Friendships and heartbreaks

Okay, so the last few years have been incredibly hard and depressing on me in the friendship department. 

I honestly feel in my  heart I am a good person.  I try my hardest to be the best friend that I can.  I am the first to offer to help someone if they are in need, I am willing to bend over backwards for someone to share my friendship with them and I am the first to offer my shoulder to someone to cry on if they are having a hard time.  To me, these are what being a friend is all about.  Being a sister/brother of sorts that god didn't give us.  And I have a few friends that are this way with me as well, but more times than not, I am completely stabbed in the back or taken advantage of in the most hurtful ways.  And I don't understand it.

I had a friend that I had been friends with for 22 years.  And the last few years were incredibly straining on our friendship.  I would call and be put on the back burner.  I was there for her and let her come over when ever she needed time away and a shoulder to cry on, but in return I was told that she ran away from her family on the weekend because of me.  And then, the most ultimate betrayal.  When my youngest son, who was only 2 weeks old was admitted into the hospital for a freak E.Coli incident where it was in his kidneys, she called CPS on my husband and I, making up a list of things that were either completely untrue, or they were GREATLY blown out of proportion.  We were investigated and found as neglectors because they put more validation in the giant lies, and refused to talk to the doctors, midwives and nurses.  Because of this persons actions, if I were to be able to go back to work, I am unable to because the 3 years I put into my education was wasted now that I can longer pass a background check.  See, if you are a certified counselor with the state, you can have absolutely NOTHING on your background that involve children.  Child Neglect is a HUGE no-no.

And yet, two years later and I am STILL having a hard time letting this go.  This "friend" blamed me, went on a rampage saying that I was a horrible person for making it known that I found out it was her and then turned it on me.  I will NEVER be friends with this person again, I will never subject me or my children to this kind of hatefulness that will only insue from another friendship with this person and her husband.  But for some reason, I am having a HUGE hard time letting this go.  This may be because I treated her the way that I wanted to be treated, because this was the ultimate betrayal, or because I could have lost my children because of these lies and over-exaggerations.  For whatever reason, this is something that has forever scarred me.

And now, I befriended a few people this year and I feel that I have been used and abused in the worse ways.  For example, my husband and I had to move rather quickly due to a flood in our home.  We ran out of room in the two storage units that we have and a "friend" readily offered to store our stuff in his shop.  We agreed that he store our stuff there.  There is nothing small there, it is all huge, but it has sense been moved.  First he said he put it in storage, then he said that he has it at a friends house.  But he wont tell us who this friend is, and keeps telling us that he is bringing it to us.  But he never shows up, he never gives us our stuff and he has now turned the table on me saying that I need to lose his "f-ing" number and never talk to him again.  I called the police today and found out that what he has done is not illegal and that I will have to sue him in small claims court.

So now, I have to go to court, file the small claim with money that we do not have to spare, just in an attempt to either get our stuff back or be compensated for our loss.  But nothing will ever compensate the amount of money that we had in this stuff.  Nothing will ever give us back our stroller that was given to us by a family friend who went off the deepend this year.  Nothing will ever give my daughter back her very first bike that we got her for her birthday that she only got to ride a hand full of times because her birthday is in January.  No one can replace my husbands bike that he bought himself after his divorce so he could spend time riding on the Greenway for serenity. 

Nothing can take away that fear that I will now live with about being friends with someone new again.  I feel as if I need to do a criminal background check on anyone new that comes into my life.

I should never have to feel this way!