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Betrayed by my Best Friend
by: Tracy Porter
Copyright 1997
I met Ester in the winter of 1996. I was selling Avon at the time and she and her husband, Chris, had recently moved into the same street so it was not long before I introduced myself by way of a catalogue put into her mail slot.
During our initial meeting Ester gave me a Cheshire smile as she told me of her job and husband, and suggested that we get together one evening. German born, it had always been her desire to marry a British soldier and live in England. When she married Chris and moved to England all of her dreams had come true. Ester even told me that if her marriage failed she would stay in England because she considered it to be her home.
By initial impressions it seemed that we had a lot in common because we were both 35 years old, foreign born and had married men affiliated with the British armed forces. Ester worked as an administrator and I a secretary, putting us in essentially the same income bracket. During our meetings we spoke of work, home and families at great length and I believed that we had developed a rapport. I also felt that any differences of opinion we had would only serve to add flavour to our relationship because I am essentially a tolerant person and respect the views of others even if I do not personally agree with them.
Because we both endured difficult childhoods it made it easy for us to sever any ties and move to a foreign land. While I had my paternal grandmother who provided a stabilising influence, Ester had no one and was even taken into care as a child because of the austere environment she was forced to endure. In retrospect, I believe the fact that she didn’t have one suitable carer or role model in her early life influenced many of her perceptions and behaviours in adulthood.
Early on in our friendship Ester had told me that she did not like to hear other people’s problems and for this reason I intentionally refrained from contacting her on those occasions when I was feeling particularly unhappy. It is unfortunate that during the time that I knew her my marital difficulties seemed to be at their worst and I was unable to think of much else but how melancholy I was. I am also not one of those individuals who can hide her problems from the world, so my feelings were reflected in my mannerisms as well as body language to show a troubled person indeed.
Although I am sure that Ester had the best intentions, our friendship took on a more authoritative tone as she took every opportunity to give me advice on every possible topic of conversation, regardless of how ill-informed she was. Additionally, because we both possessed entirely different personalities, we tended to view life differently and any advice that she did proffer was usually inappropriate to my temperament. Just one on many suggestions that agitated me greatly was Ester’s notion that I should move out of my home into a bedsit because I was so unhappy, failing to take into consideration that I had my own furniture and two cats to think about as well as the fact that I am not able to function in confined spaces. I wonder if she would have been so eager to move into such inadequate surroundings if she had been unfortunate enough to find herself in a difficult marriage with no one to turn to for help.
Finally, in August 1997, after months of her relentless questioning about my personal life and why I was so unhappy, against my better judgement I confided to Ester about some aspects of my life that caused me considerable distress.
It just so happens that during this period I was temping at the company where she was a permanent member of staff. A couple of days after I had poured my heart out to her, Ester and I walked home from work engaging in conversation. As the dialogue progressed, Ester rather forcefully suggested that I go back to college and get some more qualifications that I really had no interest in. Because I was not overjoyed with what she must certainly have considered to be profound insight, we found ourselves at an impasse.
Ester must have taken my reluctance to agree to her every word as an insult because I was soon aghast to hear a litany of insults hurled at me, many of which must have been predetermined because she had taken things that I had told her in the strictest of confidence, twisted, and used against me. Just one of several insults that Ester hurled in my direction was that ‘I was such a miserable person she did not blame people for not wanting to be my friend’, which was said as a direct result of a statement that I had told Ester in. She also made a point of telling me that she was not a ‘social worker’, a remark that I found to be quite hurtful because it was she who wanted to know all of the details concerning my unhappiness while I was reluctant to reveal them. I can only imagine that she been waiting for the opportune moment to use those hateful words against me when she felt that she would be able to wield the most damage.
While Ester stood in the middle of the street, ranting on at me while tears streamed down my face, I realised that she was telling me in a most cruel way that she did not want to be my friend any more, primarily because she felt that I had not shown enough gratitude to her for having befriended me.
Amazingly, in the midst of all of this, I actually tried to calm her down and put it down to a misunderstanding that could be resolved. Finally, after I had listened to this tirade for about an hour, Ester announced that she was going into her house to make her tea, and wanted me to think about our friendship and how ungrateful a friend I had been to her for not appreciating all of the good advice she had given me. At that, I was absolutely dumbfounded by what had transpired, and turned, crying, to go to my own home which was a few doors down.
As much as she hurt me, I resolved to give Ester exactly what she wanted and made no attempt to contact her. As the weeks passed, I did manage to think about our friendship and I came to the realisation that while she made a point of telling me that she did not enjoy listening to other people’s personal problems, she contradicted herself because she had an uncanny knack for asking probing questions in order to coerce people into telling her what was bothering them. As in my case, she actually took an offensive stance when I did not wish to reveal the true nature of my unrest by stating that I must be ‘making it up’ or ‘it was all in my mind’.
Eventually, what I felt as sadness for a friendship that had gone awry turned into hatred because I realised that she had lured me into her confidence only to betray me when she felt I was the most vulnerable. I had to pass by her house every day on my way to work and I looked on her with loathing for the sick joke that she had played on me.
About three months after Ester’s outburst, she actually had the nerve to telephone me regarding the fact that the town centre had been evacuated due to a chlorine leak. Although I suspected that she only wanted to hear the local gossip, I could not bring myself to be rude to her regardless of how shabbily she had treated me. I can only guess that either the phone call was her attempt at a reconciliation or she does not have as many friends as she would like me to believe. Regardless of what motivated Ester to behave in the manner that she did, I will never trust her again and the friendship will never be the same.
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The above piece is autobiographical in nature. It depicts how I was treated by someone who was supposed to have been a friend. Sadly, with friends like that one doesn’t need any enemies.