I’m the Problem. It’s Me.
A very vulnerable look at my garbage track record of making and keeping gold-star friends.
When I was eight months pregnant, I received a text message from a number that wasn’t in my phone. “Hi Karli,” it read, which was downright hilarious given where it went next. “I’m only going to say this once: DON’T FUCK WITH ME.” Right? Feels like we could have skipped the pleasantries on the intro and gotten straight to the point. The tone quickly spiraled from there.
It took me a moment to realize that the sender was a former friend and fellow yoga teacher who had ghosted me six months earlier. I’d taken her number out of my phone when it became clear that she was no longer interested in being friends. She stopped responding to my text messages, unsubscribed from my tarot newsletter and promptly disappeared. I got the message. Nothing dramatic happened. I accepted she didn’t want to continue corresponding, so I did what I do with all my digital waste and deleted her from my contacts. The end.
Or so I thought. Now, she was texting out of the blue at 10 pm to accuse me of talking shit behind her back. She said someone had sent her one of my Yes, Misstrix newsletters, and that I should NOT under any circumstances be flattered by that (lol). She then told me that getting pregnant was my “latest ploy for attention” and that she pulled away from me because it was clear that I was attempting to steal her genius.
And oh yea, that I had no business writing about sex and relationships, I was an egotistical show-off in my yoga practice and that she deleted the shared documents we’d developed for a course we were co-creating on tarot and astrology because I was obviously using her since I have no talents or skills of my own. The cherry on top was when she threatened to blackmail me with text messages she supposedly had about me being shady in my relationship with R. Girl, I’d like to see you try. The whole thing was completely deranged.
I was pretty shaken, but I responded clearly and concisely: I hadn’t gotten pregnant for attention—I’d simply changed my mind about what I wanted. I didn’t know what she was talking about with respect to writing unflattering things about her because I’d never written anything about her at all. I told her that her message sounded unhinged. As such, I wasn’t impressed. I wasn’t interested. I would no longer be engaging. Then, I blocked her on everything.
I’d like to say this was the first time something like this had happened, but that would mean overlooking the time a different yoga teacher I’d tried to befriend from the same studio tried to start a rumor that I was sleeping with the owner. Please, dear readers, if you take only one thing away from this newsletter, let it be this:
If I were going to start sleeping my way to the top, it wouldn’t be at a fucking yoga studio…or anywhere else I already have the skills to succeed. I’m a fantastic yoga teacher. I don’t need to bang my way to greatness. Alternatively, if you hear I’m trying to sleep way to the top of Goldman Sachs, absolutely believe the hype. I’d blow a partner to make half a million per year as a managing director in a line of work I have no business doing.
You might also be interested to know that I don’t need to steal anyone else’s genius—especially the so-called genius of a woman who is completely incapable of composing an email without typos. Jokes aside, these nonsensical accusations are somewhat on trend for me. I’ve had plenty of former friends believe things about me that simply are not true. I’m not jealous of either of these women’s lives, skills or talents. I’m pretty fucking content with my own.
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