I’ve been gone a long time… Did you miss me…?

Sometimes I don’t blog because I have nothing to say, I forget I even have a blog, I’m lazy, or I just have way too much on my plate and just can’t deal. Those are the days I say “fuck it” and hide on the sofa under a blanket. As if hiding under a blanket will protect me from the world and the stresses I’m feeling. It doesn’t, but there’s a certain comfort in swaddling yourself in a nice, warm, soft blanket.

Admit it, you want to do that now since I mentioned it… Holy shit, am I a Jedi?! Haha… Well, if you live in Australia, you can be. I hear it’s a recognized religion there. I don’t know exactly what’s involved in that, but I can tell you, they probably don’t teach you how to use Jedi mind trick on weak minded fools. It’s a shame, really… At this point, using Jedi mind tricks would be more than a little helpful for the bullshit that’s been going on lately…

Before I go on… I saw The Rise Of Skywalker opening weekend. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil it (although some sites have already done that). What I will tell you is that it was such a bittersweet moment for me. I sat through the entire credits, literally, with tears streaming down my face. I cried all the way through the parking lot to my car! It had nothing to do with the movie content, mind you… It was because I had seen A New Hope in the theater when it was released in 1977. I was 4… And now I had just seen the very last in the theater. It was just a very emotional moment and I don’t know why.

On a funny side note… This past weekend I had gone to lunch with my best friend. I ordered a wrap and a side of broccoli (that was seriously undercooked). I was trying to cut some of the larger pieces and having difficulty. My friend told me to put down my wrap (which was in one hand) and use the fork (which was in my other). I looked at her for a second, then waved my fork slowly over my plate and said, “These aren’t the stalks of broccoli you’re looking for…” My friend started cracking up and told me that’s not what she meant. My reply was, “You told me to us the fork…” I know, bad joke…

Now, back to the original subject… And please, if any of you have thoughts on this, leave me some comments. I’m having a very difficult time right now and find myself in something of a state of upset I don’t know how to handle.

A dear friend of mine, let’s call him Anakin (I’ll explain later why I chose that), lost his father to cancer back in the spring. Someone else I know, let’s call him Obi-Wan, lost his father to heart failure a month later. Both were incredibly close to their fathers, but I believe Anakin was closer to his. Either way, they both had difficulty dealing with the deaths and I was trying my best to comfort them both, even giving them time to commiserate.

Things seemed to be going alright… I was there for Anakin, a shoulder to cry on, someone to talk things over with. He seemed to be doing okay, or so I thought. I had no idea at the time what was lurking underneath.

During this time, Anakin became involved with one of his female friends, Padme. He introduced us and Padme and I became great friends, as he expected.

But, like the Star Wars couple, it seemed this was not destined to be… You see, Padme is married with a good number of children. Her husband wasn’t exactly a great guy. He cheated on her, even had a bastard child from one affair. Padme had had it with him and was wanting to get divorced and planned on being with Anakin. However, there were some things Anakin had to take care of first before traveling hundreds of miles to be with Padme, like pack, sell the house, pay off bills, all that fun shit. But he was dragging his feet… Anakin promised Padme he would be there on a certain day and always found some excuse as to why he had to wait. There were maybe 2 days where I agreed he shouldn’t leave due to expected bad winter weather, but the other reasons? They seemed like they were just excuses. Obviously Padme wasn’t happy with this procrastination.

In the meantime, during this procrastination, Padme was facing some difficulty of her own. Her children were torn about the divorce. They wanted her to be happy, but they didn’t want to lose their father. And then there was the husband… The fear that she may divorce him was the kick in the ass he needed to start getting his shit together, which made Padme’s decision more than difficult. Anakin was having problems relating to what was going on with her, and she with him.

So, asshole that I am, I want to help them both, especially Anakin, my friend of 40 years. Who the hell keeps friends that long, right? I decided to try and be a mediator of sorts to clear up misunderstandings. It worked well with Padme. Anakin on the other hand… He just didn’t understand that, when you’re married with children, things become complicated. His response was that it wasn’t complicated; people make things complicated. He was literally screaming at me that night, telling me what a piece of shit her husband is, that the kids needed to grow up (yes, a 5 year old should grow up and be an adult…) and that he spent 6 years taking care of his father and it was time someone put him first for once. I tried talking, but he was so irrational and selfish at the time that nothing got through. And when I told him how he was behaving, he really got angry with me.

This is where things really turned ugly…

Every time Anakin and I spoke, it was always the same irrational, selfish and, often, childish things. Obviously, he and Padme were done, as he told me, yet all he could do was bitch about her and her decision to stay with “that asshole”. And if it wasn’t that, he behaved as if someone should erect a monument to his greatness for taking care of his ailing father for six years… It was as if he felt the world owed him.

