Female Friend Drama Part III

Where were we?  Oh yes, we'd just come back from our big trip. It must have been May.  My mother went travelling in South America for two months and I was in charge of the house (my sister wasn't much help.) I went into a depression and cried randomly.  Things were stressful.

You see, Angie, a former co-worker, an art teacher I used to assist, had phoned me the previous December to tell me she had throat cancer.  She asked me to start substituting for some of her art classes at the rec centre, gradually I took them over.  I was also driving her to chemo, and visiting her often.  I got to know her and her family quite well.

Emily had wanted to go on our trip to get some perspective.  I think she decided she wanted the old boyfriend back.  They'd been together 8 years, both of them still lived at home.  They only saw each other about once a week.  It seemed to me to lack any kind of romance or spark.  She told me she wanted him to do a big gesture to win her back.  I had no sympathy- in one year she had considered relationships with three other men (the two from work and the one in London). 

Meanwhile we were back working on the film at the arts organization.  Both of us would bring our laptops, but only she would plug into the internet.  She would sign into online messaging and talk to people all day long.  I thought that was pretty rude.  Mostly she talked to her old work buddy Charlie, who was still devoted to her.  They played this game where they'd pick a word (like 'sunshine') and send each other songs with that word in the lyrics.  The music would play in the room so I could hear it too.  I kinda wanted to play, and sometimes I made suggestions, but I didn't really think it was very professional of either of them.  Charlie was at work, and we were pretending to be! 

Once he sent a song that featured the words 'stupid ho' over and over and I reached over and turned it off.  That was the end of that game, or at least my involvement in it.  Well, I still say you can't play a song like that in an office, especially when you're using the space for free.

After that, Emily wore headphones.  If I wanted to talk to her about the film, she acted like I was interrupting her most unreasonably.

I said I was crying quite a lot at that time.  Sometimes at work.  Emily had to comfort me.  We'd go for walks.  She was a reasonably good friend at those times, but what could she do when I told her I was lonely and worried about surviving as an artist and sometimes jealous of her social life and jobs?  It only made her feel bad about what she had, when she wasn't even happy with her life either.

What a mess.  What a mess.

There was this really special art show in town and even though we talked about going together, I decided to go with my sick friend Angie instead.  I couldn't believe Emily sulked about that.

Then the arts organization had a job opening, just a little short term gig, and they asked both of us to put in a portfolio.  We took a long walk to discuss that one.  I at that time felt that I needed the job to save my self confidence.  I wasn't going to ask Emily not to apply, but I must have secretly hoped she'd stand back and let me have a chance.  I was holding back what I felt.  She was getting really heated and blurted something about me thinking she wasn't a good enough artist to do it, which was hurtful, insulting....I didn't think that, and I didn't want to hold her back.  It's just that I really thought I needed it more than her, like I was drowning and clutching at anything that would pull me up...
In the end we both applied and neither of us got it.  Probably the best outcome, but the damage was done.
She withdrew more and more into the online messaging....I couldn't even talk to her.  In June I wrote her a letter, and at the end of the workday I tried to give it to her.  She wouldn't take it.  We went to the park and tried to talk, but I tried to tell her she was like a brick wall and I ended up sobbing hysterically, loud, gasping, unstoppable crying, in a public park.  She just sat next to me quietly.  At one point she said so quietly and sadly, "Why are you so sad?"  We were in the park a long time, we moved to a quieter place, I still couldn't stop, she started getting a little angry, and I gasped out 'I'm....so.....disappointed...." and she BLEW UP.   Yelled stuff at me and left me crying in the park.  I sat there and cried for a while then went home.  My mother came home that night.  I acted quite normal.  I casually told my sister Emily and I had had a fight. 
I tried to phone Emily but she hung up on me.
A few days later I got an email saying that I should go to counselling and that I should take time away to heal.  Emily had suggested counselling for me before, because she got scared when I cried. 
So I signed up right away, and started going once a week.  I didn't tell my family. 
I liked my counseller, even if she looked like the mom on Leave it to Beaver.  I think she had dentures, or just some really straight teeth.  My counseller made me say what it was I liked so much about Emily, and I couldn't think of much. 
I'm going to save everybody hundreds of dollars:  The best thing the counseller told me was "If this is the worst time of your life, and you live through it, it will be over and nothing will ever be as bad again."
For the first few weeks I just lay on the couch a lot.  Eventually the counseller helped me make a list of goals and I started drawing again.  I got a part time job at a thrift store, which changed my view on the world in many ways, but that's another story. 
Emily and I still emailed a bit, for some reason.  My counseller told me to give her space, so I never wrote unless she did, and never asked to see her.
In October there was an art school reunion and I wrote to Emily and told her I was going.  She said she was too.  I think she said she was proud of me. (?)  At the event I saw her (with Charlie) and she hugged me.  I told her a bit about the guy at work who liked me.  We met a few times after that, and hung out for short periods of times, trying to be friends again, although she kept her distance a little more than I did.  An old teacher died and we went to the funeral together.  I ignored the fact that while I had been crying on the couch that summer, she had stayed at the arts organization and worked on her own project, one she must have had secretly ready to go.  I wonder what she told them about why I never came back.  I wonder what happened to the pair of shoes I left at the office.
The film , the project we worked on for five year, was never mentioned.  I think she did date Charlie for a little while but she didn't really go into details. I didnt actually see Emily all that much, but we wrote often and it was quite friendly.  I was busy with my new job and trying to work on my art, I took a few art classes, and I stopped going to counselling.

