How do I tell you I won't go to your wedding? I think the guy you're marrying is one of the biggest twats I've ever met in my life. But you know this. I despise him and never want to set eyes on the dickhead again. But you know this. He was verbally abusive toward you and threw a chair at you, having already thrown a drink in your face. But you know this. Oh no, sorry, I forgot "He gets angry and loses his temper so he throws things toward me, but not at me" is how you prefer to phrase it.
A wedding is about celebrating someone's relationship. I can't celebrate your relationship with him.
The first time I met him he hit on me so hard I told him I was dating a friend just to get rid of him. He creeped me out, and it didn't matter how much Meg told me he's a lovely guy, he still creeped me out. The second time I met him, he kept separating me from my friends, and attempting the whole 'insult a girl until she wants you' thing (which never works on anyone with an ounce of self-respect). When you told me you had hooked up with one of Meg's friends, you remember my first reaction? "Oh dear god, tell me it's not X!" You didn't know. So after Facebook stalking him, you confirmed it was who I thought. At the time you said it was just sex, and agreed with my impressions of him. Eventually you realised (long after the rest of us) that you weren't fuck-buddies. You were in a relationship and just couldn't admit it. As soon as you did admit it, you moved him in. What the hell? Oh well, you were happy. You had that really goofy smile on your face every time you spoke of him. But that started fading quickly. January last year you said you thought he was going to dump you, but you didn't seem all that bothered. You talked about how much you guys had been arguing, and how much he took advantage of you (not contributing to rent or bills, eating twice as much food as you and your daughter combined, but never paying for any of it, and getting back into debt after you'd bailed him out). Instead he proposed. You seemed so happy, so I was pleased for you. When you asked me to be a bridesmaid, the answer was obviously going to be yes. You were one of my best friends, and you were so excited. To start with. Until he started putting on the pressure about booking venues and paying deposits (which of course you would be paying, considering he'd got into debt again), and he kept throwing things in your face every time you argued. He held your previous marriage over your head, as though it was something you'd done intentionally in order to betray him before you'd even met him. He was allowed to rave on about his ex girlfriend, and you would plan family days out with him, your daughter, and his son, but you funded them, you arranged them, you convinced him that spending time with his son was a good idea. If it was down to him, he'd continue as he had done for the previous 5 years - his son would be his for the weekend, so he would leave son with his parents, while he played football with his friends. Such a doting father.
Every time you argued he'd storm out, saying it was over and he was moving back in with his mum (seriously, what was with that? He couldn't afford to pay £300 a month to rent a room? Oh no, I forgot, all his money had to go on cigarettes, nights out, and petrol. Oh and laptops that he'd break in a rage.), and you'd beg him to reconsider. Literally beg him. Tell him you loved him and you would change. That goofy little smile you used to get when you thought of him disappeared. Instead you looked tense. You cried all the time. You developed so many stress related illnesses. And I couldn't tell you about the inappropriate messages he kept sending me, about how he wanted to see me pole dancing. When I said you were better than me, he kept insisting he would rather I showed him some moves. Such a loving and doting fiance you had.
Finally, you two argued, he yelled it was over, and you saw the light. "Ok". A week later you moved into your new place, and he was begging you to reconsider. You held strong. Then you met up with him. You admitted you loved him, you said you could try again. You changed your mind the next day and told him you couldn't keep doing it, it was over, and you weren't starting again.
So, like any well-balanced individual he started stalking you. You used to have to stay an extra hour or two at work in order to avoid him. He tried to force his way into your home, while your elderly mother and your 13yr old daughter were there, because he didn't believe that you were at work (even though you'd worked the same shift since before he'd met you). He followed you around the streets for almost an hour until you managed to sneak into your home through the back entrance and pretend no one was home. During this time he was constantly calling you, texting you, and sending messages on facebook. He was also constantly trying to call and text me, and his messages got nastier and more and more aggressive. I'd finish work at midnight, and see a torrent of texts from him. I was so stressed I couldn't sleep until 3 or 4 in the morning, and I'd have lectures at 9 or 10, so I was stressed and exhausted. Which you kept commenting on while I supported you through his campaign of harassment. Until you finally agreed to go to the police and take out a harassment order against him. At which point you realised just how bad he'd become.
So why did you contact him just after Christmas? I know, you said that you had to give him a package that had arrived for him, but that's bollocks. You knew where he lived (with his mum), you could easily have dropped it off at his house on ANY weekday, while all his family would have been at work. Instead you contact him and arrange to meet up, because dropping it off at his house means you run the risk of bumping into him and his family. Do you not see the contradiction there?
