Monday, August 16, 2010

I found my friend

I had this friend once. We met in high school. We went to an all girls catholic private school, weird considering we weren't catholic. We met in year 7 her name was Mary. But she left the school at the end of year 8 to go to a public co ed school. We still kept in contact though and I would quite often go to her house for sleepovers. As she is turkish she introduced me to turkish food yum, chocolate laxettes (if we ate too much turkish food), her brother (spunky) and strict parents (but they were always nice to me). I always had fun with her at her house. Although her house was only an average sized suburban brick veneer it seemed like a mansion to me and had things like ducted vacuum, airconditioning, tinted windows, brand new carpet, so I always thought her parents were really rich (they weren't they were just better off than us). One time me and our other friend Penny who I am still friends with went and had a sleepover at Mary's house. We ate lots of food, lots of rich food and watched scary movies, when we decided to go to bed I felt sick so I went and locked myself in the bathroom and threw up all over the bathroom I was mortified and hysterical but her mum came and helped me and helped me clean it up. Mary got into trouble as her parents thought we had raided their liquor cabinet. As if, we were only 13 we were more interested in junk food. I saw my first adult movie at Mary's house, it was her brothers he was about 10 years older than her.

When we were 17 she came out to me and it weirded me out because she was one of the first gay people I knew and I thought she would come on to me, of course she didn't. After I got over the initial shock I realised Mary was still Mary. So we kept hanging out. She moved out of home before me into the inner city (we lived in the burbs) and she got her license and a car before me so we hung out a lot and I would stay at her various places. We would eat and listen to Tori Amos and watch DAAS videos and talk. We had fun. When she came out to her parents they rejected her it was terrible. After a while though she told them she wasn't gay and they 'forgave' her, basically she was living a lie. She tried dating boys it didn't really work.

She was always changing jobs, starting courses and not finishing them and moving. She wanted to be a singer or actor and could sing and act but never really got the break she needed.

When we were in our early 20's we had a falling out. I was going with this great guy Rob, gorgeous blonde Rob who I adored. I was working at Pancake Parlour and living out of home and was at uni doing my degree. I was spending a lot of time with my boyfriend and my pannies friends. This put a lot of strain on my relationship with Mary she was quite possessive of me and would become jealous. She decided to enrol in a course at my uni and the day she went to enrol I asked her to do me a favour which was to drop in a change of subject form for me, (now if anyone hasx ever done one of these they can be a bit of nightmare, the scene from love and other catastrophes is the classic example), she did it but then called me to tell me how stressful it had been and to accuse me of using her and only contacting her when I needed something from her, it hindsight probably true at the time. She basically was telling me to get lost. It was sad but kinda had to happen. I unfortunately took it to the next level and did something pretty awful to her. After this she called me and accused me of this act which I denied. She then basically told me to F off and that was it, I was pretty shaken up but had brought it on myself.

So that was it friendship over.

That was more than 10 years ago, I have thought about her many, many times over these years and have wondered what she was doing and if she was happy. And she appears in my dreams over and over again. I obviously have a guilty conscience about the whole thing.

Her parents shop in the same supermarket as my mum and if I ever went with her I feared running into her or them.

When I joined facebook I tried searching for her to no avail. The other night I found her not on facebook but on a blog so I have read her blog and she is doing alright. She now has a daughter a little younger than Dylan. She has had a husband for 7 years but they are getting a divorce. Her life seems ok. I don't know whether to contact her or not. I need to clear my conscience and apologise or is knowing she is ok enough for me? Food for thought.

I was a terrible friend to her in the end, god I hope I am a better friend to my friends now.

1 comment:

Averil said...

I would contact her. Just to let her know exactly what you have said - that you've thought about her a lot over the years, and that you're sorry for how the friendship ended, and how glad you are to know that she's doing ok in her life.

JMHO!

xx Smiles, Averil