Imagine this: you’ve leant your best friend your cherished slow cooker; she knows how much you value it. Even so, it eventually comes back broken.  When confronted with the obvious, she either denies anything happened at her end, or swears it was already broken. If she’s really in a bad way, she might deny borrowing it altogether and that she happened to find it at her place.

Sadly, my mother was notorious for doing this. Happily, not my friends. Mom would go one step further: next time she asked to borrow something, and I said no because of what happened the time before, she would deny denying she’d done anything the first time.

It drove me crazy. Especially because I’d be like Charlie Brown with Lucy: I’d fall for it as any insane person would, believing in my heart that this time would be different.

It’s useless to try and reason with them.  Instead, what I really need to do is understand why I keep falling for it and do something about that!

You see, it is emotional on my side. And once I can come to terms with what’s going on with me, then I can deal with what’s going on with my friend.

With my Mom, I wanted her to be accountable in a way she couldn’t be. It wasn’t until I understood who she was that I was able to stop putting us both into that particular dance. You see, it wasn’t just her. It was both of us, playing out a familiar song that had, long ago, run its course.

Declaring someone else insane