Day 46: A Friend By Any Other Name

"Who Needs a White Horse When She Has a Coach?" This ensemble is for the working woman. Now that I am one, thank you very much, I've been wearing some sort of slacks/shirt/flats ensemble on a regular basis. This outfit particularly calls to me today, because I spent half the day working with accessories, which includes, you guessed it, Coach bags...oooohhh, aaahhhh. Really, there are some amazing ones. I am also wearing a watch with bracelets lately, don't know why. I guess it's my way of dressing up and feminizing what can seem like such a stuffy and masculine, albeit practical, accessory.

Frenemies: people who seem like your friends, but who actually end up being your worst enemies. Samantha and Charlotte fight over sexual morals. Miranda dates one of Carrie's exes, whom Carrie warns her about even though he seems like a nice guy. Of course, the guy turns out to be an a-hole when Miranda dumps him, just as Carrie predicted. Carrie teaches a class on how and where to meet men, only to find that she doesn't have much to say to the 200 single women who show up. When the class size drops to 5, she decides to teach by doing; she takes them to a bar and gives suggestions about what to do.

I like this episode. After just talking about the amazing side of good friends, here's the not-so-glamourous part of forging deep connections with other people: the opportunity for disagreement and disappointment. I love that even with a group as tight as these women, there are tensions that never really leave. That's realistic. We can't get along with everyone. Even if we do (or pretend to), there are inexplicable forces at play that draw us closer to some people and away from others. This is especially evident to me lately being in a job where I work closely (and under great amounts of stress) with about 15 other women of different ages, races, and places in life. While I truly like everyone, there are people I find myself drawn to work and talk with and others not so much. Some people's humor I totally jive with; others just rub me the wrong way. I can't explain it. It just is.

And then there are the friends that turn into enemies. I hate the word enemies, and I would like to think I have none. However, I know it's not true. I can count the people who have really not liked me (that I know of; if you know different, don't say a word) on one hand, but the thought of them makes me cringe whenever I think of our past interactions. Some people aren't on that list that should be, like the girl whose boyfriend I slept with once in high school. He said he was in love with me, and bought me the same gifts for Christmas that he bought her. That was my first and last experience of being the other women.

No, the people who are on that list are people I don't really know what happened with. I just know it wasn't good. Actually, and I mean this honestly after wracking my brain, I can really only think of one person that hated me. I mean I think she wanted to kill me. And, yes we were friends first. Here is the story:

I was in Peru. Things were going badly with Billy when I met Alison, an Australian (nothing against people from there, of course). It's funny: I use fake names all the time when I'm writing, but I seriously can't remember her name. I think I've blocked it out. Anyway, I met her somewhere in the touristy area of town. She seemed immediately to want to take me under her wing. She told me she was working for a Peruvian man and could get me a job. I said that sounded great and started the next week. Two weeks later, Billy broke up with me. I was a wreck, barely keeping it together long enough to work my six hours a day and then cry on the walk home.

Every day, Alison would invite me places like Gringo trivia night, give me books to read on breakups, talk about her own experience with Peruvian men (she was sleeping with our boss), and tell me what to do and not do with Billy. When I decided to move out of Billy's apartment, she nearly forced me to move in with her and not go to a hotel. For three days, we ate together, watched funny movies, and she even insisted that I sleep on her bed the first night.

The third day, she started acting funny. She said she was tired of "saving people" all of the time and that it was so much pressure to help people out that clearly couldn't make good decisions on their own (she referenced another American girl at our workplace as her other example). I told her that I was very thankful for her help, but that I didn't want her to feel pressure to help me. I could just get a hotel and figure it out on my own. She didn't say anything. The next morning, I found a note on my bedroom door that said that she would rather I wasn't there when she got home and that I needed to find another place to stay.

"Okay," I thought. "No big deal." I thought the note was weird, but I didn't think much about it. When I walked into work that day, she wouldn't look at me. When I finally asked her if anything was wrong, she got in my face and started screaming (and I mean screaming) at me, telling me that she couldn't believe what I had done and how I had lied to her. I asked her what she was talking about, but she just kept screaming and even pushed me. That's when I grabbed her and said, "If you fucking lay one more hand on me, I will fucking punch you, I swear to God." And I would have. She walked away, and we never spoke again. I never went back to work there, even though my boss still wanted me too. I told him I just couldn't work in that abusive environment with her. I wrote her a card saying that I was sorry for whatever I did to hurt her, and that I had thought long and hard about what she had been talking about and could think of nothing. I thanked her again for her help. I never heard back from her.

I worried for a long time about that relationship--that "frenemy" I had somehow created in such a short time. Why did she hate me so much? No matter what I said or did or tried to make right, she wouldn't have it. It killed me. After a while, I began to think, "Well, there's a chance she's crazy, like bipolar or something." That made me feel a little better, since I had no other explanation for her acting so rashly. In the end, who knows the answer to the riddle. I will never know, and there is nothing I can do about it.

So, that's the story. And that's all for today. It makes me really thankful for my non-crazy friends who somehow love me, despite the things I probably unknowingly do that may hurt them from time to time. Again, thank God for friendship.

Hope you'll be back. I will.