Bad Girls/Sad Girls

 

Bad Girls, Sad Girls?

I was lying under the trees at Rob’s place, and my thoughts turned to female friends who are no longer friends.

Have I had an attraction to ‘bad girls’ in the same way that we might fall for ‘bad boys’? 

Overthinking geekin'

The mythology around the bad boy is that despite his unreliable ways, he is alluring and exciting. He’s high in testosterone and usually pretty cocky. He draws you close and then disappears, or he stays in your life for far too long and sucks you dry (and not in a good way). 

What is the equivalent for a female? I’ve heard the term ‘frenemy’ but never thought it applied to my past friendships. A ‘frenemy’ sounds like someone who bitches behind your back the moment it’s turned and probably tries to sleep with your boyfriend. If any of my friends were doing that, I didn't know about it.

I’ve not usually gone for ‘bad boys’ romantically. Perhaps only a handful of times. My usual type was ‘awkward but a bit funny/mentally unwell’.

Perhaps it’s ‘bad girls’ who have always charmed me?  Bad Girls are as varied and complicated (maybe even more so) than Bad Boys. A Bad Girl might seem shy or she could be a star, but like a bad boy, she has secrets and sadness that go all the way through. I have loved some very ‘Bad Girls’, and all of them were utterly fabulous in some way. They also had some pretty obvious 'Bad Girl' traits, yet as with romantic infatuation, I was great at making excuses for them.

I spoke to my friend Monique about my ‘Bad Girl’ theory, and how I was still really sad about the loss of one old friendship in particular. Monique is a quirky, funny, kind and intense individual, but she is not a 'Bad Girl'. Thank Goddess.

“Sooo,” she said, after I regaled her with my overly detailed description of feeling so hurt and misunderstood, “What do you think it says about you, the way she cut you off without telling you why, and then when she did get in touch her explanations didn’t make sense to you?”

I took a breath and blurted out “I feel like a fool! I feel like a big stupid baby that has run towards someone with my arms wide open, giving all my love, and I’ve been kicked right in the face. I feel so foolish.”

I started to cry then, and Monique said “so you feel wrong? Even though you didn’t do anything wrong, you feel like you are wrong. It’s okay that she has a different way of seeing things, but it’s not your fault and you are not a fool. You’re amazing. You know what’s crazy?”

‘What?”

“You are spending a LOT of energy on wondering what happened. We’re intelligent people and we want answers, and we spend a lot of time trying to get them. This one, well, it’s time to say ‘too hard basket’ and move on. You know why? I’m here, and I have buckets and buckets of love to give you.”

And the pain started to lift away. I also realised that it is okay to know that when people are working (or not working) on addiction issues that they may not be coming from a clear and loving place. I also get that I have had a real longing to ‘save’ people in the past, and that a ‘Bad Girl/Sad Girl’ was attractive to me due to my own need to make a difference.

As I have loosened that need, all the ‘Bad Girls’ have left me. One by one, they fell away from my life. The first one, so many years ago, once physically attacked me in a nightclub. My crime? I didn’t mind that my boyfriend might have flirted with her, and she was angry that I wasn’t angry. 

Kathy certainly was an interesting kind of Bad Girl, she was always playing games and I didn’t even know it. Each of these ‘Bad Sad’ women had wonderful traits. Like ‘Bad Boys’, they were naughty and fun to be with! The thing is that naughty often came with a cruel streak. The next ‘friend’ to fall away from my life once left me to sleep on a cold living room floor shortly after I got out of hospital with a head injury and fractured pelvis.  I was still on crutches and often in agony. She didn’t give me a pillow or blanket, and I didn’t feel I could go in and ask since she had a guy in her bed. I was originally meant to sleep in with her. I thought ‘oh she must be so drunk that she doesn’t realise I’m out here on the floor’.

One of her flatmates gave me a pillow and blanket, but it was a very painful and uncomfortable night. The next morning I asked her what had happened, did she realise I was out there? She said that she knew. She looked a little uncomfortable and she said she didn’t know why she didn’t check on me. She just didn’t. I recall that she looked at me in this blank kind of way. It was odd. There was no apology. Would you remain friends with her? For some reason I did. I was 26 when that happened, and anytime she was thoughtless or unreasonable I would expend enormous amounts of energy ‘fixing’ things. When I was around 40 she behaved so unkindly and rudely that I finally woke up. Now and then I wonder how  she is. I saw a haggard woman walking past the museum months ago and realized it was her. If we'd remained friends she wouldn't look haggard because the passage of time would have eroded us slowly together, it wouldn't be such a contrast.

A ‘Bad Boy’ or a ‘Bad Girl’ are exciting in the short term, and of course they can be a lot of fun. I have so many great memories of the two women I’ve just described. They weren’t just ‘Bad/Sad’, they were creative, funny and often generous. 

I also had two friends leave my life in the last five years who took things very literally. As a very expressive poet, having friends who are extremely literal can get you into trouble! One of them threw away our friendship because she thought I was telling her to love her feet (I was just using feet as an example). She got angry because she hated her feet. Er, okay. I was normally very patient, but on that occasion I didn’t tip toe around as her rant was so over the top. Wow, I’ve never been blocked on FB so fast! Again, it seems odd, but who knows what kind of stories and resentments people are creating? In the end, you may run on your beautiful fucking feet towards such people, and they will run away. Such a person really has done you a favour, even if it does hurt. They aren't meaning to hurt you. They really are just playing out the role imposed by whatever filters are in place.

Because look. Over there. There’s a woman with a big smile, a woman who is nervous about swimming in the sea, loves going to Toastmasters and trusts my sartorial advice. She says she's got buckets of love for me, but it's more like she's tapped in to an endless well. So here we go. Arms open wide, like big old babies!