Intermission
I don’t have time for this post. I really don’t. I’ve got a major project sitting on my desk in addition to all of the personal projects I have going on at home.
But I digress, and just so you know, I’m passing over other prospective posts to take this time to ruminate, rant, theorize, and… well, basically ramble.
Hey XXXX.
I hear you got married.
And I wasn’t invited.
Hmm. Well.
Fuck you too.
That’s okay. I didn’t really expect an invitation, especially since we haven’t spoken in over a year. That’s the kind of friends we were I suppose. Still, you were married, and I wasn’t there.
Which seems odd.
We’d been friends since we were twelve and throughout high school we were “Very Best Friends” we had keychains and shit to prove it. I became goth for you. For YOU! You think I liked that black heavy metal head banging shit? No. It just allowed me to fade into the background, which, being terminally shy as I was, helped. You became an aspiring writer for me. See? We were friends.
I sucked at goth and so gave it up in favor for spring colors. You hated writing and so gave it up for.. well. Something else that didn’t involve reading I suppose. For christ’s sake it took you a year to finish “The Bell Jar”. Mensa material you were not.
Still it came as a shock to me that as we entered our twenties your sense of competitiveness never let up. You were always trying to be prettier than me, smarter than me, more put together. You pointed out that when you finished your BA we might not be friends any longer, as educated people didn’t often associate with the uneducated. However, you mused, surely our friendship was strong enough to survive.
I pointed out that surely it was, since I had already completed my AA and was into the third year of schooling, whereas your uneducated ass had never even taken one college course to date.
We both were quiet and the words “fuck you” reverberated over the telephone lines.
You were dating a big time engineer that owned his own house and you thought, surely, you were headed for marriage. I, thought otherwise.
You told the engineer that his taste in carpet was shit. You advised he clean his house and said, and I quote, “It’s a health risk. If you had children they would be taken away by the authorities.”
I liked the engineer. He was funny, smart, and the only engineer I’ve ever met that I didn’t want to stab in the eye with a pencil. You told me this cattily and I winced for his pride.
Poor poor Engineer: I cried for you when she made you cry. She was such a bitch, really you should have shoved her down some stairs and run for your dear overeducated life.
So, Bitchy Friend, how did we come to the end? If I remember correctly, I asked how you were doing and you said, “Fine”. This, I know, is girl speak for “I am doing fucking awful and am thinking about becoming either a nun or prostitute.” And so I pressed on into dangerous territory where eventually I said, “I think you are looking for marriage. Which isn’t right. You should be looking for someONE. You should be looking for love, worry about the rest later.”
Which is when you pointed out that I drink too much, party too much and sleep around too much to tell you how to run your life. I asked how I was supposed to meet anyone and you said that my last boyfriend had left me with bruises and you would never have dated a piece of trash like that.
Wow.
Ok.
That happened once… and I left… and I’d cried for hours and weeks and months over my stupidity. But it doesn’t matter anyway. I am still shocked that someone I considered a friend tried to make me validate myself.
Fuck you. God. That one stung.
But all that stupid shit aside, hey. You married this guy in under a year of meeting him and I am hoping, fucking hoping, that you married him for love, real love, and not for the ring and some big fucking party that the two people in the world you call friends could not show up to.
But I don’t think so. You always wanted to marry a police officer, and he is a police officer and everything you ever wrote down on your short list of requirements which was: police officer, wants to get married.
Wow. What a recipe for success.
You know, none of my other friends ever liked you. They always said you were a frigid bitch, ugly and uncomfortable in your own body, they said you kept me around because no one else was willing to put up with your shit. Which might be true. But I remember you calling me on your thirteenth birthday making your own birthday cake because your Dad couldn’t be bothered with a thirty minute drive, your brother didn’t care and your mother was on vacation with her boyfriend. On your birthday.
For Christmas your father gave you and your brother identical wallets that his secretary had picked out and your mother gave you nothing.
When your brother got married he neither invited nor told anyone.
Every birthday and holiday I came over, arms brimming with gifts, random packages falling down the stairs, and sometimes, I guess I’m still afraid of how you will fare in this world without me.
