BAS RELIEF

In retrospect, one of the things I like most about the work I’ve done in film is the effect it has had on dispelling my expectations of life. At least from where I grew up, media so fully saturates a child’s life that it’s difficult to tell what one should expect from day to day life. Most precisely, working in film showed me just how unrealistic and fabricated those orchestra-swelling, climactic moments are when all things align for the hero and the major truth is revealed.

However, that is not to say that life isn’t utterly without those moments. They’re just far less prevalent than one raised on a diet of American film and tv would expect. I was fortunate to have one of those moments while I was home. It came under the guise of a former friend’s misguided meltdown.

The details of his meltdown, suffice to say, are not particularly relevant to this monologue and, under the pretext of the hope that someday he will see his great error and the damage he has caused himself, I have no intention of flogging him further. The loss of the love of four decent women who loved him dearly is enough punishment for one lifetime.

Essentially, after a single misunderstanding, he exploded into a rage that had apparently been festering for some time. The sum total of that response was a single letter (with the singular purpose of wounding all of us) sent to the one of the four of us he knew would not fight back nor call him on his shit; he knew she was too close to the situation to do much more than ache from his rage.

Weeping, my beloved Frenchoise (no relation to le Francais other than they both come from France) came over to see my girls and I at the home of my good friend Cakes and my other good friend Panda (who are sisters) while we were renovating their bathroom. Cakes read the letter out loud and as I heard the absurd and unfounded "criticisms" hurtled at my friends I knew the purpose of the letter was nothing but to wound as only a close confidant can. I recognized the vitriolic and histrionic nature of the letter as a spoiled child desperate to wound others by dragging them down to his remarkably paranoid and delusional level.

As Cakes got to my name, I had the last moment panic of the person who knows they’re about to be tortured and they can do nothing but start begging for lenience from the giddy, aroused sadist. Being home had been destabilizing enough; the last thing I wanted was to violate the sacred space and the respite of my girls with this toxicity for toxicity’s sake. I’m getting old enough to understand that places of kinship are few and far between and consequently they should be protected at all costs.

"I don’t want to hear this. It’s going to be too emotionally violent," I thought. The former friend in the midst of his meltdown knew too much about who I have been to not draw blood. In the days before my return to the States, I had been unsettled by his decision that we were still very close friends after over a year of no communication and him living for several years with a woman who not only constructed a profoundly deep friendship between she and I out of a mere acquaintance and the proximity of mutual friends but also proceeded to construct numerous vile betrayals by this mythic "me." However, he seemed to be remarkably, desperately fragile in his new state and the recent upheavals in his life so I decided to place my concern aside and, for old time’s sake, ignore my gut reaction that openly embracing him was a bad idea. "He’s punishing all of us because I was stupid enough to try to embrace him. What was I thinking? There’s no way, after years of living with delusional lies, that he could possibly return to what we all once were. I have to stop this."

However, I spent too long thinking and Cakes was already through the brief section about me. The sum total of his criticism of me was that too much money had been spent on me, that I was all there was to show for said conspicuous consumption and despite my impressive pedigree, I was still nothing more than a loser who has to lie about everything in her life to make it sound more interesting than it is.

To which all I could think was, "And?" Frankly, the dollar amount spent on my life education is irrelevant to whether or not someone finds me interesting to say nothing of the fact that people loathe most in other what they loathe most about themselves. My life is what it is. It’s full of such random crap that, while I have a fantastic imagination, it could never compare to the random beauty the universe gifts me with. In many ways, I have been beyond fortunate. In many ways I have not. In that, I am just like everyone else. It took me the vast majority of my life to come to the understanding that I am who I am and the value other place on me isn’t really relevant to my life. Either you want in on this ride or not. Which ever you choose, I’ll be having a pretty good time.

The fact that his criticisms were simply a reiteration of the constructivist woman’s (who, in high school, felt it appropriate to lock me in a bathroom for over an hour until I "confessed" that the sexual molestation I was experiencing and I refused to stay silent about really didn’t effect me because my "dad is rich") broken record criticism didn’t surprise me in the least. What did surprise me was that, this time, I didn’t have to suppress a moment’s agony.

And I had my moment when the music swells. I am no longer that girl and haven’t been her for a long time. At last I have stopped feeling the desperate need to apologize for who I am and what I have been fortunate enough to be given. I have been able to profoundly alter my life for the better.

I found myself thinking, "Well, if we are all the things you claim in the letter, then you’re better off without us but why all the drama about it?"

As I checked back in to what Cakes was reading, she read an unspeakable piece about his criticism of how she, Panda and their family have been poorly handling their brother’s KIA in Iraq. In a nutshell, he felt that after two whole years, the family should be over his death. In that moment, I understood that the former friend was dead to me. The use of a soldier and a baby brother’s murder in a distant land further than China in my generation’s Vietnam to retaliate after a mere misunderstanding is, in my eyes, far beyond unforgivable. He is so lost within his own agony that death and global tragedy are merely tools to wield for his unwieldy ego. Frankly, there are no words.

The letter, primarily, had its desired effect. Three of the four of us were wounded. However, we recovered by thinking about the criticisms he threw at everyone but "me." Beyond the blinding shame and pain he tapped into by hitting nerves for the sake of hitting nerves, we could see that the criticisms he offered the rest of us weren’t rationally relevant. And, we were all saddened to understand that, at pushing 30, he still hasn’t left high school when things like the loss of a loved one is nothing but an egomaniacal chip.

In the abstract, I find it to be a tragic loss that someone so bright and promising as my former friend could be so trapped by his own fear, paranoia and self-imposed limitations. In real time, I find it terrifying that some one so bright and promising is so desperate to lash out violently that he fabricates reasons out of thin air.