Do you Google your friends?

Google is a powerful thing. It's borderline omnipresent. I've Googled old friends from grade school, estranged friends and even my husband... just-to-see-what-comes-up. Come on, we've all done it, haven't we? Googling our own name to see what we get? And in some ways, we feel like a little internet *star* if we actually come up with some hits... right?! (Apparently, there are individuals with the same name as me living in Texas and California. One with a grandma that recently passed away, another an alumni of a well-known college.)

So Ladybug has a friend in her class that she's gotten pretty chummy with. The parents are fun and cool, and we just had our second playdate yesterday. At Ladybug's birthday party, someone actually recognized Ladybug's friend's father as someone from a reality show. Wow! I was mesmerized. In a way, I knew someone famous.

So, of course, what did I do? I went home and immediately sat down and Googled them. And to my surprise, there was so much information on them it was scary. I'm not going to give away any details but the most interesting thing I found was that Ladybug's friend's mom had a blog that told some of her key stories -- about her first marriage, her pregnancy, how she got together with said reality show star, their enormous wedding, and more. Her blog seems inactive now, it was written about 2 years ago. But I had to read the whole thing from beginning to end. I was enthralled, spellbound, entranced (I get slightly obsessive sometimes).

And then I felt guilty. I felt the way you would after eating an entire chocolate cake, like that was so good but I really should not have done that. I knew too much about her before she even told me. I was about to go call her and say, "I know everything. Tell me more!" But I decided to play it cool and let her tell me these stories when she's ready.

It's fun making new friends. But sometimes it's more fun getting to know each other in a more traditional way. I mean really, I would be horrified if she was reading my blog and all my deep dark secrets! Yikes! ;-)

Lisa Reincarnated

Growing up, I had two different sets of friends: my school friends, and my block friends. Obviously, my school friends were fellow classmates, and my block friends were different ages, but we all hung out together on our block. When I was about 8 or 9, I had a friend named Lisa, who lived across the street from me. She was 3 years older, blonde, pretty and I looked up to her. She even taught me how to ride a bike.

But Lisa was my sadistic friend. She was the ring leader when the kids on the block decided to pick on me. I told her I had a crush on a boy in class, and she told everyone about it and they would tease me endlessly. I would always ignore the fact that she started and participated in making my life a living hell. I just wanted to be her friend, and would do anything to spend time with her.

I can remember one time when I had this great collection of Barbies with the house and all the furniture. The dining room was my prized possession with all of its tiny plates, cups and silverware. I had brought all my stuff over to our Mei's house and the three of us played together. And just as I should have suspected, Mei & Lisa conspired against me, pretended to wrestle, and purposefully broke my table and chairs as they threw themselves on top of them. I was pissed and hurt. And I felt like such a sucker for even thinking that they wouldn't treat me this way.

Anyway, these memories come back today because the woman that I share PTA responsibilities with (of all things) reminds me of Lisa. Not necessarily her personality traits (although some do compare) but how she makes me feel. She makes me feel 9 years old again, and I'm giving her permission to step all over me. There are only two of us on this PTA Committee and I have done everything. Sure, she'll show up for fundraisers and help out with distributing packages, but I handle all the logistics, the money, and managing every project.

At the end of last year, I told her I was burnt out and that I wanted her to run with the next fund raiser, a candy drive. I gave her a contact name and told her to run with it. Today, she hands me a giant box of stuff and says, "Oh, this is yours. Everyone knows how horrible I am at this, so you're going to have to do it." Who the hell is everyone and if she's horrible at this stuff, why the hell is she on the PTA?????? I just said OK with this puzzled look on my face, took the box and got into my car.

That was at 9:30am, and I'm still furious. The problem is, I am such a wuss and for me to muster up the courage to someone whom I feel just bullied me, is going to take everything I have. Not sure how I'm going to address this yet but I really have to if I'm going to keep that little 9-year-old girl in the past.

Lessons learned

I have been trying to think of a response to this one for days....

