So a lot has been reevaluated over the past couple of years.  I've let go of some very toxic connections, some might have been trauma bonds.  It can be hard to meet new people.

Anyway, I have put some limits on one group of friends and will likely have to do so even more. I mean I care about them and we have a history...but it has just become SO incredibly negative.  I wrote earlier this week about how I declined a get together for last Sunday. I really needed time to myself.

I went for dessert at my friends' house on Thanksgiving after meeting up with my family for dinner.  I don't really understand what is going on there.  For one, everyone is extremely obsessed about politics. This is one problem.  I have issues with it too, so I can't be around people who are obsessed with it.  I had therapy today and talked about my news and internet addiction in relation to politics. The line has to be drawn somewhere.

Anyway, people just seem very enmeshed in this group. I don't get what is going on. One of the people used to live cross-country.  She was hell-bent on moving here, which I was suspicious of.  Texting all day every day, just overly fawning, sending emails of several paragraphs long telling me about all of her problems. I never responded.

One of our friends drove cross country to pick her up and drive her back here.  It's been a whirlwind of disaster for her ever since. She got sick, then got injured, then went to the hospital, now lost her job, ENDLESS drama.  I think she lives rent free in my friends' house with my friend's mom.  My sense is that she may be a user or freeloader, so I won't be having get togethers at my house. She'll be vying to move in.  I managed an OK dinner with my difficult family...and then went over there for dessert. It was pretty intense.  She just unloaded all of her issues, like she used to do in the zoom meetings.  So uncomfortable. And then she dropped the big bomb that I knew was coming all along. Promptly after moving in with my friend, she quit her job.  Also, she is a senior citizen, so this makes it more complicated I think. She has no plans, no money, no backup.  I had a feeling this was carefully planned all along. I don't think she would ever have quit her job back home. She had family who could have helped her, but now she is estranged from them and that door might be slammed shut.

Anyway, it was an incredibly draining and exhausting evening, even worse than I thought. I wanted to stop by and say hi before I left for my week vacation...which is being kept from her because she will expect to be taken on this vacation too...her expectations are immense.

The whole evening we heard about all of her grandiose plans to leave work entirely and start a business, she was trying to get our friend to write a grant for her. She gave me this overlly gushy card: To My Friend, which was super emotional, she wrote like a paragraph about "our friendship." I hardly know her.  And then she talked about all the tragedies in moving here, woe is her...that she was targeted at her job and had to quit.  She was raising her voice and getting emotional.  And then she got really sickly sweet, pouring all over me, saying that we can spend holidays together...and that I can come over and cook for them.  Wow that is so convenient for her! A chef and everything. She could tell I was not impressed. I was not feeling it.

As I was trying to get out of the door, she was telling me that her mother said they will never see each other again.  She asked me if I wanted to join a group for scapegoats with her...it sounded like a group for screaming crying woe is me victims.  I think she's trying to get people to align with her, pay for her, she gets to quit work, have people cook for her.  I had been super suspicious of her move and this confirmed it. I predicted that she was going to quit her job two years ago.  She was talking about she and my friend "leaving the country with their cats." She seems so self-motivated, self involved. My friend said, "no I'll be taking care of my MOTHER." 

I have always felt like she had her sights on me as a good target to use. A place to crash, now she wants me cooking for her?  She expects me to drop my whole family that lives here and that we are going to spend holidays together?  She seems like she is batshit crazy IMO.  Before she announced the big unemployment bomb I invited them to my graduation.  At first I wanted them there and now I regret it.  Now I understand my own hesitation about mixing my friend groups together. I wanted to have a party with everyone I know, but now I see my internal resistance to it.  If stage five clingers know everyone else that I know, there really is no out, no time apart from them, they tend to just annex every part of your life.  When my friend found out that I was going abroad for a week her response was that 'this person would be devastated.'  I think some people are so desperate and needy that they will suck up every part of your life.  I don't like it that she assumes we will now become fused because she lives here. Like why would I cook for her?

I may drop these people entirely, or just hang out with some of them individually. I get the election was hard for a lot of people, but as with all of the conversations, the entire night was spent raging about it, by the end of the evening people were crying, including me. I felt so exhausted. I had to leave because I had therapy early the next morning. She was trying to get everyone to stay-to sleep on the floor and stay overnight and have a "girls slumber party."  She is almost 65.  Something strikes me as not normal about this.  I personally take meds and have to take them in the evening and for the most part can only sleep in my own bed. Even when in a relationship I have to head home to take my meds, it's hard to sleep in other places. 

I have other friends, and if I thought I wanted before to keep these groups separate, I really do now. She expects everyone to be on board with her fly-by-night plans and expects everyone else to finance it. I told her she needs to sign up for food stamps and unemployment ASAP.  I found myself advice giving and talking about employment woes-I didn't want to go down this road.  I was tempted to send her job listings, but that's the codependent controller in me coming out. I think she's carefully assorted caretakers around her to manipulate to get what she wants.  I feel the impulse to try to fix and save her.  I need to keep going to my meetings, therapy, and stay the hell away.  Now I wish I didn't invite them to my graduation.  When she didn't live here, things were more chill. She seems desperate, scary and crazy.