You lied to me for two months about him. You kept dropping in little comments about not going on facebook, and not wanting to know anything about him. I wasn't bringing him up, you just kept saying you didn't want to know about him, and you didn't want him back. You also started treating me like shit, telling me I have a fat belly, taking the piss out of my hair, and really trying to play on my insecurities, belittling me and putting me down. I couldn't figure out why you'd become such a bitch. Then J got in touch. And it all became clear. So when I asked if you'd seen Dick since you'd spoken to the police, why did you say no, only to backtrack as soon as I said "Oh, well he's put that he's engaged on Facebook". Why lie to me?
You said you were back together and starting over, and you asked what I thought. I checked you wanted honesty, and warned you might not like what I have to say, but you were adamant. So I told you "You're a fucking idiot". We discussed it, and I was the voice of negativity, which you kept saying you needed, and you kept saying you were taking things slowly with him, and he'd really changed. The argument you had with him over the phone when we were heading to Rammstein didn't suggest he's changed at all. It was the same argument you'd been having for six months. He was demanding to know why you didn't answer the phone the seven or eight times that he'd called (during our lecture by the way), and demanding to know who you were with and what you were hiding from him. Yeah, he's changed. He's even more demanding and paranoid than he was before. Perhaps because he realised you didn't need him. The constant texts during the concert were ridiculous though - seriously, he's a grown 'man' who has lived here his entire life, why does he need to ask you where he should order pizza from? Oh, right, he doesn't. He just wants to make sure you don't forget about him for a single second, and you don't have a good time at a concert without him.
Since the concert you and I have hung out once, and that was for my birthday. During that day you overrode almost everything I said, made us late for the train, (because apparently it takes an hour for someone else to agree to load your GC-MS samples for you), made horrifically judgmental and borderline racist comments loudly on the tube, and then decided that you'd start talking about poledancing on the tube, although the rest of us were blatantly not into the conversation (but the topic wasn't for our benefit was it, you were playing to the guy stood next to you - who, by the way, was not that pretty, was about 15yrs younger than you, and was gay and not into you, judging by the way he was checking out the guy sat next to me).
You've been a shit friend to me so far this year. You've put me down, stood me up, attempted to wreck my birthday plans, and then decided that the plans I'd put so much effort into for my birthday were brilliant, and you were going to do exactly the same. In addition to that you decided the plans I'd put the effort into for our moot court were actually really good (despite telling me how stupid they were) and you promptly copied them, despite me telling you I was really offended and annoyed by it. "Oh yeah, I know, but I don't care I'm doing it anyway" were your exact words.
So forgive me if I realised that our friendship was not built to last past Uni. I don't want to go to the Summer ball because I don't want to risk you bringing Dick. I am not inviting you on holiday because I don't want to spend a week with you trampling all our plans, and complaining about the Spanish (which, lets face it, is your usual routine - complain about the people who live in the area you are visiting)
The more time we spend together at the moment, the more I realise you are not the type of person I want to spend time with. I know this is horribly snobbish, but you're loud, crass, racist and horribly crude (by the way, we raised the idea of bowel movements as a topic of conversation at Claridges, and agreed it was not acceptable, so why did you start that conversation?). I know our friendship has an expiry date, and it's your behaviour toward me that has made me realise that.
So forgive me if I don't want to book a day off (and therefore use one of my very few holiday days) in order to spend the day faking a smile and feeling horribly uncomfortable. A wedding is a celebration, and this isn't one I can celebrate. I will not be a hypocrite and smile at a ceremony that I fundamentally disagree with. I think you are making a mistake marrying him, and you'll see that all over my face, which will, in turn, ruin your happiness. I will never speak to him again, I never want to be within earshot of him again. At a wedding it's a pretty difficult feat to entirely avoid the groom throughout the day. In all honesty, I don't want to waste one of my holiday days faking a smile at a ceremony I disagree with, for one person I despise, and another who I don't think is a very good friend. Your own sister isn't going to be there, surely that's a huge warning siren?
How do I tell you this? I don't want to have a massive argument with you over it, because I don't like arguments. I don't want to have to justify and explain myself, because you know what I think of him, and you know I never want to lay eyes on him again. Our friendship is fizzing out anyway, and I don't want it to end on a really bad, angry note, which is why I don't want an argument over it. Especially considering I'll probably end up saying that I don't think our friendship is good enough to justify me putting all of this aside for you.
All I can tell you is that "I need to think about it" You must be expecting my answer to be no. If you're not, then you must be a little deluded.
