Community Chat

[LilacTree]

I posted a while back about my lifelong friend making a racial epithet to me on the phone. She had been driving down the highway in NC and a group of African American teenagers were fooling around on the median strip. One of them jumped quickly in front of her car and then hopped back onto the strip. They were laughing and thought it was funny. Of course it was not and she had a right to be angry.

However, she made the remark “they should have stayed slaves longer,” absolutely stunning me, since she had always seemed to be in agreement with me about racial bigotry. I posted here and asked you all for your opinions.

Most of you said you could not be friends with someone who would say that, and if she could make that kind of racial slur in anger that it was how she truly felt, and you would have called her on it immediately. Long story short, I let it go, but I couldn’t seem to forget about it. Thereafter, every time anything racial was brought up, I said I did not want to discuss it. She never brought up the incident again and neither did I. Ordinarily, I think we would have discussed it once or twice again, but that did not happen. I am convinced it was because she knew how what she said affected me.

Things never stay buried for long though, they always come out eventually. This happened several days ago when we were discussing Al Anon which she is attending because her son is an alcoholic. She was criticizing his wife because she doesn’t go to Al Anon. Her son will not go to AA. I started talking about my former SIL, who I called a “drunk,” but who went to AA five years ago and became sober (and a completely different person, it saved his life). She objected to the word “drunk,” and I said I was not talking about her son, I was talking about my SIL. But she became really angry that I had used that word and would not drop it. So I blurted out “oh, but it was ok for you to say . . . and I then repeated the racial epithet (words) she had said directly to me on the phone that day the incident on the highway happened. I realized then I made a huge mistake by not calling her on that slur the minute she said it, something most of you who responded to my post said I should have done.

Her response was “I never said that, those words never came out of my mouth.” I responded that she indeed did say it, directly to me! She continued to deny she would ever say a thing like that, that I must be “losing it” or something to accuse her of that, and inferred I was lying. She was by then very angry and compared her son not going to AA as the same as me having RA and “preferring to lay around all day and not take the biologics.” We have discussed many times how afraid I am to take them due to the side effects and the fact that they are not a cure and often do not work and/or make one sicker. She always seemed to understand that, but obviously she did not. At that point she wanted to hurt me, and she, of course, did.

Two real things happened during this phone call. She lied about something terrible she had said directly to me, then denied it vehemently and told me I must be losing it to accuse her of saying that. And she also put me down for not taking meds that scare me, as being the same as her alcoholic son not going to AA. I said I resented being compared to her son in that manner because he chooses to drink and I did not choose to come down with RA. She said they were both “diseases,” so it was the same thing as far as she was concerned.

Then to end the call, she quickly whispered into the phone “oh, I have to hang up, someone’s coming.” I did not answer, I sat there silently looking at the phone which I had put down on my desk. She said “are you there?” I did not answer, I couldn’t get any words out of my mouth. She hung up.

This happened at the beginning of the week and we have not communicated since. She will not make the first move, she never has when we have had disagreements, which have happened several times in the past. I am always the one to break the ice sometimes many months and even as long as a year later. Of course, what caused the estrangement never comes up again and therefore never gets resolved. But I always think of our lifelong friendship and we don’t have that much time left anymore, or I don’t anyway, she is very healthy.

Since I posted about the original incident a couple of months ago, and remember your responses, I am posting again as to the outcome. I welcome your thoughts and opinions. As with any argument, there is always right and wrong on both sides, but I am hopeful this will not end up as a negative thread.