was because she was a male-to-female transsexual. I protected her. In the closed-down world of NE Pennsylvania, I felt Michelle needed someone who would be her friend despite her oddity. And she did look odd. She was not born a petite feminine-type male. She could not pass. She was 6'2" tall, skinny, angular. Very strong jaw. Wore her hair in a beehive, gods know why, she said the women of the 50's were her ideal (Marilyn wore no beehive!). Also, she so preferred to use her own hair. A false piece was an admission of defeat. But she had male pattern baldness.
A little technical information. Boy and girl babies are all girl babies until testosterone kicks in. If you catch a child before puberty, you can prevent those give-away secondary sex characteristics. Beards, deep voices, baldness... But once you've passed puberty, all the female hormones in the world won't completely reverse the testosterone effect.
As someone from New Jersey who'd moved to NEPA (locals would not even talk about it) said, "why would you go through all that trouble just to be an ugly woman?" Not very kind, but a legitimate question. The nerve it must have taken her to walk into a room full of NEPA people for the first time dressed as a woman. With the beehive, sharp red lipstick, and ill-fitting clothes from Salvation Army...there were things to admire about her. She'd been wealthy but had to declare bankruptcy due to drug and alcohol issues, a nasty divorce, a house she was eventually evicted from...
[I'm drawn to people going through shit. It's not fair. I want friends who are healthy, wealthy, and wise but I attract the dying and the insane like flies to shit. Maybe it takes one to know one. But I'm not dying.
I mean, we are all born astride a grave. Why is my mother's death forefronting itself. Duh terminal Kelly duh. Now Tom relapsed. Fuck it. I know I'm sick but how can I get better if I only attract those sicker than myself? ]
anyway...
Michelle grew very small breasts. She even got mammograms at the Veterans Administration Hospital. Nice thing about vets, being a vet sort of excuses all kinds of social no-nos, within the VA system. I said, "If you only got them ten years ago, how could they be cancerous?" They don't do mammograms on 23-year-olds.
I think she enjoyed the trip. Validation of femaleness.
why can't I stick to the fucking topic?
Michelle accused me of stealing Lois and ruining the sponsor/sponsee relationship. It was more abominable because I'd jeopardized sobriety. Michelle could get on a high horse about things and multiply your error exponetialize your error by pulling higher principles out of her rabbit's hat.
And further down the rabbit hole we go.
The ultimate crime was inviting her to use our washing machine while the Big Pine laundromat was closed down for some reason. The only laundromat withing 40 miles or so. I simply invited her to use our washing machine and dryer until the laundromat re-opened.
Well. How dare I do such a thing without consulting Michelle? Now, if you're a wife and a friend needs to do a couple loads of laundry, would you say, "sure, use my machine" or would you say, "I have to consult with my husband before making such a household decision."? Michelle was convinced she'd ruin the machine. Or something.
Control. I stole her friend and now I was running rampant in our/her house messing with all her stuff.
Joyce Maynard wrote a memoir that includes her romance with J. D. Salinger. Some have tossed asparagus at Joyce for violating the holy hermit's privacy, but the things she said rang so true I have to applaud her.
Narcissism is a personality disorder. It's beyond liking yourself. It's seeing yourself apart from nearly everyone...and only those in your golden circle are deserving of being treating like human beings. The rest are cogs and sprogs in your machine. And once you cross the line from golden circle to cog or sprog, it's all over.
That's what our marriage counselor warned me about.
I didn't listen. I could not believe a person could turn on another person like Michelle turned on me. If I hadn't experienced it, I'd have a hard time believing it. I even got taken in by narcissists after Michelle...that's another story, an anonymous story, and the only reason I can get this written.
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