On top of this, we began speaking poorly of women. As he told me, “woman” was a title you earned, like getting a diploma when you graduate. The rest were females. And the difference was that female were liars, cheaters… Pretty much if you didn’t fit his criteria for what a woman should be, you were considered one of the dreaded females… I didn’t take kindly to this at all. But, you know, according to him, he spoke to 12 women (ooh, so many) between the ages of 20 and 63 and they weren’t offended and thought he was right. So… you spoke to 12 stupid women…?! And just because a whole whopping 12 women agreed with him, doesn’t mean the other millions will. One day he’ll spout his bullshit to the wrong one… Actually, he already did, but he wasn’t physically in front of me when he did. Otherwise his face would be very much concave for how hard I’d have punched him in it…

In the end, Anakin did get the house sold, but had no grand master plan and ended up having nowhere to live, so I was told by a third party. Even though I hadn’t spoken to him for a while, I sent a nicely worded, very adult text, explaining that I was still upset and angry, but if he wanted to speak in an adult fashion (as we should be able to do at this age) he should feel free to text me back.

He did text me back… and none of it was pleasant. All of it was whining, bitching and just being nasty in general. One thing that seemed to irritate him most is that Padme and I are still friends, which he made mention of, along with the statement that he “somehow ended up the Darth Vader in this situation”. That’s why I chose to call him Anakin… Makes sense now, doesn’t it…

To add insult to injury, after all the cruel things he said to me, he had the unmitigated gaul to tell me (which was more like an order) to inform Padme where he wanted something he’d given her returned to! What in the happy ass fuck?!? Seriously, he was just the biggest asshole in the world to me, then he orders me to tell her to send this item back and where to send it! I was so pissed off! I could have blasted his ass out of the water, but I didn’t… One thing Anakin repeatedly bitched about was that everyone expected him to be the bigger person and fuck that shit. I wasn’t about to flip shit… Instead, I showed him what it meant to be the bigger person and sent him a nicely worded text that also told him off in an adult fashion. I also informed him I was not about to help him get the object back from Padme. I told him if he wanted it back, he needed to grow up, be a man and ask for them himself, that I wasn’t going to do his dirty work for him.

In many ways, my friend is a lot like the character of Anakin Skywalker… He looks like a grown man, but he’s a child who throws a tantrum when things don’t go his way and expects that the world should work the way he wants it to. Yeah… that worked out real well for the character of Anakin, didn’t it…? In his desire to create a world that worked the way he and Padme wanted it, his mentor cut off his limbs, he caught on fire and ended up stuck as an angry, bitter prick in an uncomfortable suit for the rest of his life. And so it probably will be for my former friend, Anakin… minus a mentor lopping off limbs and him catching on fire, of course… Although I can safely say that, at this point, I’m so pissed that I kind of wish that on him…

Life isn’t fair… Sometimes it always seems as if it’s unfair in your favor. That’s how it is. Some of us were just meant to suffer in life; that’s our destiny. The thing is, to a point, we control our own destinies. Getting involved with a married woman (or man) carries a major risk that they won’t leave their spouse for you. Selling a home and having no plan as to what you’re going to do or where you’ll go come closing day is incredibly stupid. So if things didn’t go the way Anakin had hoped, he has no one to blame but himself.

Perhaps what I found most interesting was him telling me that I should put myself in his shoes and maybe I’d be able to understand…

Hate to tell Anakin but, with the exception of losing a parent, I have been in his shoes and worse. But what does he care… The only thing he cares about now is having people walk in his shoes. He could care less about having to walk in someone else’s shoes himself. Maybe if he did, he’d realize that we’ve all had bad experiences, we’ve all been hurt and most of us have had lives that were unfair, some of us more than others. And women seem to have the shittier end of the stick because, much as we want to be equals, most of us can easily be overpowered by a man.

And so ends my own saga, much like Star Wars…

But it leaves me with some unresolved issues and feelings… Anakin and I have been friends since we were in first grade. And no matter how many of my peers asked me over the years, “Why the hell are you friends with him?!” I remained his friend. Maybe because neither of us had the best childhoods (mine was decidedly worse, even he agreed on that). Maybe it was because we were both misfits. Maybe because, while he treated a lot of people like shit, he never did so to me. Until now… When I told him how badly he upset and hurt me, it didn’t even phase him.

He’s no longer the Anakin I knew… So in many ways, he is like the character. That Anakin turned into someone no one recognized and started down a path that Padme said she couldn’t follow. That’s much how I feel about my former friend. He’s turned to the Dark Side… He’s not the person I’ve known for 40 years. And the person he’s become, I don’t like. You would think that dissolving our friendship would be an easy thing to do, to just say “fuck it” and move on. It should be that easy; but it isn’t… I miss the friend I had. Now that friend is gone and it’s like I’m grieving a loss, which others tell me I shouldn’t let it upset me so much. But, in some ways, it is like grieving over a death, don’t you think…? Let me know, dear readers.