T
But I digress, and just so you know, I’m passing over other prospective posts to take this time to ruminate, rant, theorize, and… well, basically ramble.
Hey XXXX.
I hear you got married.
And I wasn’t invited.
Hmm. Well.
Fuck you too.
That’s okay. I didn’t really expect an invitation, especially since we haven’t spoken in over a year. That’s the kind of friends we were I suppose. Still, you were married, and I wasn’t there.
Which seems odd.
We’d been friends since we were twelve and throughout high school we were “Very Best Friends” we had keychains and shit to prove it. I became goth for you. For YOU! You think I liked that black heavy metal head banging shit? No. It just allowed me to fade into the background, which, being terminally shy as I was, helped. You became an aspiring writer for me. See? We were friends.
I sucked at goth and so gave it up in favor for spring colors. You hated writing and so gave it up for.. well. Something else that didn’t involve reading I suppose. For christ’s sake it took you a year to finish “The Bell Jar”. Mensa material you were not.
Still it came as a shock to me that as we entered our twenties your sense of competitiveness never let up. You were always trying to be prettier than me, smarter than me, more put together. You pointed out that when you finished your BA we might not be friends any longer, as educated people didn’t often associate with the uneducated. However, you mused, surely our friendship was strong enough to survive.
I pointed out that surely it was, since I had already completed my AA and was into the third year of schooling, whereas your uneducated ass had never even taken one college course to date.
We both were quiet and the words “fuck you” reverberated over the telephone lines.
You were dating a big time engineer that owned his own house and you thought, surely, you were headed for marriage. I, thought otherwise.
You told the engineer that his taste in carpet was shit. You advised he clean his house and said, and I quote, “It’s a health risk. If you had children they would be taken away by the authorities.”
I liked the engineer. He was funny, smart, and the only engineer I’ve ever met that I didn’t want to stab in the eye with a pencil. You told me this cattily and I winced for his pride.
Poor poor Engineer: I cried for you when she made you cry. She was such a bitch, really you should have shoved her down some stairs and run for your dear overeducated life.
So, Bitchy Friend, how did we come to the end? If I remember correctly, I asked how you were doing and you said, “Fine”. This, I know, is girl speak for “I am doing fucking awful and am thinking about becoming either a nun or prostitute.” And so I pressed on into dangerous territory where eventually I said, “I think you are looking for marriage. Which isn’t right. You should be looking for someONE. You should be looking for love, worry about the rest later.”
Which is when you pointed out that I drink too much, party too much and sleep around too much to tell you how to run your life. I asked how I was supposed to meet anyone and you said that my last boyfriend had left me with bruises and you would never have dated a piece of trash like that.
Wow.
Ok.
That happened once… and I left… and I’d cried for hours and weeks and months over my stupidity. But it doesn’t matter anyway. I am still shocked that someone I considered a friend tried to make me validate myself.
Fuck you. God. That one stung.
But all that stupid shit aside, hey. You married this guy in under a year of meeting him and I am hoping, fucking hoping, that you married him for love, real love, and not for the ring and some big fucking party that the two people in the world you call friends could not show up to.
But I don’t think so. You always wanted to marry a police officer, and he is a police officer and everything you ever wrote down on your short list of requirements which was: police officer, wants to get married.
Wow. What a recipe for success.
You know, none of my other friends ever liked you. They always said you were a frigid bitch, ugly and uncomfortable in your own body, they said you kept me around because no one else was willing to put up with your shit. Which might be true. But I remember you calling me on your thirteenth birthday making your own birthday cake because your Dad couldn’t be bothered with a thirty minute drive, your brother didn’t care and your mother was on vacation with her boyfriend. On your birthday.
For Christmas your father gave you and your brother identical wallets that his secretary had picked out and your mother gave you nothing.
When your brother got married he neither invited nor told anyone.
Every birthday and holiday I came over, arms brimming with gifts, random packages falling down the stairs, and sometimes, I guess I’m still afraid of how you will fare in this world without me.
T
