Friends...

...how many of us have them?

When is a friendship over? Do true friends really stay there through it all? Or is it okay to say that you can’t deal with the other person’s problems anymore?

Recently I lost a friend. Not to some horrible disease, death, or car accident. No, I lost her to herself.

“What the hell does that mean?”

Sometime in June of 2007, this friend of mine began talking to this guy. They hung out and everything and by week two of knowing each other, they were a couple. By week three, they were in love. I was never really thrilled about the idea of her rushing into this thing with this guy, but I let it ride out for a while. By July I made up in my mind that I really didn’t like this guy and that my friend could do way better, but I left it alone because it was her relationship. By August, the boyfriend had moved in with her at her mother’s house. Now, the reasoning seemed somewhat valid, but not enough that he should have stayed there for more than a week or two. For a while she was planning on getting an apartment with him, but they kept running into financial issues. In the end it seems as if she’s been taking care of him more and more since they first met and this is the same thing that happened with her previous boyfriends.

Now, even though this isn’t really about him he’s got his own issues. Aside from his bad financial choices (he has enough for a really nice car, but can’t afford to get his own place) he has serious insecurity problems. He made her throw away her perfectly fine bed sheets (in the bed she is nice enough to allow him to lay in while he’s “homeless”) because he felt like she disrespected him by allowing him to sleep on the same sheets that she (long before they even met) had sex with someone else on. Though she’s always had male friends, he doesn’t like when she associates with them unless they’re either me or her other gay friend because he knows that we’re gay (though he was still suspicious of Kevin since he hadn’t met him). He’s said on multiple occasions that he feels like out of all of her relationships he considers that her relationship with him is the only real one. Whenever he sees a picture of one of her exes he makes sure to say how ugly they are in comparison to him (which really isn’t even the case because clearly we call him “Wildebeest” when we talk about him. What does that tell you?). He’s asked her about her past sexual experiences in detail (i.e. “How many have you been with?” “How many did you swallow for?” “Who was the biggest?”). Then proceeded to ask why she wasn’t still with the guy with the biggest… as if she were that shallow.

Either in the end of September or the first week of October she and he got into a big fight that resulted in her coming over to see us at another friends house.. The fight was about something very stupid. Something that was once again spawned by his insecurities. When she arrived she was almost in tears and explains the whole thing to us. She then tells us that he ran outside after her and stood in front of her car while she was trying to come to us. He then hopped in his car and followed her for a few blocks. It was a little crazy if you ask me. After a few hours of talking to her (and a very hostile voice mail from him declaring that it was over between them) she went home, but ended up coming back to my house and spending the night because she wasn’t ready to go home if he was still there. By Tuesday of the following week she said that she had deleted all of the numbers of her male friends out of her phone and that she was going to do “whatever it takes to make this work”. Mind you that she has never cheated on anyone she’s been with.

We, as a group of concerned friends, had already been discussing the things going on with her. After that night, we determined that it wasn’t really the guys that were the main issue, but her choice in them and the decisions she makes pertaining to them. We discussed it heavily, taking the time to look at her past relationships how she handled them and decided it was time to talk to her about it. It actually grew to be a little bigger than what it initially started out as (as is always the case) and to this day is dubbed “the Intervention”. So a week or two later, we invited her over to another friend’s house where we hung out for a while, then (and this was a little extra) Kamaria pulled out the manila folders which contained information about women in bad relationships, statistics of abusive relationships, signs of abusive relationships, and information on sexually transmitted diseases. All very important, though a bit over the top. WE basically summed up that we notice the pattern in the guys that she dates and that we want her to really evaluate it herself. Of course she felt as though she had been attacked.

Afterwards she didn’t talk to any of us for a few weeks. We, as cubicle/office jockeys, communicate through email all day. We continued to include her and invite her out with us, as to us nothing had changed, but she would never really respond. It took about two weeks for her to begin speaking again, but even then it seemed strained, as if she didn’t really want to, but since we were still talking to her she might as well. She didn’t actually make it out again with us until the end of November when we all went out for mine and Cherrish’s birthday. She complained a bit and was the first to leave. We continued to communicate with her and invite her to do things with us, but she would always make excuses or just not say anything at all.

Eventually it got the point where the excuses were tired and non-communication was old, so I decided to make it known to everyone that I would no longer include her on any of the emails because it was pointless to continue to speak to someone who acts like they don’t really want to talk. That was about two weeks ago.

Last Wednesday, I received an email notification from my MySpace account letting me know a new blog had been posted. This isn’t normally surprising, except that it was a blog posted by her, which is something that isn’t done often. So I went and read it. Basically, it talked about how lonely she is now and how she never does anything anymore except going to work and going home. She then talked about how she had difficulty reconnecting with people, and how no one really talks to her anymore. She mentioned how she didn’t like people trying to run her life and that she wants to keep her friendships and her relationship separate. Also how she didn’t want to have to choose between her friends and her relationship because she’s already confused as it is.

I read this blog and, honestly, I laughed. I really felt like, at this point, she had brought all of this on herself. She was the one that cut us out and when we finally decide to let go, she becomes upset. It also was her that deleted the numbers of all of her male friends from her phone and vowed to never talk to them unless they called her. And her other close friends… well, we noticed that she treats them not so great either. As for forcing a choice upon her, we never once asked her to choose between us. We’ve all dealt with dumb guys in the past that our entire group may not like and may think we ought to leave alone. But, as we always do, we let that person know how we feel and leave them to make their own decision in the end. That night two of my friends decided to respond to it (though I told them not to). They basically said what I just mentioned and a little more, but all leaving the door open to accept her back as a friend. By Friday our response came as her taking the blog down (comments and all) and putting up a picture of her and her boyfriend.

None of this really bothered me too much. I actually find it humorous that they still, even up to last week, tried to reach out to her. I had already determined that I could never really be her friend again. She was a cool friend when I considered her as such, but in the end you basically have to sum it up as her leaving all of her friends behind (all of whom she’s known since high school) for a guy that she met at a bar not even a year ago. To me, that completely disregards everything we’ve been through as friends and I refuse to tolerate that.