October 5, 2023

EXIT INTERVIEW #1, Part 2

Katie and Sonia

The following is Part 2 of 3 of the first EXIT INTERVIEW to appear in Mommy’s El Camino.

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EXIT INTERVIEW #1: KATIE AND SONIA, Part 2

Sonia: You helped me remember something when you said, Ben was always there. He became a fixture when I stopped bringing those problems to you. For me, that was occupying so much of my mental space. So when we weren't gonna talk about it, there wasn't a lot to talk about. So when we did talk, it felt like we mostly talked about you

Katie: I know. 

Sonia: I don't know if it’s true, but I felt like I couldn’t bring what was going on with me to you. I wasn't in a light mood for bullshitting or having laughs. I started to feel unhappy and angry just talking to you in general.

Katie: Yeah. And you had said that and it had been palpable for sure.

Sonia: I had said that?

Katie: Yeah. I think in one conversation at one point you said, I don't have a lot else on my mind other than what you've said you don't want to talk about. So it's hard to talk, and you got upset. It made me sad and I also didn't know what to do. 

Sonia: The other thing was that I started to call you or answer you when I wasn't alone. I think I did that kind of deliberately. I'm imagining that noticing Ben being around all the time, might've been by design. I couldn't say because we're kind of speaking in generalities. But that was a way to have things be different, I think was to not be alone together.

Katie: Yeah. But then like throughout that trip [to New York to see you], it felt like something terrible was going on in your relationship because you never wanted to be with me without him.

Sonia: Oh. That visit was really, really, really hard. I think I felt steamrolled a lot. I remember at one point we made some kind of joke about boundaries. And you were like, “I'm here to help you practice your boundaries.” We were acknowledging that you were pushing them.

Katie: Did you get through… did you finish the thing that you were trying to say?

Sonia: Oh, the patterns. I wanted to tell you a little bit, if you want to hear it, about what it was sort of like for me after that trip, which is basically when we stopped talking. We haven't really discussed your intensity and my conflict aversion. I think for a really long time they helped keep us together because I would avoid conflicts to maintain the relationship. Our thinking patterns, to grossly oversimplify: you’re all black and white, I’m only gray.

Right? Because when we did talk about whatever you were dealing with or whatever I was dealing with, I'd be trying to get you to see it in more nuance, or you'd be trying to get me to pick an answer already.

Katie: Mm-hmm.

Sonia: So what I'll say is I think when you left after that trip [to New York], I said that we would talk soon. 

Katie: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Sonia: And we didn't. And, I think I knew that I needed a break. 

Katie: Yeah. I mean, that definitely felt like a goodbye.

Sonia: Oh, okay. In spite of that, I did not have an intentional plan. Like my behavior wasn't premeditated or deliberate. I wasn't like, “I'm not talking to Katie,” or “I'm not returning her calls.” It just was what I was doing. I think I realized at a certain point that that was what I had effectively done. 

The other thing was that you were in my dreams pretty frequently. 

Katie: Like for that year.

Sonia: Yeah. Leading up to me reaching out to you again, and my understanding of what was going on for me. I really had no idea what was going on for you at the time. I also spent a lot of time in therapy talking about you and our friendship. Maybe that's after our second conversation, which we haven't really talked about it, but that's when I feel like you cut me off.

Katie: Yeah. I mean, what has been most surprising to hear you say several times now is that you… That there was a cutoff that happened [that you chose]. Because when we had that conversation on the phone, you told me that you had had an anxiety issue around work. Essentially what I said back is, I don't believe you, I don't trust [it], and [if it was true] I feel hurt that you didn't tell me that at all.

What I remember most about that is, I say the thing, but you don't always say the thing. That was why I felt acutely that I was not going to chase you because I was tired of always doing the [work of], “what is going on with Sonia? How do I excavate what is going on?” 'Cause clearly something was going on and I didn't wanna do that work anymore. I felt like in that phone call, I was immediately being asked to do some major excavation work after having been shafted for a year, very painfully.

I'm getting a little self-righteous, which isn't really necessary, but I think that's why I feel some relief in the fact that my gut feeling was that I wasn't getting the truth about what had been going on that year and why we hadn't been in touch. I was being asked something of, that that call was to ask something of me after, you know, dropping me.

And that I wouldn't be told the truth that I had been dropped.

Sonia: Hmm.

Katie: Even now, like blood pressure goes up. It's just under no circumstances… and I didn't have to say everything that I said, but I don't blame myself for being very honest with you. I think it got a little out of control. But I think there just wasn't room for anything else except to be blatantly honest with you, which is that I just didn't feel that I could trust what you were telling me on that phone call.

