Ages ago (or, at least, it feels that way), a woman I thought I was friends with posted on her (now defunct) blog about how I didn’t know how she took her coffee, so I clearly didn’t know her.

She didn’t flat out say she was Talking about me. It’s possible she even pretended she was talking about someone else. I can’t remember.

I do remember that, at the time, I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out who she was talking about. And I didn’t really care. I was wrapped up in my own Personal Drama (who isn’t?), and a rant about how a cup of Coffee proves you don’t know someone wasn’t really at the top of my list of things to worry about.

There was a deeper message about how you can’t get to know a person by reading their blog which (maybe intentionally) completely erased all of the time we spent talking outside of our blogs, and the time we spent commiserating about our psychotic boss, and the amount of time I spent defending her to our psychotic boss (to my own detriment) to make sure she didn’t lose her job.

But like I said, back then, I was wrapped up in my own personal drama, and I was forgetting things often, and I wasn’t really paying attention to the (what I thought were) friendships that were falling by the wayside while I tried to keep my head above water. So when she fucked me over, and then subsequently cut me out of her life, I was really fucking confused.

Later, when the personal drama started to die down, I realized that most of that post was a conversation she and I had with another person we worked with. I’d said she only took cream in her coffee. She reminded me that she had finally weaned herself to black coffee. I blew it off because a) it’s coffee, and b) she lives in the middle of the country. It would have been a long time (and now, I know “a long time” is actually “never”) before I would have been buying or making her a cup of coffee. Who cares?

Apparently, she did. A lot. And it turns out she probably wasn’t ever really my friend at all. I just liked her a lot (at the time), and put as much as I had to give into trying to build a friendship, and assumed she was doing the same, only to find out she was actually part of the reason I lost my job. One of the many times in my life I learned the hard way that assuming makes an ass of u and me.

Since that realization, I’ve noticed that’s basically my MO. Try really hard to be friends with people I think are neat on the surface, give all I’ve got to give (after all the things I give on a regular basis just to keep myself afloat) to that friendship, and then find out they weren’t doing the same.

Hey, them’s the breaks, right? You could be the juiciest peach in the world, and there’s still gonna be somebody who doesn’t like peaches.

And I’m a bitch on my best day. I try not to be, but sometimes, there’s just no avoiding it. Mostly because I’m not the one to sugarcoat shit, or keep my mouth shut when I disagree with something, or not stand up for myself. And sometimes, I don’t know how to say what I’m thinking nicely, so I just say it, and hope the person I’m talking to knows me enough to know I’m not trying to be a dick, or at least asks questions before just assuming I am trying to be a dick.

I can probably count the number of honest-to-goodness, no foolin’ friends I have on one hand because of that. Most folks don’t have the spoons to try to figure me out. I’m okay with that.

It’s so quiet here. Not even my mind is trying to bury me in self doubt, right now. M pointed out that I haven’t had a nonspecific panic attack since we moved here. Not that either of us is deluding ourselves into believing I never will again. But it’s almost been a month, and the only panic attack I’ve had was incredibly specific. It was over this house and the fact that I never want to leave it.

But I keep remembering things. Things I’d thought I’d forgotten. Things I didn’t even realize I knew. Good things. Bad things. All of the things. Things like that damn post about a fucking cup of coffee I would never make or buy.

And I’m not freaking out. I’m not letting it get to me. I’m not letting it bring me down.

I don’t know if it’s my change in mindset, or this house, or a bit of both. But it feels really good to not be anxious and angry all the time.

P.S. She was right. I didn’t know her. And now, I’m glad I didn’t.