Category Archives: Friendships

Losing Friends

A few years ago, when I first moved back to the LA area, I got another job in another office, but this time my boss was Jewish and he was not a big fan of Christians and their “killing a living thing to celebrate the birth of Jesus”, aka Christmas. It was great. I had just started my blog and he loved talking with me about fundamentalists. When I had my first radio interview, he was so accommodating, let me take time off to do the interview and even set me up in an office.

Around that time, I was a new blogger and very similar to a new mother, I wanted to coddle my blog and be with it every minute of the day. I had to feed it daily so it got big and strong and I had to clean out the spam-germs so it stayed disease-free. ha! Sorry, I’m getting a little carried away with my metaphor here. My point is I woke up early to blog nearly every morning and then I blogged daily at lunch. When I wasn’t blogging, I was working on my manuscript, but the blog was a writing exercise for the manuscript so they complimented each other.

I got a little burned out after year one of that schedule and then my second year I decided to slow down, maybe write daily for 3 months and then take a month off and repeat the pattern. I was flexible with myself and forced myself to rest. I also had anxiety so nearly every day I would log on to my email and see a new “You need to get saved” or “Are you saved?” or “I’m praying for you to get saved” email and I’ll be honest–I spent most of that year in tears. Over the course of time, and with the support of a lot of great non-religious friends and some very nice religious family members, I realized that the issue I needed to just brush it off. All of it and all of them. Sometimes that meant losing old friends, like the other day. I won’t go into it too much but someone who used to say she loved me and I was her hero went bat-shit hostile on me the other day. I personally think it was my lack of religion (and lack of respect for pseudo-intellectual fundamentalists) that did her in, but it might have to do with the fact that her dad believes pharma companies planted AIDS in the world and I just think that’s a bit insane.

Even when I act tough or hide it with humor, losing friends hurts. Even when I know they are stupid or weren’t that supportive of me in the first place (or when I know it was bound to happen).

Have you lost friends or family members? How did you cope? Or are you coping now? If you need to talk, email me at mycultlife@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you.

Reza and MJ make me miss my gay bestie

It’s not often that reality TV makes me cry, but Reza and MJ’s fights make me miss my gay best friend.

A long time ago, before there were Egyptian pyramids, I fell in love with a man we’ll call Ted (not his real name). Ted was a writer like me and he was tall and yummy. One small issue: he was gay. Okay, so I’m not one to stay in love with someone who clearly doesn’t want me, so I moved him to the friend zone and he quickly became one of my best friends.

Ted and I hung out all the time. We he ate salads together and we got coffee together. And we talked about boys. All the time.

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At some point even based a character in a play about me and I acted in that role. And so our friendship blossomed. I was writing poetry at the time and he was writing plays, but we worked around it. Coming from a small college, someone (not me) started getting a big head when his plays were being produced in our very small theater department.

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Unfortunately, besides writing, Ted and I also had the same taste in men. Exact. Same. I mean, down to the “Omg, Ted, you will never believe the hot guy I noticed in class!” and he would say “No way!” because as I described him, we realized it was the same guy.

Fortunately for me, the men we liked were usually straight, so I slept with them all (except for the gay ones). In my defense, they asked me out and I don’t think they knew he liked him. Except for one who made out with him and me in the same night and then denied making out with him the next day, but we won’t go there because I think I already beat that horse to death.

I’m not surprised, really, that our friendship unraveled considering all this. I mean, the men he went after all fell for me (and were terrible lays). It was bound to happen.

But the thing is, I wasn’t the only guilty party in this breakup. It seemed like Ted and me were both becoming divas pretty quickly, but I started taking my diva to the back of the bus when he was around so he could shine and that’s when it all went to shit. Pretty soon I started realizing he wasn’t really as concerned about me as I thought he was once. I noticed myself constantly making excuses for Ted to my other friends when he wouldn’t show up at parties I planned and they all told me “Lisa, you deserve better than that in a friend.”

Being a pastor’s son complicated things, too. I was going through my “I think I’m not a Christian” stage and his parents were telling him that they knew he was gay (even though he had tried very hard to hide it) and that his being gay was killing his father (true story). Obviously, it pissed me off when he would call me crying because that is so very damaging to a child. All the churches I knew were full of douche bags like that, but (deep breath), they were his parents and he was close to his family like I was close to mine. He was starting to go through his first gay crisis though. He was starting to out his actual feelings for men and loving it, yet his family was about to lynch him or sell him off to the first available fat chick at church.

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With time it seemed like everything just started going to shit. It was like a really messy breakup. One minute I was giving him blow job tips and the next minute he was angry at me and always hanging out with our friends without me and I was of course, hurt. When he would forgive me, I would hold a grudge. The cycle continued.

Just like Reza and MJ, a wedge started forming between us. When I moved to LA, I started feeling resentful of him when he asked to hang out only when I said I was having drinks with my actress friend or my boyfriend  (at the time) whose father is a very famous songwriter. Not being one to feel comfortable with networking, I started feeling like he was using me and my friends. He was, in fact, just networking but I felt used. I wanted to hang out in our pajamas and have a sleepover. I didn’t want to plan big networking events just to get him to visit.

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Watching Reza and MJ fight, I started tearing up and then I really lost it when MJ said that she knew, no matter how mean Reza was to her, he loved her. I guess I just don’t feel that way anymore. I doubt he does love me anymore. Ted and I haven’t talked in years, and he doesn’t look me up anymore when he comes home or comes to LA. I don’t know. I know things were a certain way when we were younger and in college and they won’t be that way ever again. I’ve changed. I’m old. I have a job. He has changed. He moved away to Singapore to get an MFA.

Either way, I still love him and I miss him. A lot.