{"id":1416,"date":"2013-04-14T06:00:31","date_gmt":"2013-04-14T10:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/?p=1416"},"modified":"2013-04-14T06:12:02","modified_gmt":"2013-04-14T10:12:02","slug":"wallyball-forfeit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/2013\/04\/14\/wallyball-forfeit\/","title":{"rendered":"Wallyball Forfeit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"speak<\/a><\/p>\n

What the hell is Wallyball?\u00a0 Oh you\u2019ll love it.\u00a0 You play in a racquetball court with a volley ball and a net. You play off the walls, it’s fast and it’s fun and it will be hysterical.\u00a0 Was this the plan the whole time?\u00a0 Well yeah, we didn\u2019t want to tell you because\u2026Because I\u2019m not the least bit athletic, because I smoke, because I\u2019m bigger than any two of you put together, because I\u2019d be the one running for towels and wouldn\u2019t that be perfect?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll take the forfeit.\u00a0 You can\u2019t forfeit, it\u2019s her fortieth birthday party.\u00a0 Yeah I know.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to take the forfeit.\u00a0 Why are you saying that, she\u2019ll be crushed.\u00a0 No she\u2019ll understand.\u00a0 I have no idea if she understood, I never saw her again.\u00a0 In my heart I knew that would be the case but I did it anyway.\u00a0 Somewhere in the back of my mind I was ready to quit this friendship but my method of breaking it apart haunts me to this day.<\/p>\n

We had been friends on and off since high school.\u00a0 It was an interesting friendship, she the blonde athletic beauty that all the boys adored and I the dark haired side kick that all the boys lamented to about never getting her attention. There were times when I thought she keeps me around just to clean up the messes and,\u00a0 although I could hold my own on the looks side of things, didn\u2019t I make her look all that much more beautiful for my curviness and Italian features.<\/p>\n

The relationship was on again for most of the major life events, her wedding, my wedding, her annulment, her next wedding, and the birth of her children.\u00a0 I was maid of honor, matron of honor, Godmother to one of her children and her mother used to call us sisters.<\/p>\n

We weren\u2019t sisters.\u00a0 There came a time that we no longer wore the same size clothes.\u00a0 There came a time that I began to smoke more.\u00a0 There came a time that I seemed to be relegated to the kitchen during parties while she socialized with her, now quite beautiful, friends.\u00a0 These were the young mothers with all that entailed and all that I had no interest in.\u00a0 I am a favorite Aunt with all that entails but they couldn\u2019t grasp the importance or the prestige of that title.<\/p>\n

At the same time she moved an hour away.\u00a0 Visits became infrequent and thankfully I didn\u2019t need to recount the goings on in my life with a husband that had become addicted to drugs.\u00a0 On the rare occasions we did get together, always at her much bigger much more expensive home, the uneasiness was palpable.\u00a0 I knew this was not going to be a lifelong friendship after all but I\u2019m a never-say-die kind that just keeps trying and blaming myself for the lack of improvement.<\/p>\n

At one point in my life I realized that no one had ever left me.\u00a0 Interesting thought to cross one\u2019s mind but it\u2019s true.\u00a0 And why would they?\u00a0 I am a giver, I\u2019m the one who will loan you the money, clean up the mess, make an excuse on your behalf and generally make sure you are comfortable and accommodated. Not always to your benefit I came to find out when my husband and I finally divorced after twenty six years of marriage.<\/p>\n

So as I was putting all the pieces together toward moving on, this party arises.\u00a0 In my heart of hearts I couldn\u2019t imagine I would ever do a thing like not show up.\u00a0 But I couldn\u2019t, I just couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 I could not bear the embarrassment of people jumping in front of me for a ball as they had so many times before.\u00a0 I could not chance the unpredictability of my husband\u2019s behavior.\u00a0 Who the hell knows what side of the high he might find himself on and did I want to haul an hour away only to turn around anyway.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t stand trying to put on a fun face in front of all the slender young mothers again.\u00a0 And I could not be the one to fetch the towels.\u00a0 Or serve the food.\u00a0 Or take the pictures.\u00a0 Or be invisible.\u00a0 I just couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

So that was the end of that.\u00a0 Why does it haunt me?\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure.\u00a0 Did she turn out to be right about my husband and the one sided relationship. Yes.\u00a0 Was she right when she warned me that being a Godmother was a big responsibility not to be taken lightly before I made the decision to say yes.\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Was she right about health and smoking and vegetables. Yes.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure it haunts me because it was heartless and it could have been handled better.\u00a0 It haunts me because it doesn\u2019t represent the way I do things.\u00a0 It haunts me because I let them down and I\u2019ve tried my entire life never to let anyone down.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t haunt me because it ended but because I was completely selfish in my execution of the friendship\u2019s end.\u00a0 The irony of using the word execution does not escape me.\u00a0 I didn’t speak the truth to the person who needed to hear it.<\/p>\n

So now it is seventeen years later and I think of her on her birthday each year.\u00a0 I wonder if I should apologize for my behavior.\u00a0 And then it occurs to me that she has probably gotten beyond the Wallyball forfeit years ago and I am giving myself entirely too much credit for \u201cruining\u201d anything.\u00a0 I look at the state of my life on this day and feel I\u2019ve done more good than harm in the seventeen years that have past but somehow I can\u2019t seem to let it go.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t stay with me every waking hour but it does give me pause when there are hard conversations to be had with friends.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve developed an interesting mix of friends since leaving my husband four years ago.\u00a0 The life I was living was one of isolation so now that I am reengaged I am careful to monitor when to engage fully and when to hold back just a bit.\u00a0 This is not a constant vigilance but I never again want to fail to recognize when my comfort level is being threatened.\u00a0 I never want to be relegated to the kitchen unless it\u2019s my choice and oddly enough it\u2019s usually my first choice now.<\/p>\n

I no longer smoke. I am slimmer now but certainly not near the curvy figure I once had.\u00a0 Thankfully, I am much healthier, nuts, berries and the occasional vegetable to thank for that.\u00a0 I\u2019m older now and I know I will never recapture my youth; it\u2019s gone and mostly cherished for its lessons learned.\u00a0 I know like I know, that I will try to speak the truth and\u00a0continue to honor myself in my friendships and that the mishandling of a friendship, or its breakup, is nothing I ever want to repeat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What the hell is Wallyball?\u00a0 Oh you\u2019ll love it.\u00a0 You play in a racquetball court with a volley ball and a net. You play off the walls, it’s fast and it’s fun and it will be hysterical.\u00a0 Was this the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[237,239,238],"class_list":["post-1416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-company-of-women-2","category-pause-points","tag-friendship-break-ups","tag-speak-the-truth","tag-truth"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27hQ5-mQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1416"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1424,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416\/revisions\/1424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}