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July 16, 2010 Death would be easier to take if it were so. Not that I wish that for her, but it would at least be understandable. I met my friend in kindergarten. We immediately took at liking to each other and for the next 6 years, we were always with each other—at sleepovers or at birthday parties. We had lunches at each other’s homes and played dodge ball in the alley until the sun went down. We had many similarities and in physique were very different. She was round and I was flat. She had beautiful hair and mine was frizzy. We were middle-class kids living in dysfunctional families. That’s probably why we were really so compatible. After elementary school, both she and I moved and we went to different junior high schools. We had no contact for those three years and I really never understood why. She was still a chubby teen and I was developing faster. Somehow, a conversation ensued and she told me that she had some jealousies towards me. I never understood why. She was always good in school and we both had several friends. I missed her contact those years of junior high. My family moved again, this time to Maryland and so did my old friend. Imagine how shocked I was to see her in my high school and our friendship took hold yet again. It was like we never had any years between us. I started dating and she did not, even though she was now a beautiful, nicely built teenager. I was the more introverted of the two of us, but I really enjoyed her outgoing personality. We began to really complement each other. I went on to junior college after high school and she did not. She began a career with the Federal Government and I met my husband the first week of junior college. Even though I courted my husband for almost two years before our marriage, my friend included my husband and I in many social events and ditto. After being married a couple of years, I became a mother and my friend and I, now having obviously different lives, still communicated regularly. My innate “counselor” role included my friend as well as my family. Our conversations over the next several years were pretty much one-sided. She looked to me constantly for advice and I was delighted to be of help. She was having some issues with promiscuity so I advised her to seek professional counseling. My friend listened and went into psychoanalysis for many years. Eventually, she married in her late 20’s. Our relationship took a different course. I was already a mother of two and she was just learning how to be a wife and mother. We still spoke regularly and visited each other often. Early on I recognized that she was having troubles in her marriage with a husband that was controlling and emotionally abusive. Again, I filled in the role as counselor between her visits to her therapist. This continued for many years and with three children later, my friend’s marriage was getting more and more intolerable. She would call me a few times a day, and no matter what I had to do, I was available to talk. We discussed her going to marriage counseling and I applauded her willingness to do that to keep her family together. I always felt that marriage was a commitment and as long as the marriage had no deal breakers such a drug/alcohol abuse, or physical abuse, then one should work on it. Counseling did not work for my friend and her husband. Their fights were escalating and I really didn’t learn of it until years after they were divorced. I just knew that once my friend started speaking to me about “killing” her husband, that I really knew that her marriage had deteriorated into physical violence. Once I learned that, I told my friend to get out of the house. She was only working part time and she was extremely scared. After all, she had been controlled for years. My pep talks to her were a daily event. She moved out of her house, leaving her three teenage kids with her husband. She called me many times a day to cry. She was sure that she wasn’t going to be able to make it alone—both financially and emotionally. I encouraged her with ego boosting talks about embarking on a new life journey. I told her that she was entitled to a better life and with any luck at all, she could find one. No matter what I had going on in my life, I had time for my friend. The relationship was give and take—with her doing 85% of the taking. It didn’t bother me because I was used to it being that way. My friend remarried and her life changed drastically. She could now do and buy most anything she wanted. She moved into a new home and had a professional decorator, a far cry from the dumpy house she had to endure with her first cheap husband. She and her new husband travelled. Never before had my friend experienced such a life and I was so happy for her and I told her so regularly. We were still friends, but actually very different people. I got an education over the years and my friend did not. My friend became very self-absorbed. She went to get her hair, nails, face, etc. done regularly. She had lots of cosmetic surgery. She wanted to look young and it really consumed her. I didn’t understand her way of thinking and just told her that she looked great the way she was. Over the last few years, I realized that our differences were growing internally. I still felt that she was like a sister to me and wanted her to feel the same. However, it didn’t go that way. She began to resent my opinions period. She wanted me to agree with her over everything and I just couldn’t. First of all, I didn’t agree and secondly, I couldn’t be a phony. I had and always will tell it like it is—if it doesn’t hurt anyone. A few months ago, I realized that my friend was only communicating with me via email. I couldn’t imagine why. No more phone calls. When I didn’t answer one of the emails for a few days, she wrote to me telling me that she was wondering if I was ill. I’d been having very painful back issues of which she knew. I wrote her back telling her that if she were really worried, why not just pick up the phone and call me. The call never came. I told her that I was very sad and missed her terribly. She told me that our friendship had to become less intense now that she was no longer a needy person. My reaction to that was that I felt perhaps I had been used all those years—especially now that I needed a friend. Her last email to me said, “if you feel used, so be it.”
That was the death of a friend.
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