Intensive Care?

You all ways hear in life you never know how much you need something, or love something, or simply want something until it is gone or you are awaken by some event when you have to imagine life with out something or some one. This can be a car accident, cancer, a recent encounter with death or simply just be taken away by someone.

Most recently I have had to think about this everyday. As I have said before I moved to New York. And although the transition has seamed easy it has been one of the hardest of my life. The person that I have considered my best friend to the point of family is showing me a side that I simply cannot stomach, self centered, narcissistic, bratty behavior of an only or extremely younger child. She in fact has such a gap between her and her older brother that while still in grad school she practically became an only child.

I however refuse to allow this to be a handicap or an excuse. It makes no since to me how someone can be so judgmental, self absorbed and stubborn, to the point that the closes of the close friends don’t last. I will admit in the beginning we used each other I had a car and needed a friend that would be at my beck and call so to speak. And she needed some one to hang out with. However what started out as a summer of tit for tat turned into what I thought would be an everlasting friendship.

In the beginning we fought over who was good enough to hang out with us. We felt so secure with each other that we gave up our other two friends and became a duo. We fought like brothers and sister, had the inside jokes and called each other’s mom, mom. Then I lost the car and got an apartment. The tit for tat continued unintentionally. She would crash at my place when she came home from school and didn’t want to be trapped in the house with her parents. And she would clean but I would cook. Then my fortune flipped again and I had a car and just sort of bounced until I ended up in Chester.

I would say it was the acquisition of the new car that threw things off balance. I drove us everywhere and never really asked for gas. I would pick her up from the buss stop and drop her off. She would get pissed when I was late or didn’t drop her off at all. We had had one big fight when she had sex in my apartment while my little sister was sleeping in the same room, and from the way she reacted to my anger I should have known then that although she is mature for her age, she was quite the spoiled brat. It was I who was the bigger person and made up. She was the one who violated my home and had sex in it when I asked her not to and made the conditions uncomfortable to normal people.

Now I tend to bit my tong a lot with all my friends, I tend to attract people with issues that cause them to see them selves superior to most people. Funny how it is no real contest when it comes to looks and personality from what I have been told, but they are the ones that must always be in the spot light.

At the moment my best friend and I are living together. I will admit taking someone into your home is a big deal. But this is something that was discussed in detail, the good, the bad, and the dirty. I try to manage my little 10 X 4 foot area. I think we could have rearranged the place to fit things in better and make the place more live able but she insist on having things her way. So I let it be. But she complains about how I pile my clothes on my futon. I have no place to put them. She complains about me taking my time to do the dishes. I cook for the two of us one would think she offer to do the dishes. I am not staying her for free I do pay rent. We fought over light bulbs because she was mad he gave me the silent treatment for 3 days. We when food shopping and I made it clear days before how much money I had. I even made a point to keep a running total of how much we put in the cart and just kept adding. We get to the register and she looks at me when the total was $101. I paid my $43 in cash and told he that all I have like I said. She in a huff and pissed had no choice but to pay for the rest with debit. Mind you I got dressed to take her to get a pony tail and I still drive us both around when we go out and never ask for gas.

I asked her for $15 in gas money to help pay so we could both get to Philly, after paying she ask “When am I going to see it again?” I paid all the tolls and was paying for the gas to get back, in short the trip cost me about $30.

Then I read her blog and she is talking about how much she hates living with me. I know two people living in a studio basement is cramped but I try hard to make the best of it. While she mumbles under breath, ask truly stupid questions, maintains a sarcastic attitude towards the world 80% of the time and talks incessantly about herself, how she spends her days and her views on people, “Why can’t the world be like me? Women are all the same that’s why I can’t be friends with one. So and so treats me bad because everyone treats him bad, He will never amount to anything, she is so depressed, why am I friends with him, her, you are a smart ass, dumb ass, I hate you, he is ugly, I don’t like this dish you made.” This is 90% of what she talks about which over laps with the other 10% making her like every other woman, ex boy friends.

There was a time when I played along yet she fails to notice that I never take her side initially. I can’t help but cheer for her opponent that something will clique in her closed fist of a brain and see, that stereotypes are false and unreliable and that her opinion is not the only one that matters.

What brought me to write this today was what happened when I got home? There is no key for the top lock it locks from the inside with a knob. She is well aware that I get home by 8:30 am yet the top lock was locked. So I had to bang on the door one to wake her and two to get her to realize that I needed to get in. For the second time I came home to place that reeked of sex a man that I barley know and my friend naked. This time it was different however. The temperature was 2 degrees above hell. Her crappy land lord has yet to turn the heat on and to get around the cold and having to deal with the bitch. My friend turns the oven on and opens it until the place warms up. I could tell that her and her friend we quite hot while sleeping because both were sweaty and both barely used the covers to cover up.

I went to the kitchen to turn off the oven which was wide open and clearly had been on all night while the two did what ever then slept. It was so hot I had to run and move quickly. Everything in the kitchen was hot to the touch. And then I saw it. Every day I check my plants to see how they are doing. I barley have a green thumb, so I have cacti. An Aloe Vera, a spiky yet non prickly cactus and then a snake plant which is not a cactus but it quite easy to take care of. All had been baked my aloe gained big brown spots. All the tips on the other plant shriveled up and my snake plat which normally has thick strong hard leaves were hanging down. I knew I got a little joy from my plants and I liked the fact that theses plants were only a month younger than my car. I had did it but a stupid act but someone who rarely thinks about her actions may cost me the one simple pleasure that I have had for almost two years. They are in intensive care. I never imagined my life with out theses plants I have another one at my moms that planned on getting when I go down for thanks giving. I was shocked at how hurt was at the prospect of maybe loosing my plants. I came quit close to crying, but anger stopped me.

When I think about what dose she and I have in common aside from grade school? I am the funny one. I am the cook. I am the one with the car. How has having her enriched my life over the most recent years together? Her chance to make it all even and I come home to place when she has flat out said she wish I wasn’t only to find that I could have all been burnt down. My plants took a huge blow and so is our friendship. I have a hue feeling that if I walk away she will pretend not to care and rationalize it to the point that it was my entire fault.

If my plants do die I have a feeling our relationship will to. How to you explain to someone that there couplet disregard for feeling is going to cost them their longest friendship. I know some people grow apart and like branches on tree people brake off from your life, either due to a bad storm or under the stress of something else. I cannot afford to remain friends with people who are not helping me in life because they want to. I stayed friends with her only to have my immediate needs met and now that I am big enough to satisfy my self and look for healthy relationships this one is draining me. Real friends let you be who you are never judging you just advising and supporting you. A real friend never tries to make you into something your not. Your best friend should be the one behind you when the world is agents you telling you to be strong but reminds you when you fucked up and will tell you how bad you did.

I had that once but now she’s different.