I recently broke off a friendship of about five or so years because I couldn’t handle the utter neediness of said ‘friend’. It’s a long and whacky story and Choosy’s in the mood to share!
I lived overseas for two years and kept in touch with a handful of my varsity mates – obviously the less interesting and more religious (read: dull) ones fell by the wayside (this is a topic for a WHOLE other blog). So when I came back I prepared to move back into my 2 bed flat which had been rented out to one of my varsity mates (let’s call her Eddie) and a friend of hers. The plan was to share the place with Eddie (chucking out random friend) and split all the bills etc. It’s a really great flat and I was excited to get back in there.
Anyhoo, all went well and we were getting on famously – I am an easy-going kinda gal and although I have a fondness for getting my own way I certainly do not consider myself argumentative or confrontational. Unless challenged – nobody puts Choosy in a corner. So we went out one night with another varsity mate, Legs, who is also a top chick and parties harder than Courtney Love on acid. Eddie, after a few drinks, decided to play the part of the grumpy, belligerent brat and proceeded to berate Legs and me for being shallow, callous slags who were clearly only interested in being friends with thin, pretty people.
Excusez-moi? Come again? Non comprendez vous … Legs and I literally laughed out loud but soon realized that that was clearly the incorrect approach to this specific problem as Eddie was starting to look like the girl from the Exorcist – I swear she was spitting green stuff…The evening ended rather badly with Legs (who I’ve never even seen raise her voice before) telling Eddie in no uncertain terms (or volume) what a pathetic creature she was and Eddie in full blown hysterics in the parking lot of Panache. Lucky me – I got to go home to tension so palpable it was basically oozing out of the walls.
The reason that what she said hurt me was because I’ve never based my friendships (or even my romantic relationships) on looks. It’s never ever occurred to me that someone would ever do that kind of thing, I mean, lordy, are there even enough decent people in this world to limit yourself to being friends with the aesthetically pleasing ones – I have a hard enough time making friends with females in general, I’m not going to go out of my way to cut more people off!
So we eventually had our first little chat about why she behaved the way she did and I got to hear all about how hard her life is and why she’s so depressed. Really? Are you? Well let me wrap you in this blankie of cotton wool and pat your head so that you don’t feel sad. Please can I protect you from the big bad world and if you feel like you need to take out your frustrations on someone can I be the first to volunteer for a good old character bashing since that seems to make you feel so much better about yourself?
But I forgave her and we moved on with our lives. She didn’t see Legs again and Legs, understandably, wasn’t interested in subjecting herself to that particular brand of crazy anymore.
Because I wanted to salvage the relationship, I invited her out one night with a group of mates from a different circle. I thought it would be nice for her to meet new people and just chill out on a Friday getting drunk at the Jolly. She proceeded to be incredibly, embarrassingly rude to all my male friends. It was cringeworthy – she was truly a social hunchback. I called her on it and asked her why she found it necessary to be so nasty – she snapped that not everyone could be like me and that sarcastic was her ‘thing’. She told me to stop telling her how to behave and stop trying to change her. I lost it. Admittedly, I lost the plot a bit – here I was, being so super nice, inviting her out for a drink with MY friends, who she had just been so unnecessarily bitchy to, and she had the cheek to tell ME where to get off? I don’t think so. I told her to stop bothering me and to go home before I said something I regretted. It was not a pretty scene, I apologise to anyone who may have been at the Jolly that night.
So, anyway, she stormed out and about half an hour later I got a call from the boyfriend of a friend who lives in the same complex as me. He told me that he needed to take Eddie to the hospital and that I should come and meet him there.
Great.
To cut a long story short (excuse the pun!) Eddie had decided to gouge two massive gashes into her arms. So much so that when my friend saw her he could actually see the muscle and the fat through the cuts. She had been tranquilized and stitched up and I drove her home in cold, grey silence. Now I understand that people in these situations need help and kindness. They need love and positive attention. But if you had been in the situation you would understand my complete fury. She had had no intention of killing herself. People who self harm usually do it in private places so that no one can see. When something like this happens, it is purely for attention. She had cut herself to teach me a lesson. To show me that I should never disagree with her or upset her because she was fragile and I was an uncaring bully. To make me feel so bad that I would grovel and plead with her to forgive me and be my friend. So that I owed her something.
Well, cupcake, I have news for you: in the inimitable words of Tyler Durden, “you are not a beautiful or unique snowflake”.
And so the began the demise of our relationship. I kept very distant from her and spent more time with my other friends.
Then one night I got a call from the same friend whose boyfriend had found her bleeding in our kitchen that night. She said that Eddie had barricaded herself under her desk at work and was refusing to come out. Yes, you read that correctly. The backstory is that she was having a full blown affair with her boss and he had eventually called it off and wanted nothing more to do with her. She had not taken this well, refusing to stop calling him and making several attempts to corner him in their boardroom after hours etc…Finally he had told her, in no uncertain terms, that it was over and to leave him alone. She proceeded to scream at him at a company function and berate him in front of passerbyers. She then fled up to her office and curled up under her desk in the foetal position. And which lucky lady got to go and coax her out from under her desk? Ding ding ding! That’s right, you guessed it – ME!
Ugh, the humiliation. So she sniffled her way home, prattling on and on about how much she loved him and why couldn’t he love her blah blah blah. Women are stronger and better than this and she was giving womankind a bad name.
The next night I came home to find papers from the sheriff stuffed under my door. She was being charged with sexual harassment. Needless to say I fled the scene and left it for her parents to deal with. After a one more month of painfully avoiding each other in an 80sq meter flat, she finally moved out.
I hear that she has a decent new job and is getting better but the point is that she let herself get to a place where nothing made sense. Where her self indulgent moping caused her more pain than accepting that life is sometimes unfair and knowing that we all have to go through some awful crap before we realize that we have the strength to pull ourselves up and get on with life and the living.
Obviously, I’m not including people who genuinely suffer from bi-polar disorder or manic depression; people who cannot logically distinguish between rational and irrational anymore. I know that there are people out there who need so much help and love and support but in this instance I felt like nothing I could do would ever be enough – she needed to believe that she had been let down so that she had a reason to behave the way she did. She just seemed more content in her misery and chose to stay that way.
I guess we’re all responsible for our own happiness and I choose a huge helping of happy please.
