Bad Gurls Club- BGC Loyalty is everything.

Last night The Husband says to me.  ” You, Lefty and One-eye all have the same FB profile picture”  And I laughed, of course we do.  It’s of all three of us.  We come as a set, a tricycle,  a three legged stool.  Remove one of the three pieces and the  rest just doesn’t work as well.  I’ve talked about besties, and the BGC are my uber besties. We even.. ahem.. have matching BGC necklaces with our names on them, like a 3-way BFF necklace from grade school.

You’d think with that much love we’ve been together forever, but that isn’t the case.  We all went to the same High School, we knew of each other and Lefty was in some of my classes. We had no ill will towards each other but we didn’t hang out.   My besties in High School were the Six Pack Pow Wow.  I’d been with my same large group of guy and girl friends since pretty much 4th grade, and the 6-Pack was born from that group.     High School is funny, you hang with who you know.   Graduation came in 1989 and then 20 years passed.

One-eye and another friend started up a monthly dinner club for reconnection and reunion year purposes and I started going. Those dinners were GOOD TIMES. Down town at a bar/restaurant we  talked of our current lives, our High School lives, and  our last 20 years lives.  We all had the perspective and maturity that adulthood is supposed to bring and those first few dinners sitting next to girls I knew and loved, girls I barely know but didn’t have history with and girls who seemed not so nice at the time  my eyes were opened over and over again. HOLY SHIT LADIES! EVERYBODY IS ONLY THINKING OF THEMSELVES IN HIGH SCHOOL.    Some girls were sheltered and wished back then for the party life it looked  like the 6-pack + group  had.   Some girls were partying on their own with their own besties.  Some girls had just been doing their own thing.  But we were bonded by where we all came from. That inside the interstate loop,  Public High School with the bad rep, grew up on the west side history.  I was salutatorian of  my graduating class. I could of been valedictorian but skipping choir to go eat breakfast at  a local diner with my friends was more important than going to class.  I’m a B singer at best. And I also had to skip after school practices sometimes b/c of my illustrious new  place on the aforementioned cross country team.  So one C in choir my Senior year later and I’m no longer the head of the class, I had fallen to #2.   So I’m not tooting my own horn here, but people kinda knew who I was in HS. And at that age we all had ideas in our heads about what everyone else was or wasn’t like compared to ourselves.

Lefty came to one of those dinners and brought some of the girls  from her HS crowd. We were waiting to be seated and doing introductions.  I didn’t recognize her face, or her name.  She flat our told me she had FB friend requested me and I had obviously not accepted (I’m still a little weird about FB and my privacy) and she was calling me out on this.  Lefty knew I should of probably remembered her.   The dinner that night was HUGE, there were easily 12 or more of us.   Yearbooks were being passed around and I had to look Lefty up b/c it was bugging the crap out of me that she  seemed miffed and that I couldn’t remember her.   And there it was, her picture in that signature black leather jacket she wore so much.  DING! LEFTY I shout  wayyy down the table.  “I totally know who you are now, I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you on FB”   Lefty seemed so cool to me in HS, she did her own thing and was her own girl. I would of enjoyed spending more time with her back then, but that just isn’t the way it was.

One outdoor smoke break later we are all laughing and enjoying the shattering of what kind of girl  they all thought I was, with the kind of girl I really am.  Lola is pretty cool, who knew.  That year passes and then comes our 20th High School Reunion.  The Husband and I get a big suite at the hotel and I proceed to act like I’m 18 and let all the people in our room act that way too and end up with a $250 smoking fine.  Lefty and One-eye were in the room with us that night and it’s probably what started the true glue of BGC.    We didn’t hang out again until closer to Christmas that year. I went to Lefty’s house and she drove us both over to One-Eye’s. I still remember how pretty that night drive was with all the Christmas Lights.  We spent that night sitting in a room and talking and drinking. And there it began, the currency of sharing  pieces of our hearts and our secrets.   And we never stopped sharing or tightening that bond.

The thing about going through an Almost Divorce  is that while you are going through it, it IS a divorce.  The Husband and I were that   shocker divorce couple.   The one no one saw coming and everyone thought would never happen.  It’s  a very very lonely place to be for someone like me who was used to having tons of friends and acquaintances that were all used to me being the pulled together strong woman life of the party.     Divorce makes things awkward, people won’t look you in the eye, they won’t engage you in conversation, or they are way too nosy or way too critical and judgmental and full of advice you can tell they are DESPERATE for you to take.   Advice you can tell comes from their own insecurities about their own lives and their own marriages.  Apparently some people think divorce is a plague that can be “caught”, or maybe they don’t know what to say so they choose nothing, which hurts even more.   Or maybe  my drama was just too much of a burden to go with their own drama.  I’m sure I  was often distracted and possibly miserable to be around, shrugs.  Water under burned or no longer cared for bridges at this point.

My  Bad Gurls were among the few  who held me up during that time.    They listened, they kept it real whether I wanted to hear it or not, they let me vent and cry and scream. They kept my mind off my numerous issues and kept me busy.   I saw them almost every weekend whether I had the kids or not. Our families had become more entwined before The Husband moved out, but when he went they “went” with me, husbands and all in one big lump for team Lola.   They let me use their shoulders and their homes  as my safe place when I needed one.  And the thing is, it wasn’t even their “turn”.  We had no long history of  shared girl code banking of me listening to them on the phone for countless hours complain about their lives and telling them to put on BGP. We had no past girl trips or MNO or MNI bonding.  Girls whose loyalty I shouldn’t of had to even question were doing inappropriate things with The Husband.  Girls whose loyalty I shouldn’t of had to question were saying “oh it’s ok that so and so did that to you, I don’t’ think it’s a problem, in fact I think you’re a little nuts for being so bent out of shape about it, and I made sure to tell her so”.  Yes, Divorce is ugly and uncomfortable and it is ABSOLUTELY A BATTLE WHERE SIDES MUST SOMETIMES BE TAKEN.  We had nothing but a shared class reunion,  a few months of bonding under our belts and an intimate knowledge of where we came from.  Those two girls were there for me and continue to be.   There are MANY reasons why I love them both.  I’m sure I will speak of them often in this blog.  But here lovies,  is the bottom line.

In the Girl Code, loyalty is everything.  I love you girls, don’t ever change.

PS- If you have a friend that is  in the middle of a divorce, be sure to tell her you love her today.  Believe me she needs to hear it as often as you care to say.