I do have girlfriends, after all

I always thought I couldn’t get along with other girls – in elementary school a group of 3 girls hated me – they’d always play tricks on me, they’d tell me to stay behind a parked car for a special hide-and-seek, and then they’d disappear by the time I counted to 300 and peeked out. I ended up riding bikes with boys. In college girls hated me for doing my architectural models in 3 hours as opposed to 3 weeks and still getting A’s. At work, in the business world, women would shy away from me as I was either threatening to them in how direct I was or posed competition because I was somehow stronger – could work longer, could tolerate more, could figure out stuff faster. That’s what I thought. In reality, it was me who was shying away from other girls, and, later, other women.

Every woman who has been sexually abused as a little girl develops no sense of self worth, and projects the same lack of worth to other women. It is only men who are in the status of being worthy, worthy of a relationship. Other girls or women are not. I am only understanding this now, and I begin understanding that I always had real girlfriends, despite the fact that I thought I didn’t.

One of them called me today, and she asked how I was, and she said she called “just because” – she didn’t need anything from me, she called “just because”. The other one showed up today at my office (I was moving out things), because she remembered that we wanted to have coffee between 3 and 4pm. She didn’t e-mail me and I thought she forgot, but she didn’t. My other girlfriend, the one who moved out of town, wrote me a long letter on Facebook – telling me that she is thinking about me and wondering how I am. My other girlfriend, from Russia, bought a web camera, especially for me, so that we could chat on Skype, and when we chatted, she said she looked at all my pictures on Flickr and she knew all the places I’ve been to, from those pictures.

They were always there – and all of them were reaching out to me, at one time or another – and it’s me who was not responding, it’s me who couldn’t find time to get together, it’s me who thought that nothing will come out of having coffee together – yet the whole world comes out of doing that. I’m glad I’m understanding this now and not when I’m 80, sitting alone in front of the window of a retirement house, having nobody next to me to chat. In fact, it’s my dear girlfriend from Russia, Olga, who is responsible for me and my husband being together now. One day, after having a particularly nasty fight with my first husband (that was when my daughter was little and I lived in Moscow), I left the house and didn’t want to come back, so I went to see her, we drank wine and promised each other to have fun in life. We decided that when we’re both 80 years old, when we will have no teeth and our breasts will be looking rather like rabbit’s ears, hugging our bellies, we will sit together in two whicker chairs in front of the fireplace, and we will remember all our love affairs, and we will laugh about them. When I met my second husband, when he was walking me home after we danced at a night club, I thought I was falling in love. Then he told me was leaving for US in 2 months to marry his girlfriend. After that he calmly invited me to go to an art museum together. I got so mad, I yelled at him: “Who do you think I am, green peace? Do you think you can just have a girlfriend for 2 months before you leave? Did you know I’m married and I have a 3 year old daughter?”

We both nearly yelled at each other, until my girlfriend’s words surfaced in my mind – what stories would I tell her, when I’m 80 and sitting in front of a fireplace?

I said: “To hell with you, I will go to an art museum with you.” I decided to have an affair. After all, my husband at that time had an affair with someone else, and we were sleeping in separate rooms. I have to thank my girlfriend for her words of wisdom, because we’ve been together with my husband now for 11 years. I thank all of my girlfriends – for keeping poking me – to have fun, to have life, to have affairs worthy of being retold later. I promise I will be crawling out of my cave more and more often. I love you all!