First: hugs to Kenzy!

Part One: The necessary background info

My friend Hailey--who I know at the very least has been discussed in my old easyjournal--has a boyfriend. He. Is. An. ASSHOLE. I hate him and I've only met him once. Hailey is showing signs of like, battered-wife syndrome without the physical battering. He's mean to her--you know what. I need to start from the beginning.

Right after Chris and I started dating, Hailey called and said that she had been invited to a superbowl party at a guy's house. This guy, Roger, she had met working together at the small pizza place in the little town we live in. She had always found this guy very cute and very attractive, but believed she never stood a chance with him because she thinks she's ugly (she's not) and too fat (she's not). She gave him her number that night never thinking he'd use it. But then he called the next day. Two weeks and five dates later, she lost her virginity to him. This from the girl who dated my ex (before me) for nine months and would not have sex with him at all. Anyway, that's not the point. Thus this....relationship, or whatever in the hell it is, began.

For a very long time she couldn't even tell you what her relationship with this guy was. At the very basic level, they were fuck-buddies who spent a little free time together. At the most, they were dating; and I mean that in the most stripped down form of the word. He told her he couldn't deal with anything serious. As of now, they've been together about three months. She just learned about a week or two ago that he considered them to be "boyfriend-girlfriend". He refuses to let her meet his parents. He says he's afraid it would be awkward. Roger has mommy issues. She made fun of him for being fat as a child. Hailey thinks the reason he won't let her meet the folks is that he's afraid they'll be unkind to her because she's overweight. Maybe that is the case, but it's bullshit. You let your girlfriend meet your parents. It's common curtesy. I didn't really want to officially meet Chris' parents, but I did. He'll sleep with her, but Godforbid, she try to hold his hand in public. That's not allowed. Hailey's paying a high price for a former heartbreak. I can appreciate Roger's need for caution, but dammit it cannot pervade your relationship. Neither here nor there. I continue.

Roger in some ways is what Hailey was looking for. Someone with an opinion, intellegent and seeking an education, someone with goals who wants something out of his life. In that respect, Roger is good for her and can make her happy. But if that's all that's there that makes her happy, then she should just be friends with the fucker.

Her lot in this relationship is to basically be his subserviant and to find his best friend someone to fuck. She told me the other day she felt like she was Ryan's (Roger's best friend) date finder and that if she wasn't finding a date for Ryan, then she had no purpose. Furthermore, she has too much respect for her friends to let Ryan get near them. Thursday she told me she thinks Roger would rather hang out with Ryan than have sex with her--that she worries he doesn't find her attractive anymore.

Mind you, I haven't really liked this guy from the beginning. For the most part I've always felt she was getting used. However, after a nasty fight last week, and a squalling phone call from Hailey, I knew I hated him. Last friday as I was in the park with my then soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, and all of our friends, my cell phone rang. It was Hailey, who was crying so bloody hard I couldn't understand a damn word she was saying. I got her to calm down enough to tell her to come meet up with us so we could talk about what happened. So what happened? That night Hailey was going to hang out with a friend of hers--details unclear here--anyway, the event led up to him asking her, "so you're going to go hang out with her? what, so you can turn into a whore just like her?" Then Hailey spent the next ten minutes talking about how he was right and that she was a whore and bullshit like that. In hindsight (for me) that was a fight for dominance and Roger was "showing her who is boss". And he won, because half-way on her drive to meet us, he called her and wanted her to come over. When I asked her what she was going to do, at first, she said she didn't know what to do. After she arrived, she said she would soon be leaving to go back to his place.

This floors me because it's coming out of a girl who is as independent (and maybe even more so because she was an only child) as I am. Until now she has always believed herself, and everyone around her has believed it, when she made the statement "whatever, I do what I want", when we've tried to get her to do something. However, she doesn't do what she wants anymore. She does what Roger wants. (Let me clarify the friend factor here. All of her friends dislike this guy and this relationship. Every single one of us. She comes crying to us, begging advise, but never takes it. We're all pleading with her to ditch this fucker, but she won't.) A big part of the arguement was the fact that Hailey's friends Brett and Emory were uncomfortable around Roger and didn't want to go to his house with Hailey. Brett lives about 5 hours away and is only in to visit once, maybe twice, a month. Hailey's been friends with Brett and Emory and Vanessa since they were sophomores in high school. They are somewhat of a tight-knit group and at one time, Hailey knew the value of their opinion and took their advice. Of all her friends, though, she's known for taking my advice most often; I once held the most sway with her. Anyway, Roger apparently felt slighted by the fact that Brett and Emory didn't want to go to his house and denounced them, saying that they were stuck up. Then he had the flaming audacity to tell Hailey that he believed that she should stop hanging out with them because they were too snobby. And do you know what? If that's what it took for her to get back in his good graces, she was going to do it! I went off when she told me that, literally screaming something to the effect of, "SO WHAT? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR ME?! IF he doesn't like me, then you'll let me go to?!" I was pissed. She followed up with some bs like, "no, no, you're something he can't touch." It was bull shit. By the next morning, it seemed she had at least, in part, come to her senses saying there was no way she was giving up Brett and Emory and that she didn't care if he didn't like them. By sunday she was saying she believed that they should break up.

