when it hasn't been your day, your week, your month or even your year

Highcon, Ri and C are invited and will likely attend the episode of Friends this weekend called "The one where Chandler Settles Down." Considering I was the Monica Geller at her most relentless to his avoidant Ms. Chanandler Bong (RIP Matthew Perry) for about 18 months two decades ago, I am certainly not on the guest list. But I do hope that Chandler’s new wife makes him happy. 

I've made this Friends reference in the past, and I kept it breezy, but this NaBloPoMo is all about the circleback with context, so I will go ahead and stretch this simile beyond its limits. What the hell, it's been 19 years (to the day, eerily) since we broke up.

Let's imagine that:

• Chandler and Monica are humans instead of sitcom puppets at the mercy of ratings and writers. 
• After a decade of membership in a tight-knit friend group and a benign personal connection, they bumped elbows one afternoon when they were both single and found it created an electric spark worth investigating.
• Mapping out the implications of a potential breakup and swearing upon a swing set that they would not let things get weird, they hesitatingly gave it a shot.
• The Friends eventually found out and were happy! One was especially over the moon at the idea that this best friend and that best friend were now BESTEST best friends, and announced to every patron of Side Tracks that he'd known it all along.
• They were deliriously happy until Chandler began acting kinda shady, ain't callin' her baby, why the sudden change...this trifling behavior seemed to crop up whenever Janice's laugh could be heard in the background.
• Monica's attention to detail made her suspicious, especially when stories didn't add up. This grilling made Chandler more avoidant. Which made Monica double down and catch more inconsistencies, which made her panic. 
• At Central Perk, Monica crossed her arms and glowered in an armchair, but Chandler was all jokes. He turned to the others, raised his eyebrow and circled a finger around his ear. "Could she BE more paranoid?" Everyone laughed, even Gunther.
• Monica had enough and they broke up.
• It was easier for the Friends to hang out with Chandler. He remained funny and normal. Monica cried a lot in her apartment and kept trying to get them to agree Chandler was at the very least being dishonorable and untrustworthy. If he's lying about hanging out with Janice, what else is he hiding? She was getting to be a real drag. Come on, it's Chandler. He would never! Get a grip, Monica.
• Then Monica kind of disappeared. She got an off-hours job in some dungeon in the city where she was up all night, worked all weekend and didn't see any friends at all. Supposedly she started one of those blog things.
• At the 20-year high school reunion over a decade later, Monica and Chandler had a nice chat about how he was really into the woman he was dating but she was angling for a ring and he wasn't about that life. They inquired about each other's families and Monica showed him photos of her children. 
• The group got together a handful of times but it was never the same. The Friends haven't all been in one room together since 2019, and even then they were sprinkled among 25 mutual friends and acquaintances at a going-away party. They exchanged pleasantries and raised a toast to old times.

That relationship very nearly turned me to ash. People who saw the mess that was me in the following months or caught a glimpse of the bitterness simmering under the surface for years afterward assumed I must've been so desperately in love with Chandler that I couldn't get over the heartbreak. Sure, being unable to make it work with him was a crushing disappointment. But it wasn’t just him that I lost. 

The fact that not a single one of them took my side and their refusal to acknowledge my hurt as anything beyond a crackpot theory—essentially gaslighting me into thinking I ruined the group by being extra? That's the blade that caused the festering wound.

When I was trying to explain the distinction (as recently as last year) one of them turned to me and said, "Cadiz. You have to understand. If it were ANYONE else, I would have so been in your corner, all the way. But it's Chandler! We love that guy! How could we possibly be mad at him?" 

Within a year of the breakup I had met and fallen in love with the man who would hold my hand throughout my failed attempt at “and that, my friend, is what they call closure” a few years later. I didn’t get it. What happened instead was me going full-scale Hysterical Monica on the whole group in actual Central Park. This man stayed by my side when there were two airports full of flights out of New York just a cab ride away. That is precisely when I realized I would marry H someday. Later, when asked about that bizarre confrontation, all he had to say was "Who, Chandler? I don't have a problem with the guy. Besides, he left the door open for me."

If my ex has managed to find someone as well-suited to him as I caught for myself, then he is a truly lucky fellow who deserves every happiness in the world.

#NaBloPoMo

"I'll Be There for You" The Rembrandts