I didn't trust what you were saying the intention was, which was just to chat. I didn't believe that. It took the whole phone call for you to say the anxiety thing. And I was like, wait, what? And then I felt even more terrible. I felt really disrespected and I feel like in our friendship, you've kind of always been the Yankees and I've always kind of been the Red Sox. Like, I feel like you always win. Like you've always been better at me at everything.

I felt like that phone call was your kind of inadvertently like fessing up to always having been better than me. Like that you could just drop me and go on with your life and you would have plenty to support you anyway. Whereas like I had to entirely rebuild, and that's my fault, you know, all eggs in one basket. I think it needed to happen to shake the rhythm that we had been in for decades at that point. So I don't think the separation was a bad move.

And I also think that I'm a hard person to get away from. If you don't make it clear that you want me to fuck off, I won't. So, I think at that point in my life, it was necessary for people to really hurt me in order for me to stay away from you.

I was not buying anything that was happening on that phone call and that felt like a real disrespect to come to me after a year to talk, but then to get a bunch of stuff that felt like bullshit, like that I wasn't really being told the truth.

Sonia: It sounds like you still feel that way about that phone call.

Katie: Well, it was strange the way that it happened out of nowhere. It felt particularly painful because I had a feeling that you were getting married and I felt like Ben had been used as a wedge between us in the first place.

Sonia: By me.

Katie: So…

Sonia: Like,

Katie: Um,

Sonia: Um,

Katie: I don't know.

Sonia: Used. Okay. 

Katie: Or that he had served that purpose, and also that he did not like me.

So, my impression at the time was that it was a courtesy call or like a charity invite. “She always said that she would be there. We've been friends this long, I guess I should feel it out and see if an invite should be extended.”

I felt like I was on an unexpected interview call after having been out of communication for a year, not at my choosing.

Sonia: Right.

Katie: Um.

Sonia: Do you wanna know what I thought it was gonna be? I mean, I think that I believed at that point in time, “Katie will come, like, she's invited, she's coming. Surely we will work this all out somehow between now and that time.” And I didn't have your address. This [was] crazy because I didn’t have your address, because we hadn’t been talking and we had to talk, so I had to reach out. I mean, it was definitely not an interview or a courtesy call. I think my naive hope was that you got it. You were as aware as I was, that it was messy and that we were having some time apart, and that you'd be happy to hear from me and we'd have some kind of conversation. I don't know exactly what I imagined it would be like, but that would be, you know, the point of beginning to fix it.

Katie: Yeah. I mean, too many people have left me in the lurch for that response. I just don't have the capacity for that. And you in particular were one of the very most important people in my life. So the casual nature of it was particularly painful, to have our friendship taken so lightly, that was very, very painful. And my value in your life, my time and space, to have it be gone for a year and not have that be a big deal.

I was offended and hurt from so many angles by that phone call. 

Sonia: Hmm.

Katie: I think it kind of calls to point the way that I felt a lot, which is like, you know, it's ironic and kind of backwards because you were doing a lot of the listening to me when I was upset, but I do a lot of quiet carrying of things. Whatever it is that you're not saying, I'm fully aware that there's stuff not being said and I accommodate for whatever those shapeless things are in my relationships. I've not ever articulated this before, but I think that phone call really dumped a lot on me to carry and let go of by not addressing the most obvious thing.

Sonia: That I had abandoned you.

Katie: That we hadn't been in touch for a year because you had stopped responding to me.

Sonia: Mm-hmm.

Katie: And to not have like any explanation or context for that, but then to just wanna chit chat. Like you said you got to a point with me where you couldn't chit chat as well.

Sonia: Right.

Katie: I feel like this is tiring, but I feel like we're also getting somewhere and it would be bad to leave this on a bad spot. 

Sonia: Yeah. Yeah. I also feel like it wouldn't feel good to hang up right now. 

Katie: Yeah. I don't know how much really there is to say, unless you feel like there's more to say about this phone call. I think that the stuff that needed to be articulated has been, the mysteries have been solved, I guess. 

My question that I think is important, the question that's like standing out to me is, when do you think our friendship was at its best? Chronologically or in practice.

Sonia: I love that question. Feels like there's so much tape to review, don't you? We're not talking about those parts right now.

Katie: Right. I'm also curious what you think about like the whole Yankees, Red Sox thing. 'Cause I really do feel like you benefited from that in our dynamic a lot.

Sonia: The metaphor means nothing to me because those are two teams I know nothing about.

Katie: You don't know about the Yankees and the Red Sox thing, like the dynamic.

Sonia: Since you've used it as a metaphor, I guess, the Red Sox always lose and the Yankees always win, but I kind of forgot that it was against each other. I think of it as Yankees, Mets. I thought you were gonna say Yankees, Mets.

