Portrait of an African American bride with her bridesmaids.
The world is changing rather quickly these days. Instagram images become the basis for a happy lifestyle, rappers don’t have to know how to rap anymore, and married women are envious of single women.
Sounds silly, right? Well, I thought so too until one of my close friends stopped talking to me after she tied the knot. It left me baffled to be honest. But after analyzing our friendship, our upbringings, and almost 20 years of her taking crap from the 19-year-old idiot she met in a high school Freshman English class, I get it now. In college she revealed to me that she viewed him as a “daddy.” He did everything for her that her absentee father never attempted as well as what her single, disabled mother couldn’t afford to do. Granted, buying your girlfriend sneakers is extremely basic, but it means everything to a young girl who can’t get these things with her allowance.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I always thought she was a bit jealous of me because I had a two-parent home, much better grades than her, and Claire Huxtable confidence prior to entering high school. The longer we remained “friends,” the more I could see my suspicions were correct.
After graduating from college we remained in touch somewhat. As usual, my girlfriends and I always find a way to talk about men when we get on the phone. One day we got on the subject of marriage and how we’re tired of the single life. (At that point she and her idiot had went their separate ways because he was a total psychopath who harassed her regularly.) She took it a step further and exclaimed, “Yes! Somebody to help with these bills!”
Insert the cringe-worthy sound of a DJ taking the needle off the record…. Okay, I’m not that anxious to get married. Not then and not now. And no, I haven’t been a baller all my life, but I always took pride in doing for myself no matter how hard I had to work to make ends meet. Shout out to my parents, grandmother, and brothers for reinforcing that. When you’re starving, you’re liable to consume anything, no matter how bad it is for you, and that’s just what happened to her. She took the psychopath back and settled for a life of half-hearted love, mediocrity, and abuse of all kind for the sake of stability. Now that she has her “stability,” she’s become jealous of my accomplishments as an independent person and we are estranged like Screech and the cast of Saved By the Bell. Other classmates, friends, and her family have even asked me what’s her problem because her attitude sucks. *Kanye shrug*
The kicker is now that my ex-bestie has what she thought she needed, she’s lonelier than ever — and a full-fledged hater. She never fully healed from her upbringing and I know she knows that’s the real problem that’s spawned all these other issues. What’s really sad is I know at least three more women who married for stability and are wishing they didn’t. They, too, are permanently mad with the world. I have not tried to fix these friendships for one reason: It’s their relationship with themselves that needs to be fixed. These estranged friends found shelter, but forgot they needed a home. There’s nothing this single and self-assured woman can do to fix that for them.