Iris had commented on a previous post that I should find the lesson learned in finding Rose's letter. I still don't know what the lesson is yet but I've done a lot of thinking about why these people are constant recurring characters in my dreams. They are people who were once in my life but are no longer... my therapist says they tap into my "abandonment issues."

The reality about all my past friendships is that I feel they either drifted apart or were broken because of me. I blame myself. And here is where I can go into some rather deep self-loathing about how everything is my fault. hmmm... but maybe this is the lesson. I don't know. Maybe I need to stop blaming myself for every friendship that has passed. Maybe I need to tell myself to stop feeling like a burden to my family and friends, or really try to determine why I put myself in rather compromising positions.... can someone say sabotage??

I wish I knew how to get my former friends out of my dreams but they do really haunt me. And with every dream I'm left with a strange sense of loss. Perhaps it's just a reminder about what I'm missing even in my current relationships. The mind is a complicated place and I'm not even sure if I'm making sense. But it's 1:40am and I can't sleep.

My mind spins and races and runs uncontrollably
My world turns upside down
But my clock still ticks loudly
So here I am trying to make sense of the insanity, while I google to figure out how soon I can take a pregnancy test

Rose's Letter

I had a good friend in high school named Rose. Recently, when I was cleaning out my closets, I came across a letter from her. When I was in high school, girls used to write letters to their friends all the time... tell their dark secrets, get their emotions out on paper. We all did it, and looking back now, I can see how therapeutic it probably was. I wonder if that's all left to email now, which to me, would be a little disappointing. I like the idea of writing free-hand on paper. You see the emotion in the handwriting, you see where she pressed hard on the pen, scribbled, and in some places wrote small so no one could see, and larger for an exclamatory effect. It's so much more personal, more real. And you can rediscover it 20 years later, like I did.

Anyway, Rose had a quiet, shy, sweet exterior. She came from a very traditional Italian family, and was very protected and her parents would never let her out of the house. However, Rose always had a long-term steady boyfriend, from the time we were in the 8th grade. And the rumors of her sex life were always circling. Her boyfriends were always a little unusual -- one was the bad boy who was cute but never showered and everyone always wondered what she saw (or smelled) in him. The Italian-"boss" type who was 20 years old, whom she would sneak out to hotel rooms with. And the highly effeminate guy whom others in our school would make fun of for being gay (even us, his close circle of friends, always wondered).

Anyway, Rose loved to flirt and play mind games. In this letter, she confesses to me that she just told her boyfriend (Dirty Guy)'s good friend that she had a crush on him. Then she proceeded to go back to Dirty Guy to tell him what she did. Her letter was filled with distraught and guilt and she kept saying that she was a horribly mean person and she didn't know why she did the things she did.

A couple of nights ago, soon after reading that letter, I had a dream that I was reunited with her and we hugged. And the hug was so strong, so intense, that I started to cry on her shoulder... long and hard. It felt good to see her again, and I remember feeling that I so wanted to be friends again.

After thinking a lot about that dream, I remembered how our friendship ended (I had actually forgot this when I rediscovered her letter). She betrayed me a couple of years after H.S. graduation. I was having problems with my boyfriend, and was trying to break away to see other people. I had gone on a date, and used to tell her everything. Well, my guy had suspected something, and convinced Rose to record our conversation of my silly details. That evening, he presented me with this tape. I went back to Rose, furious. How could she betray my trust? She tried to apologize but I wouldn't hear of it. Our friendship ended.

And today, I still have regrets about how I handled that situation. I mean, I wasn't totally honest with my boyfriend, was I? I was betraying him, so karma came back and bit me in the ass. And she was the easily-persuaded type. My boyfriend was the suave-charming-schemer type and I always did understand how she could've also been the victim in that set-up, too. And I ended up patching things up with my boyfriend, and he convinced me that I was a sucker if I ever spoke to her again. I think I may have been a sucker for getting back with him.

Many years later, I ran into her in the subway about 4 years ago when I was pregnant with Ladybug. She was with a man that didn't look familiar, and told me she was engaged to be married that year. I was so excited to see her but she looked far less interested. In my exaggerated memory of the last time I saw her, I see her leaving the train with her fiance, laughing and giggling, running away from me.