Katie: Oh God, you're spending too much time with Ben. No, the Mets do not apply to this. The Mets are irrelevant.

Sonia: I grew up in California. 

Katie: But you had a New Yorker mom. 

Sonia: My Mom doesn't give one shit about…

Katie: Okay. Alright. You just said it exactly the way she would. 

The Yankees are the polished gold star blue ribbon fucking motherfuckers. You cannot beat the Yankees.

The Red Sox are Boston, knife you in the street, lose all the time. People are scared of the fans, but the team can't win. And the loyalty is just fucking marrow deep with the Red Sox. And like when they play against each other, it is violent, especially in Boston, a lot of resentment. Because, you know, New York is the greatest or whatever. 

I'm just saying I feel like from high school, you always won and luckily I didn't want or expect ever to be valedictorian…

Sonia: Which…

Katie: Yes, I know. Which you never were, right? Sure. 

Sonia: I'm curious what you think I won. What are the, what are the things that I won that you lost?

Katie: You were everyone's beloved, like you always got the A, you always had the sharp idea. You always had work on the wall. You got the publications first. You got the shinier schools, you got the solid parents, or at least the solid household. You got along with your sister, you had a full family. Your grandparents fucking loved you so much that they made sure you were set up. You won the game. And, on all those turns, I fucking lost. Every time.

Sonia: Okay, that's helpful because, well, you're talking about the hand I was dealt. I thought you were talking about material accomplishments.

Katie: Yeah, but you are materially accomplished. You have these fancy New York friends and you give yourself the freedom to explore creatively. For a long time I think a lot of that was about [me] not being out and not living the life that I wanted at all.

I don't know that I ever would've gotten where I am now, gotten myself as free as I am now if I’d stayed in that mentality that I had around our dynamic. I think I was keeping myself trapped and I think that's why I was a bad friend.

Obviously it would be easier if we were just this set of archetypes or something. If this was all like an intellectual endeavor.

Sonia: The Yankees. If I was just The Yankees.

Katie: Yeah. Which, you know, is not the case.

Sonia: No, we're so much more complicated.

Katie: Right. But again, it does eliminate room for feelings or tenderness or sadness or whatever, which I don't know quite how to deal with. 

Sonia: Mm-hmm. I'm laughing because of what you just said. I think for most of my life, you, to me, were my model of emotional openness and vulnerability and closeness. So to hear you say that right now, that you're not good with like, tender feelings. I see in this conversation and looking back what that means and the ways in which that is really, really true, but is absolutely the polar opposite of what I believed to be true.

Katie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Sonia: That second phone call, not the…

Katie: The very bad phone call.

Sonia: The Very Bad Phone Call [the first after we’d not spoken for a year] really fucked me up. I don't know if we wanna talk about it, but I want you to know that even if we don't want to go into the details, I'm saying this out loud because…I mean, I knew how angry, you were so angry on that phone call, but, uh, this conversation is giving me a, you know, completely like a more context and… it feels like we got caught in something really horrible where I feel like I did the worst possible thing I could do to you. Like, you're a person who felt abandoned a lot by her family, and I feel like I abandoned you. And, you said that you couldn't trust me and couldn't talk to me or couldn't know me. After that conversation I couldn't stop thinking about it because I feel like I had this realization at that moment that that is what you had been doing to like everyone in your life who crossed or disappointed you, cut people out. I couldn't believe it was me, I mean obviously like given the way I had behaved in that sense, that's justifiable. Or rather that I have no place to talk from about that, but, uh, I don't know.

Katie: Do you remember? I think it was our senior year. After Matt broke up with me, I had mono, and we had some conversation, and I did something and you wanted to not be my friend anymore. Do you remember this?

Sonia: No.

Katie: It was something I said, or some way that I acted, and I was really sorry. I remember saying something like, I just don't know any better and please forgive me. It felt very much on the edge, our friendship, like nearly over our senior year of high school.

At least on my end, I feel like there was some kind of… you know, my mom was a Gemini [and you’re a Gemini]. I feel like there was some kind of thing to overcome or surpass or work through [between us]. And like I said, it's hard for me to say it because I wish that there had been a better way for me to come to myself, come back to myself. But I do think that an extended period of time, not having you available to me, made it possible for me to more fully be myself and to be more honest with myself about what wasn't working. Not with anyone else, but with myself, like in relationship with myself. 

Sonia: That's probably true for me. I don't know if we had limped painfully through instead of having a double break. Would I have started therapy again? I don't know. There's almost no way to know.

PART 3 of EXIT INTERVIEW #1, Katie and Sonia, will appear next week.