Announcing the arrival of new niece today! We went to see the baby at the hospital today- oh, family dynamics fun. My grandmother is only 75, but her conversation is getting harder and harder to follow. It's one long cheerful stream of half-finished unrelated anecdotes about everyone she knows....My mother was cranky, my sister's baby was fussy, the in-laws visiting from England didn't introduce themselves to us, my dad and his wife hung around the neighbourhood of the hospital ALL DAY but left after a short visit with the baby...the new mother looked very small and young and wouldn't let anybody hold the baby for the first hour and a half. My brother looked happy and quiet and possibly overwhelmed.
Fun moment for the still-single sibling: "Next year is going to be so boring. What can top two babies?"
I'm not sure how well I'm doing right now. I am happy that the baby arrived safely, and of course I will love it like a good auntie. Seeing the new parents, it just felt like intruding on a such a private moment, such a huge life changing moment, and one I don't think I'm ever going to have.
Also I've gotten zero messages on OKCupid. What am I doing wrong?
Anyways, I'd better continue with my story about Emily. Sorry to whoever is reading this, I don't think it's interesting to anyone but me.
For two years Emily and I worked on that film part-time, each of us taking jobs as opportunities arose, and then they started to arise more for her. During this time, my parents separate, hire lawyers and fight over money, I don't speak to my father for a year, my mother sells the house we've lived in for 17 years and we move 17 years worth of crap into a new house.
One day near the end of these two years, the day after Halloween, Emily wasn't at 'work', that is to say she wasn't at the space where we met to work on the film. The receptionist of the arts organization told me that Emily's boyfriend had phoned in to say Emily had spent the night in the hospital. I phoned her parents and left a message, and got no answer. I didn't have a phone number or email for the boyfriend, even though they'd been going out as long as I'd known her.
I was super panicked and started to cry. I kept phoning her parents and finally spoke her to dad. She was still in the hospital. She'd fallen and hit her head on the sidewalk while 'running from the police'? Her dad has a thick accent so I can't say for sure that's what he said, but that's what I heard. I went to see her in the hospital, and when I went into the room she was asleep and had a big purple bruise. I forgave her everything at that moment; I was so relieved she was okay. We visited and she was a bit evasive about what happened, she just said she was 'running, just running.' I never asked her what really happened that day and she never volunteered the story. She stayed at home to recover for the next few weeks and I went to visit her. She seemed grateful for that. She said she felt very different, like her personality had changed. I can't remember what exactly was said but I remember that time as being very surreal.
Weeks later I had a niggling feeling that it was weird that the boyfriend had called the arts organization, who really didn't care whether we were there or not, and not me. It must have been at her instruction, no? I mention this little incident because it seems like the beginning of the end...
I can't remember what happened the following winter and spring, but it must have been when she started to get some really good jobs and had no time for the project. That summer I hardly saw her at all. She had a job at the best place in town, and I was so jealous. Our mutual friend had moved to Seattle to live with her boyfriend (met online!) and Emily and I took a bus trip together. We did a lot of catching up and had really great conversations. She told me this guy who sat next to her at work, Adam, was flirting heavily with her and she really liked him. She still was dating her long-time boyfriend, and Adam had a girlfriend that he lived with. I actually encouraged her to go for it, since I didn't like her boyfriend all that much. After a few months of hearing about all the flirting, in the end Adam wouldn't leave his girlfriend and Emily was heartbroken.
But. There was another guy who sat on the other side of her at work, and he seemed to have a bit of a crush on her. Charlie was maybe 8 years older than us, and was a bit of a film-geek, really cheerful, had a tendency to talk too much if you got him started. It seemed he'd only had one girlfriend in his life, and they were still 'long-distance' but it was fading. He also still lived at home, at 34! Emily was friendly to Charlie and hung out with him a bit. She suspected he liked her and still spent a lot of time with him. She told me a lot about how lonely he was, and even suggested I go out with him. I was having none of that. No leftovers for me, thanks. But Emily still kept hanging out with him, and inviting him to hang out with the two of us. I'd meet her at the movies, and surprise! there he was. Her parents started to suspect things and discouraged the friendship because Emily is Chinese and Charlie was white. He even came to my house once with her, and they sat together under one blanket. I was annoyed.