Part Two: The Events of the Last Week

I'm sure I left out bits of info in that last part, but if I missed something important, I'll let you know. I think I got all of the important things, though.

So as Hailey and I talk this week, I learn that she won't be leaving Sir Fuckhead. Monday rang in as the day I was supposed to break-up with my boyfriend. However, I backed down that day, afraid of hurting him, but set a time for the next day to call it splitsville and end my unhappy relationship. Monday night I called Hailey to see how she was. She was at Vanessas playing chess and thinking she should stop letting Roger rule her life. Good idea I tell her, and let her finish her game with Vanessa.

On Tuesday, moments after I turn my cell phone one for the first time since Saturday, it rings. Hailey's calling to say hey and see when I was going to go break things off with Chris. At the time I was walking out the door for the restaurant I was to meet Chris at; ironically, she was just leaving her house to meet Roger to have dinner at the same place. She made me promise and swear that if she let me meet Roger that I had to be as nice to him as possible. And I was. Sacchrine, as it were. I was even asked to join them for a little jaunt to Wal-mart. (by the way, I broke up with Chris during dinner that night. After he left, I went to talk to Hailey & Roger).

Ah, I did miss something important. For a long time Hailey had been trying to get Roger to join us for one of our weekend outings to meet our friends because he--if we all didn't now hate him--would have actually fit in and gotten along with them quite well. But the fact that I was dating Chris creeped him out. Chris, creeped him out. He was wholly intimidated by Chris' size. Chris is 6'5" and weighs over 300 pounds. And he only looks intimidating until he starts talking. But the fact that I was dating her ex, something about it just unsettled Roger--and he was also intimidated by Chris' size--so he always found some way to weasel out of going anywhere with us. Thus taking Hailey with him. So until about a week ago, when Hai came to join meg and I for a couple hours for coffee and chatting, I hadn't seen her in roughly two months.

Wednesday and Thursday came and went seeing conversations pass between Hailey and I where Hailey began to take up for Roger and make excuses for him and for herself. Saying things like, "Roger was just playing when he made that whore remark" or "he didn't mean that he wanted me to stop hanging out with Brett and Emory." Then there was her, "I deserved what he said to me. That fight was my fault." This from a girl who was sexually molested by a stepfather she watched beat her mother to shit repeatedly for years. She should know better. And when I told her, "Hailey, you're acting like a battered wife", she was stunned at first and says, "there's no way Roger would ever hit me." I don't believe that. Neither does Vanessa, and Vanessa was the first to say so. When I told Hailey I agreed, she just brushed it off saying that we were both crazy. Of all the things I know about abuse, some of the first signs (someone correct me if I'm wrong here) are that the abuser will try to ostracize their significant other from their friends? Furthermore, in these abusive relationships, women often begin to make excuses for their boyfriend's behavior and begin to believe that they deserve to be treated this way for some fucked-up reason or another. And, in the beginning, they always believe that their boyfriend could never--would never--hit them. In these same conversations Hailey begins to talk about how tired she is of Roger running her life and how tired she is of basing the things she does around what Roger will think of it. And starts saying she wants to come hang out with us this weekend...

...She's said that before, about wanting to hang out with us on a weekend. On two occasions I can remember distintly, she told me she would definitly be joining us no matter what. However, something came up for me and I wouldn't be joining my regular group those weekends, thus releasing Hailey from any liablity in joining us. Come to find out, on both occassions, she was going to back out because Roger decided he wanted her to do something else. I couldn't exactly get mad at her on those two occassions because it wasn't like I was going to have gotten to see her anyway. However, last night was different.

Part Three: Last Night

Thursday night Hailey PROMISED me, SWORE to me that she would come hang out with us this weekend. That she didn't care what Roger wanted her to do. He was free to join her if he wished, if not, we would come first and that she would definitely be joining us. No. Matter. What. Around five last night I talked to Adrian. We were to meet at our regular meeting spot (an Exxon station on the main road in town) around 7:30 from which we would decide where we wanted to eat and what we wanted to do. Hailey knew this is how the evening would start, because it's how they all start and the night before she was all for it. So I when I got home last night, I called Hailey. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi, Hai. What're you doing?

Hailey: Just leaving Vanessa & Jeremy's.

Me: Cool! Be at Cloyd's (name of the gas station) at 7:30. We're meeting there to decide where to go for dinner. Be there. No excuses.

Hailey: Well...

Me: What do you mean 'well'? I mean, no excuses Hailey.

Hailey: Well...

Me: Hailey, you fucking promised me! You said you'd be there. So--be--there! 7:30--No excuses, Hailey.

Hailey: I'll have to ask.

Me: Ask?! What the fuck do you mean, 'ask'?! Who the fuck do you (fyi: I swear A LOT when I'm pissed off) have to ask? ... ROGER?!