I was really happy to have Emily back in my life.  Part of that might of been that I was seeing all my old art school friends again.  The ones she'd been hanging out with all along.  The ones that never phoned me during my disappearance...

I stopped covering Angie's classes- it was too hard.  She took a turn for a worse in the spring. 
She died at the end of June.  I didn't even cry.  I only cried when I fought with Emily.  I haven't cried in years.  I wish I could.  I wish I could.

In August I decided to have a bbq, one I'd planned for Angie to attend in June....that might have been inappropriate but I wanted my friends around me.  It rained and not a lot of people came but we had a good time.  Immediately after I was helping prepare a slide show for Angie's memorial and two computers in the house broke down.   I had a nasty cough.  I sent Emily a little message on facebook:  "I"m sick, my computer's broken and the memorial's next week.  Stress!  Do you think people had a good time at my party?"  She wrote back :"I can't help but notice your messages have been getting more negative lately.  You friends love you and want you to be happy but you have to do something about this."

I took three days to reply to that, and I said 'Angie died six weeks ago.  I'm grieving.  It really wasn't all that negative.'

She wrote back a bunch of nonsense about  having to protect her own happiness and she wasn't going to be my dumping ground anymore.  It's burned into my memory forever:  "you can't deal with stuff and you don't solve problems."
That day I found out my grandmother had cancer.  I never answered Emily's message, and two weeks later she 'unfriended' me on facebook.   This was August.
I went back to counselling once soon after that.  My counseller wasn't too impressed with Emily.

I ran into her twice after that.  There was a minimum of interaction.  I think we said 'hi' politely.
In January I received a card from her.  I opened it at breakfast and cried into my cereal.  It was a gift card for art supplies and all it said was 'the desk is very useful.  I am grateful. -Emily'.  

I cried because I had given her the desk six months earlier.  It would have given me a little dignity if she'd taken the desk from me as a gift, from a friend, because I thought we were, at the time.  And, knowing her like I do, I felt she was freeing herself of all obligation to me.  She might not have known she was doing that, but she probably thought of me every time she sat at the desk, and thought she could square things up if she send me $35.   I wasn't going to make good art if my supplies came from her- I gave the card to a friend.

35 bucks for 8 years of friendship and an old desk.  But I got my revenge!  Emily borrowed a van to pick it up.  The night before she came I discovered my cat had peed on the top and I scrubbed and scrubbed it, but never told her.  Ha!

I still curse her name sometimes.  I don't talk to anybody from my old art world anymore- I'm starting over, on my own, out of the shadow of Emily.

PS.  My grandmother is now cancer free!