It amazes me how strings of letters combined to form specific words, then strung into run on sentences and eventually run on paragraphs can change the course of someone’s day, possibly their life.
I feel so strange right now. It’s the combination of confused, because it just doesn’t make any sense; frustrated, because all forms of communication have been eliminated (at least on one side of the equation); and, for lack of a better word, free, because the burden of trying to fix someone is no longer there.
It is not my job to fix people, especially not the people in my life that I call ‘friend.’ This has been the hardest lesson I have ever learned. It doesn’t matter how right I think I am, how clearly I can see the situation and the solution, I cannot force someone to act on my judgment.
It is my job; no it is an honor, to stand by those people, to make sure that they know that I will be here for them, whatever their need. And I will do this until I am told to do otherwise. I will continue to think good thoughts their way, to hope for the best, to offer my support and to help them see the humor in not so great situations.
I have been ex-communicated by someone who I have held very close to my heart for the past 3 years. I have referred to this person as my first ‘adult’ friend. We became friends not because we had gone to school together or because our parents knew each other or even because she was a friend of a friend and we ran in the same social circle. This was someone who I established a common ground with. We have inside jokes, one word punch lines that no one else understands. She is also one of the three people in the world (outside of family) who have seen my cry unabashedly.
This is someone who struggles with so many demons, not just her personal ones, but those of the people around her. She has so many issues she should just go ahead and get a subscription. Her way of dealing with these issues is to not deal with them. Often times, the solution to her problems comes from a bottle. This frightens me. I thought about it today. I cannot remember the last time I spent time with her when she either did not have a drink in her hand or had already consumed multiple drinks during the day. I do not say this to be a prude. I enjoy drinking, too, but I do not use it to escape from my problems, or to avoid them completely.
Last night, I received a slurred voicemail that I chose not to respond to since it had been a long day and the last thing I wanted to deal with was my drunken friend. It was not only slurred, but the requests made of me did not make any sense. The more I thought about what was said, the less sense it made. I blamed it on the rum and went to sleep.
I woke up this morning and went through my usual routine of checking websites. Email first, then Facebook (gotta love my Scrabble addiction), then MySpace. She had joined about a month prior and since then, we had been sending messages almost daily. We said more in those messages over a 3 week time span than we usually did on the phone in 6 months. Typing is so much easier. I’m definitely more of a typer than a talker, so the messaging was appealing since it opened the communication back up between us and kept it consistent.
The messages were sometimes funny, sometimes flirty, sometimes mundane, and sometimes sympathy inducing. The one waiting for me in my Inbox this morning was none of these things. It was a complete slap in the face, for its utter lack of explanation. It contained some of the most insulting sentences ever directed towards me, although not once was the blame directly placed on me and my actions.
I am not supposed to respond to her message, not through email, not over the phone. Even if I try, there will not be a return response, or so the message says. I have been completely written off, in a fucking message on MySpace. All of the love I have sent towards this girl has been cancelled out, all by her pressing the Send button.