For Mariam

The most traumatic parts of this whole awful time have been the attacks by strangers. But the most acutely painful have been the silence and rejection by people I know, specifically people I thought were work friends. As irrational as it sounds, being kicked in the teeth by shoes I recognized as once having been parked under a conference table hurt more than being kicked by unidentifiable ones.

When I posted this recently, my Facebook friend Rebecca J. responded with something along the lines of: “But your work friends aren’t your real friends. No one ever thinks they’ll actually be lifelong friends with people they knew through work.” I don’t completely buy this, as some of the people I have met through work have become sources of true comfort and support, but in the main, in a when-the-chips-are-down sense, she’s absolutely right. The person you bitch with about the bilge that passes for coffee in the office pantry sees her relationship with you as entirely transactional (note: I worked at a bank; everything was transactional) and will not look up to save your life or even to help you change your tire if she’s got something better to do like scrolling through her inbox to find her performance review.

My real friends, in comparison, have supported me in ways that make me teary and desperate to thank them in any clumsy way I can. Yes, I left my job in a soup of scandal and the risk of reaching out to me if you are a former colleague who is still employed by the firm that fired me is big. Still. You’d think someone who you were kind to, whom you shared secrets with, whom you sobbed with on the phone while admitting pain so deep you didn’t think you could bear it would not shun you with the tap of a screen because the boss told them to. But she did.

Betrayal

I’ll call her Mariam. Mariam started at my old company at about the same time I did. She taught me to say hello in Armenian. She always remembered my birthday. She told me about the lowest point in her life and I told her about mine. We wept together when her beloved cat died after a long illness. And then, a few months after I was fired, I innocently asked her to do me a very small and very innocuous favor, as I was updating my resume and writing cover letters and, with enormous struggle and trepidation, trying to move on with my life. I wish I could say more, but the consequences of that action involve my former employer, which has effectively silenced me.

Someone apparently found out I’d asked Mariam for this favor—as I’ve written before, I’m pretty sure I know who that person is—and I wound up being scolded for it. And I guess Mariam was reprimanded, too, because she subsequently blocked me. Only days after we’d spoken by phone and I’d told her while sobbing the whole time that I was in despair. Without even sending me a heads-up to say, “Hey, they are threatening to fire me if I have anything else to do with you because they claim you are a corporate spy selling valuable secrets about their dismal click-through rates to Goldman and/or the Kremlin like you’re Julian Fucking Assange LOL. Sorry. Bye.”

I would have been fine with that. Instead I cried for days on end. Once, long before this had happened, I had expressed to Mariam my happiness and solidarity when Congress passed resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide. So to see her side against me when what had led up to all of was my speaking out about the genocide in Gaza was especially painful.

Forgiveness

Fear is a powerful motivator. Mariam is a single woman of a certain age, and her job is critical to her survival. Rationally, I know that a work friend like I was is necessary collateral damage in this case. True collateral damage, not fake, despicable “children are being used as human shields, therefore they deserve to die” collateral damage like Zionists and The Atlantic claim. A work friend is not even worth a second thought given those circumstances. Neither is an employer or a manager who would put someone in this position for no reason other than spite, for that matter.

In my last communication with Mariam, an IM on LinkedIn, since she’d blocked me on every other platform, I told her I understood, I forgave her, and while I was disappointed that she hadn’t been a little nicer about the whole thing, I wished her well and I truly meant that. She’s a deeply good person who deserves to feel secure in the world. I know how terrible it is when that’s taken away.

Walking away

At least I understand her behavior. I was more bewildered by one of the actual snitches, a virtue-signaling prig who was constantly trying to prove in highly dubious ways that she could out-DEI everyone else, someone whose parents I’m pretty sure voted for Trump and who is more or less OK with that in a J.D. Vance kind of way, while I have a great-great-grandmother who was enslaved on a plantation near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, so she can sit down and stay quiet as a Quaker on this particular issue as it relates to me, thanks. The point being, she was never a work friend and I’m not the least bit upset to know I’ll never hear from her again. Relieved, to be honest, if somewhat annoyed at what a grade-school-level tattletale she is.

To clarify: Some of my former work friends and friends I met through work and who then moved on, the ones whom I was closest to and regularly pinged silly things to on a group chat, have been exceedingly kind in ways that have been unexpected and lovely—reaching out to show real concern, offering thoughtful advice, taking me to breakfast, encouraging me to write as a way to sift through the napalmed chaff to find the grains of salvation. 

Some of the former work acquaintances, on the other hand, seem downright schadenfreude-y. That little brown icon next to my name means I pay for premium so can see when you view my LinkedIn profile. Perhaps Rebecca C. was just hoping to find I’ve landed on my feet, though you’d think she might IM me to ask if she was really that curious. Or at least respond when I IM’d to let her know I’d seen her and that I'm not dead yet instead of waiting two months to send an odd reply asking if I'd have IM'd if I'd known her mother was Jewish. Congrats. So was my father. Not sure what this has to to do with my updating you on my situation and offering to help you find possible job candidates.*

But, hey, no biggie. Best of luck in your future endeavors, as they say in LinkedIn notification speak. I’ve learned, quite painfully in the case of Mariam, that Rebecca J. is right and that, save a few notable and welcome exceptions, my work friends are not my real friends, never were and never will be, and that realization feels strangely liberating at a time when I otherwise feel trapped in a cage. So view away and enjoy the frisson of superiority. I’m now leaning on the people who rooted for me to live.

And speaking of rooting for people to live: I will never apologize for defending the children of Gaza.

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