We interrupt this blog for a public service announcement:

I am interrupting the chronological order of the events of "my motherhood" so far in light of recent events in "my womanhood". I will warn you this will be long and it IS a soapbox...

I am a mother who has just entered her 30s. Therefore, I am a WOMAN in her 30s. I interact with many other women every single day. Some are also 30ish, some are 40 or 50ish, others are just entering their 20s, and many of them are 2. Some of them I see daily, others once a week, once a year or once every few years. Some I talk to often on the phone, sometimes texts and others on Facebook. In the end, we're all women, who were once girls that were taught one way or another how to survive in a pack of other girls and not always have to be the who goes home from school (or the slumber party, or work, or playgroup, or any other social environment we put ourselves in) and cry ourselves to sleep. We are taught, somehow (I don't pretend to know precisely how), to ride a wave of girlfriendship where sometimes we are kind and sometimes we are not. Sometimes we mean it when we say we trust and love our girlfriends and sometimes we do not. Sometimes we mean it when we say the events and choices in our girlfriends lives don't threaten our own and sometimes we do not. Sometimes we mean it when we say, "I didn't mean it that way" and sometimes we do not. Sometimes we mean it when we say, "I'm sorry" but sometimes, too often, we do not. 

The first time I was betrayed by a "best" girlfriend stands out in my life story like someone set fire to the safe little house I existed in. I was 11. The fact I was so young brings tears to my eyes as I type this. Jenny (names have been changed) and I had been best best BEST friends since kindergarten. Sleep over each others house during the week, know each others scariest nightmares, make up dance routines and video tape them, allow the other one to pretend to marry your favorite NKOTB, write each other letters every single day if one of us was on vacation kind of best friends. BEST friends. One day in middle school (some random day in a random week in a random month. There was no reason to it), Jenny just stopped sitting with me at lunch. When I called out to her, she looked away. When I stopped by her locker, she turned her back to me. When I called her that afternoon, she hung up. When I wrote her notes the next day in school, she threw them out unread. To this day, I have no idea why. I cried for weeks. About 6 months later, she called me and said she missed me and wanted to be friends again. Deep inside I was so happy I could have burst, but my 11 year old soul had changed. I knew I was suddenly more mature than this sort of torture girls put each other through. I told her she hurt me irreparably. I told her no. I told her goodbye. 

Not that I have never been guilty of it.  A few years later, I had become close friends with another girl. We'll call her Lisa. She had been "dating" a friend of mine in the way you date someone when you're in 8th grade. So they talked on the phone and wrote notes and maybe swayed to and fro in the gym of the middle school during a dance once or twice. This was a boy I had harbored interest in because everyone else did too. So when one day he told me over the phone that he sometimes wished he was dating me rather than her, I beamed. And I called another "best" friend (we'll call her Lily). I shared with her what he had said to me because I wanted him to like me in the way you want someone to like you when you're in 8th grade; as proof that one day you'll have options. It's no shock that Lily called Lisa and exaggerated the conversation I had had with both her and her boyfriend. Lily and Lisa weren't friends, but Lily DESPERATELY wanted to be friends with Lisa. And this is what we do, right? To build a friendship with one girl we have to tear down another. We build a bond on mutual annoyance. So when Lisa called me to find out if it was all true, I drew a line in the sand. At 13 years old I had had enough. I wasn't going to be a "girls girl" anymore. So I took the hit. I told her I had lied. I made it up. Her boyfriend never said that. Lisa never really talked to me again and her boyfriend only did in secret. Lily and Lisa were BFF for about 3 weeks when Lily used Lisa to get to be friends with the next rung on the social ladder. 

If you are reading this and you went to middle school with me, I am sure you're thinking, "who the hell is she talking about?! When did this happen?". I am not so self-centered to think that a defining event in my life was meaningful in anyway to you. It was a big social issue for about a day or two and then the summer started and it all faded away and we were on to high school where "best friends" stealing their best friend's boyfriends was commonplace. We've all had a friend start dating the boy we thought we'd marry only a few days after he broke our hearts. We've all felt that slap as it stung our faces raw. Maybe some of us even are guilty of that. I am, myself. That's my point. Even when we see the game and how sick it is; even if we don't agree with it, we still ride the tide.

Now we are 30 and we are mothers and all of our old middle-school insecurities about where we fit in the group mentality are all still parts of our foundation. We want to be seen as women who are making good choices, using the right tools, displaying the best of ourselves and our families. We want to be liked. 

For the last 2 years, I have been waging my own battle with a friend of a friend. Someone I have probably spent a total of 5 days with in my entire life. Someone completely meaningless to me when it comes right down to it. This person is also 30, also a mother of a beautiful child. She has always defined herself by her opinions and her willingness to share them. We have been friends on Facebook. Every week, or at least it seemed, she would find a picture or a status or a comment between myself and someone else to make a snide remark about. Either I was stifling Eva's creativity the way I was having her paint, or the toy I bought her was a safety hazard. She would school me on breast-over-bottle, which sippy cup I should be using instead and comment on my choices for travel. Inevitably a photo would show up on her wall a few months later of her son playing with those same art supplies or using that same toy that she warned would be so dangerous.  I bit my tongue to be polite. I didn't want to cause drama for our mutual friend, who has been one of my best friends since high school. Her comments didn't hurt me. In my mind, she was a lunatic and I couldn't really care less about it. I never commented on her facebook life, she just stalked mine out, all....the....time. It got to the point that friends and family started asking me who this person was that was so negative about everything I did, every choice I made. So this week, when she posted another contradictory response with no constructive value when no opinion was asked for, I straightfowardly asked her to abide by the golden rule. Post nothing if it's not nice. Thanks so much. She flipped out and fought dirty. I obviously hit a nerve and showed her a side of herself she's not comfortable with. She called me a bad mom. That I was constantly negative about Eva and that we'd never be real friends because she disapproved of my parenting style. I wish I were kidding, but I'm not.

In all honesty, I laughed. I paced the kitchen for a moment because I had to expend some energy so I wouldn't respond.  I could go on and on about how ridiculous her argument was, that if I'm so awful, why are you wasting so much of your existence and time with your own child by seeking me out on Facebook to negatively comment on whatever it is I'm doing? But that's not really the point of this post. 

My point is that I find it sad. I find it awfully unfortunate that someone at 30, who is raising a child, feels so unsure of their role in the production of girlfriendship that she needs to bully and lash out and create social triangles in order to feel more comfortable. I don't know why a choice I make about sippy cups would threaten another mother, another woman, enough that they felt the need to teach me a lesson about it. Relax...it's not that big of a deal. 

Enough is enough.

I love my mommy friends for the choices THEY make for THEM. I don't care what toys you get your kids or where you bring them on vacation. I only care that you love them and that they are as precious to you as my Eva is to me. I have removed the "occasional bitch" from the description of myself on this blog because I've had enough. I will not offer my contradictory opinion to you on any topic at anytime. I will offer you NOTHING but support because you are the one making the same difficult choices and sacrifices for your child/ren that I am every day for Eva. I am proud of you. I mean it when I say that now and I will mean it tomorrow.

I am raising a girl. I pray I raise her right. I pray I raise her to chose HER closest friends with care so she will not know what it feels like to be that girl crying from betrayal day after day. I pray I raise her to mean it when she says she trusts and loves her closest friends. I pray I raise her to mean it when she says she is sorry for what will be unknowingly hurting their feelings. I pray that I can surround myself with women who will provide her with a positive example of how much a truly loving, respectful and supportive group of women can accomplish. These are the things I pray for.

We will now return to your regularly scheduled blogging...