This must be my season of change. In the last year I have made some...adjustments. I recently severed a four year friendship. Last week, in fact. It wasn't a long time coming. I wish it had been. That way I would have had time to grow accustomed and alleviate the residual guilt that came along with this particular situation of mine. Everything was fine. Our friendship was bumping along nicely on flat, smooth road. And then one night I was at work and I forgot my phone at home. I was in a rush (the great and powerful time clock is merciless to stragglers) and I left it. So, like any good employee I hopped on Facebook to see what was what with my best chum.
I was greeted with a farewell. "Goodbye cruel world" dramatics ensued. I spent I don't know how many hours on Facebook with her instant messaging back and forth. We were a fine pair, the two of us, with her promising that her number was up one week for that fateful Monday night conversation and me disbelieving at first. I thought surely she must have been joking (pre-histrionics she had a decent sense of humor). Gradually I came to believe to her and set about trying to talk her out of it. When pleading and stroking her ego, telling her how great she was and had so much to live for didn't work I moved on to anger thinking I could snap her out of it with a good dose of mad, but no avail. She was determined to be dead in a weeks time. I called the suicide hotline (work phone, of course) and explained the situation while my fingers were actively trying to communicate the joys of living. She had already spilled the beans for her grand coup de gras. It was to be at an unsuspecting mutual friend's home. She wouldn't say the method, but she had the day and the place. I explained this to the hotline and they assured me she was gravely serious. By this time I had her listing all the things (boo frickin' hoo) that were so wrong with her life because I honestly couldn't see them, still can't. And used this opportunity to call the police. YES, the police. It's the advice I was given and I think it was sound. I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if she'd actually done it and I'd stood idly by. Interestingly enough that particular county has a sheriff's department, not a police station. I digress.
I don't know what I was expecting to happen exactly. I guess I thought they would jot down the information and then they would form some sort of anti-suicide sting operation where they would kick the door in and there she would be, kneeling on the floor, dressed in a kimono. And they would stop her right as she was about to plunge the knife into her heart from shame and dishonor. I've obviously seen way too many movies. Did I mention the kimono is red? With gold dragons. And somehow or another Dolph Lundgren saves the day. And although she resists at first, when the knife is wrested from her grasp she quickly realizes that life is beautiful! Cue the curtain close. Well, needless to say, this isn't how it happened. The dispatcher (very capable woman) informed me that I should call the police now. Obviously my friend was cukoo bananas if she was contemplating suicide (this of course was not verbatim) and in her experience it could be a trick to throw me off the scent of her REAL death date, which could be right now (gasp!!). She said call the police of where ever she was located and they could check on her...and it might ring home to her how serious suicide is. So, I did. Boy howdy, was she pissed. Not that she really had a right to be.
But I discovered the next day WHY she was soo unhappy with me. One of her EX CLASSMATES was one of the damn cops that came to see if she was okay. It was a regular three ring circus with an ambulance, fire truck, and all those flashing lights. All for little old her. She was embarrassed. That's all that mattered to her. Not what she put me through the night before, making me think my best friend was going to take her own life, but that she lives in a small town and everybody might know. That was when I really started thinking about how intent she really was to end it. It turns out I was right. It was all just a ploy to garner some sympathy and stroke her ego so she could feel good about being a quitter. I tried to be friends, we tried, but I just can't see her as anything else now. Because it wasn't her idea to end our friendship, I'm the villain of the piece who is abandoning her in her time of need and don't really care for her at all. Now, she assured me the day the whole ordeal that she was fine. For the next week leading up to the big day she kept saying that she didn't need to talk, she was fine, stop mentioning counseling, she didn't need medication blah blah. We talked Monday morning and she informs me that a real friend would have called to check on her Sunday night. She gave me all these assurances that it was out of her system, was dumb and she was never going to do it again. But on Sunday (when I was really busy NOT being a self absorbed psychopath) I was supposed to drop everything that I had going on (my sisters 30th birthday bash) to do what exactly? Perfectly fine people don't need others to call and make sure they're still alive, after all. So I told her she was one of two things. Either she was mentally unstable and needed some clinical assistance or she was a big fat faker who needed a kick in the ass.
Either way she was selfish and exhausting and I was sick to death of hearing about what I didn't do right (after all, my friends turn into suicidal strangers on me all the time). And that's really the long and the short of it. She turned into a person I would never have befriended, but she did a good job on that guilt trip. I still get a twinge or two when I think of her. She called me judgmental, I might have been, but I don't remember it that way. Still wonder if maybe I DID handle it wrong, didn't say the right thing or do the right thing...but then I sing Ceelo Green's Forget You and move on to better things. The sun is bright, water's wet and life is beautiful. And I can't share any part of my life with someone who disagrees.
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