My feelings, motives(?) at this time were mixed. He genuinely was a nice fellow and I would have been happy to have him as a friend. I let him come to my house I guess because I was encouraging the relationship. I thought Emily was probably lying to herself about her feelings. It made her feel good to be with him, but if she couldn't date him, either because she wouldn't leave her long-time boyfriend or because she couldn't stand up to her racist parents, she had to stop seeing Charlie even as a friend. I thought she was leading him on, or using him to get over Adam. She seemed pretty fickle to me, two guy in one summer while still with her boyfriend. I felt really badly for Charlie if she wouldn't go through with it. I tried to explain to her how much it hurts to be alone that long, how it feels to get your hopes up and have them dashed to pieces.... She just wanted things to go on as they were.
Her contract at that workplace ended and she was unemployed again. She didn't know how much her co-workers knew about the two love interests, but she felt she could never work there again. She threw herself into the old project, our never ending film.
We'd been working on the film for four years and it was a standing joke among our art friends to ask if we were finished yet. We actually rewrote it that fall and the end seemed in sight.
Emily told her boyfriend about both the work guys, and he felt he'd been cheated on, and said some not-very-nice things. In November they broke up for real. Emily was probably really depressed but she throws herself into work when she's sad. The film made some progress at this point and we decided we'd finally take that trip to Europe. Oh to be in Paris in April! Oh, to get away from all the turmoil at home!
I quit my teaching job that spring. Emily got another short gig, working with this really disorganized artist who needed someone to keep him on track. I planned the whole trip by myself since she was so stressed.
Just before we left, a guy she'd met at a wedding wrote to her and said he'd been very impressed by her. He lived in London and offered to let us stay at his place. I protested violently. No way was I staying at a stranger's place while he was hitting on my friend. I won that battle, I suppose, because we stayed at a hostel in London, but we did have to see him a few times. He bored me. One night she went out with him alone and stayed out quite late. I was alone in the hostel and just to make things better there was a fire alarm and we had to evacuate. When she finally came home I was crying quietly in my bed. The next day she mumbled one sentence about having to give it a try but that she didn't feel anything special for him. The subject was not mentioned again.
We travelled through England for three weeks. It was mostly alright, but we stick so close to each other when we travel there's bound to be fights. Travelling with a companion requires endless compromises and sacrifices and I can't help but feel some of her choices were a little selfish. Maybe mine were just as bad. Both of us were probably depressed at that point and had been for a long time. We'd both been through a lot. Travelling didn't solve our problems at home, or even let us leave them behind.
I remember one night she asked me if she had ruined her trip. I said no, there was nobody I'd rather have gone with.
One night, we were alone in a hostel room in some big old mansion in a little Yorkshire town. I started talking about my health problems (ovarian cysts) and from there the worry that no one would ever date me, and I started crying. She started talking about how she always notices nice looking guys with girls that aren't that attractive. I was so exhausted I didn't even see that as insulting until weeks later. She must have realized that wasn't a helpful observation and started repacking her bag, leaving me crying quietly on the floor.
Much later she apologized for not doing more at that moment.
Our last week was in Paris, and we fought almost the whole time. I am on a special diet, and Paris wasn't condusive to that. Do you think you can find multi-grain bread in Paris? They eat nothing but white bread and pastry. Emily was always eating sweet things in front of me. Meanwhile my digestion system was going haywire. Emily's friend from high school happened to be in Paris at the same time and we hung out with her a lot. I didn't think much of her, and she pretty much ignored me. We went to dinner one night to try real French food. I didn't want to go, I offered to leave them to it while I spent the evening exploring alone, but they insisted. They ordered food I couldn't eat, the friend was rude to the waiters, they talked about high school while I sat there miserably. I really thought I was going to cry at the table. And it wasn't so much at what they were doing, but disappointment at myself that I didn't have the skills to turn the evening around. I wasn't a food connoisseur, I didn't speak French, I couldn't find a way into the conversation, and when the high school friend asked if French people were Catholic or Christian I was pretty snotty.
Emily said quite fiercely it wasn't polite to discuss religion at dinner.
I think I went home alone. At the hostel I crawled into bed and fell into a dead sleep. I didn't hear Emily come in. She told me she cried herself to sleep that night. The next day she told me I was very rude not to join in the conversation. I didn't do a good job of defending myself, couldn't explain how much I hated myself at that moment, nor how rude I thought they had been to me.
Somehow we got through the last bit of the trip. Another airport separation without saying goodbye to each other, somehow another patched-up friendship. I was pretty disappointed with her behaviour. I remember phoning my friend Shelly when I got home and ranting and ranting. I don't know why I didn't tell Emily my feelings....
That's enough for tonight. The friendship takes another year to die, but I think I can tell the story pretty quickly.
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