Hailey: I love you, Mads.

Me: Yeah. *click*

That five minute conversation ruined my night and still pisses me off this morning. I understand that your significant other--even when they're assholes--must come first sometimes. That they come first most of the time, but damn it, your friends have to come first some times. But we never come first anymore. Since Roger, we don't matter anymore. Or well...I matter only at night when she needs someone to talk to. She has pushed everyone so far out. We're all fed up with this Roger shit. She calls crying because she doesn't know what to do about him and we all offer up our best advice--which from most is for her to break up with him--but she just ignores it. Often rebutting the idea because she's "in love with him" and she's "afraid of being alone" and the dumbest fucking reason of them all. Sex. She likes having sex. To best sum up how I felt last night, had I finally gotten her to answer the phone, my tirade would have come out sounding something like this:

I guess your not being here means that you weren't allowed to come see us. Does this mean that you're going to always chose him over us, because I think I'm actually becoming accustomed to it, Hailey. That is some truly fucked up shit. Yes, Hai, I understand that he's your "boyfriend" and as such, he has to come first sometimes, but your friends have to come first sometimes too. You made me a promise and then predictably broke it. Hailey, can you keep a promise? Do you know what they are anymore? Because I'm beginning to think that you don't and that I shouldn't trust you to promise me anything. I'm beginning to believe that anything you promise should be taken as a tentative statement dependent on whether or not it meets Roger's approval, no matter what it may or may not mean to the friend you made it to. I'm tired of always playing second snare to this asshole. I didn't get to see you for two months because you've been stuck up his ass. And when I did get to see you, it was because he was off doing something else that day that didn't require your presance around him. So how long's it going to be next time? I put up with five tons of shit to still be friends with you. We are still friends after all that shit with our parents (car wreck. law suit. long story.), three years age difference, and everything else, and this fuckhead is what is coming between us because for some reason he now matters more than everyone else. Every single one of your friends hates him. Your parents hate him. We're all such frighteningly different people that if we all have the same opinion at the same time, you should get the clue that it's time to give up the ghost. So you're afraid to be alone. Get over it. Alone is better than being treated like a dog. A second rate call girl who is also expected to find a fuck for his best friend. You're saying shit one minute and retracting it all the next. I don't know what to believe with you anymore. First you're fed up and don't care if he likes your friends because, dammit, their your friends and you have every right to hang out with them if you want. Ten minutes later, you have to be there for Roger because he's feeling insecure about which four-wheeler to buy and you're pretty sure that that's what you'll spend your weekend doing. Four-wheeler shopping. But you know what, Hai, that's fine. If I know you know one thing about this relationship, it's this: he will hurt you more and more and then it will be over. And at that point, you will have turned us all away such that all you find is our backs walking away because we all tried to help you. Vanessa, Brett, Emory, Shannon. We've done and currently, are all doing everything we can. But when you're not listening and just keep letting these things happen over and over and over, what's the point in wasting our breath in telling you what we think will help you, because you're not going to take the advice anyway. You're not in love, Hailey, you're in lust. And it's pushing us all away. And when you're crawling around in the dirt Roger's just shoved your face in, leaving you there flat on the ground crying and alone, what are you going to do then? I worry that at that point, you won't have anyone. You're pushing us away to keep this stupid relationship, this flickering, dying candle of a relationship going. I love you, with all my heart I love you. You are my greatest friend, and I have said all of this because I love you and you need to hear it. And despite my love, I can only take so much. My feelings are hurt, truly hurt, by you. Because you don't keep your promises anymore. I asked you to come hang out with us one day out of the six in the week. One day for the first time in god knows how long it's been since you've seen everybody. A couple of hours out of the myriad that you spend with Roger. I wanted you to keep one promise and you couldn't do that because Roger, as always, is more important. Because the person that treats you worst in this world has become your world and turned you into the type of person you've always hated most. The kind of person whose whole life would cease if her boyfriend left her. That's who you are now. You're one of those women. Meaning that soon there will be no space left for Emory. No space left for Brett. For Jess or Shannon or Jeremy. No space left for Vanessa. And no space left...for me. You hurt me Hailey and right now, there's no apology that can be made to fix it. And if all you have to say is that you're sorry, I'd rather you not say anything at all. Because "I'm sorry" is trivial and meaningless. You know this. We've discussed that concept before. I am angry and I am very hurt and I don't know what, if anything, can be done about it. But now, my peace has been said and that's all I can do for now.

I called her several times last night trying to pick a fight, as it were, so that I could give that speech. But she never answered the phone. Even now, even though I know that would just kill her to hear, I want to give her that speech. I know now that what I wanted to say is not out of irrationality. That's precisely what I feel. In with a few smaller things going on, that is the biggest piece of my saddness right now. For some reason this all is really breaking my heart. I think I may print that off and read it to her. Meh. Right now I need a shower and to do some trig homework.

Sorry the entry was long. There was a lot to be said.

If anything new develops, I'll update. Until then. I'm gone.

Love,
Mads

p.s. ....and i'm cutting again...