A Friend In Need is a Friend Indeed.

"A friend who helps out
when we are in trouble
is a true friend—
unlike others who disappear
when trouble arises."

I have a friend. I have a girl friend. Not to be confused with girlfriend. We’ve been friends for nearly a decade, give or take a couple of years. Her name is not relevant. We’ve been there for each other through a lot of bad shit. Except, it seems, my struggles with mental illness and addiction. She’s the only one I had given any idea about how I was feeling, although I didn’t even tell her the intensity or depth of it. Increasingly, over the last few months, she’s sounded less and less happy to hear from me. I ignored it for awhile, because I didn’t have the emotional currency to try to figure it out and fix it like I usually would. She was one of the privileged (hah) few who got the text message from me that Monday night, and apparently I had sent a few more to her that were more or less incoherent because of my incapacitation.

I didn’t hear from her until the next morning. She chose the ‘tough love’ route. Asking me in a harsh way why I was doing this to her (?) and sending her incoherent texts- don’t I know how scared she was? And threatening suicide? How dare I. Nearly yelling at me. Let’s make it perfectly clear that I don’t ‘do’ tough love. When I am in pain and asking for help, rare as that is, I need empathy, compassion and love. She gave me none of those. I felt like I a child abandoned. I was admitted to the hospital later that day, and neither heard from her nor did I contact her. Not while I was in the hospital, and not for about 2 weeks after. Michael felt badly about it all, and encouraged me to contact her.

So I called her. She sounded like Eyeore, I swear. I don’t even remember the conversation, except that I did gently ask why she sounded so down, what was wrong, did I do something? She went from sluggish, depressed voice to angrily snapping at me, “You’re being paranoid!” (later events would prove her a liar). I dropped it, as is my usual way of avoiding angry confrontation.
The next time I spoke with her was just this Sunday. Mike had told me that he’d spent a couple of days with her, having dinner one day and going to the Renaissance Festival another. Again, that stab of abandonment. How did I manage to lose even my closest friends? She said I’ve been very hurtful in the past 6 months. Now, I distinctly remember being hurtful to Mike, Bryan and Damon, but I have no recollection of being hurtful to her. But, okay, fine, I can accept it. I explained that during the last six months I was going through an intense period of depression, self-hatred, and suicide ideation. I said I couldn’t kill myself because I didn’t want to leave that wreckage behind me for those who cared about me to clean up. I also said that during that period I became resentful of everyone, because I had to live even though I wanted to die, and it was because of them. I fully accept that’s an illness-driven statement of feeling. I was actually resentful of myself for caring enough to live when the rest of me wanted to die.

Is that how she took it? Not a chance. She started yelling at me. She doesn’t know if she can forgive me yet. (Wait…what? Are you kidding me?) I said something to the effect of, “I really can’t deal with this, I’m sorry I have to go,” and I hung up on her mid-rant. Let’s consider the fact that I just got out of the hospital, I’m in a terribly fragile and frankly needy state, and I’m barely hanging on, much less able to cope with this. After I hung up, I sent two text messages. One said, “What hurts is that you think I did all of this on purpose and not because I had an untreated illness. I thought you, who has a medical background (she’s a medical secretary), would be there for me.” She responded, “I never once said you did it on purpose.” My reply: “Well either way I need my friends right now and I feel like I lost everyone and everything. I thought I had friends who loved me.”

Okay, that was a bit histrionic. But it’s my journal, and I can cry if I want to. I didn’t hear from her again until today, when I received a long email from her.


Some tidbits:
The beginning: This is my side of things, how I personally feel, and it is important to our friendship that you try to understand how I am feeling.

A little later: The last few conversations we've had, including before you went into the hospital, you have put a lot of resentment, guilt, and overall feeling of inadequacy on my part, onto my shoulders.
I am not making this up, folks. I’m being lectured about my behavior when I was suicidal, drunk, and using cocaine. I don’t even remember the last six months except as a blur of despair, loneliness and pain. How am I supposed to respond to this? “I’m sorry, I had an untreated mental illness and I was in the throes of addiction, please forgive me”?

The last bit: I feel like you don't have the ability right now to consider anyone's feelings but your own...and that is perfectly fine. You need to work on you and find a sense of yourself before you can begin to think about doing that with anyone else. However, as of right now I can't completely forgive you, and I feel like you think you deserve that. You broke trust w/ me when you lied about the drug use…
A) All drug users lie. It’s part of our definition. Look it up sometime.
B) You’re right. I don’t really have the ability/ emotional currency/ whatever you want to call it to consider anyone else’s feelings but my own. I just got out of the hospital a month ago! I was and will be again in a very intense program designed to maybe help me live a little longer. And the passive-aggressive mood here is a little much. “that is perfectly fine” my left foot.
C) I don’t know if I feel like I deserve your lack of forgiveness. It’s your emotion and I can either accept it or not. I choose to acknowledge its existence, and accept it for your current feelings, no matter how I feel about it. Actually, I think before I sat down to write this journal entry I did feel like I deserve it. Thank you for making me see that this is your failing, not mine. I can sleep easy tonight.

No matter how much I want to ask you what kind of friend does this to someone who is fresh out of the psych ward for wanting to kill herself, I won’t. No matter how much I want to tell you what it feels like to be not only abandoned but abused while in need, I won’t. No matter the fact that I think I should tell you those things if only to help you grow emotionally, I won’t. The dramatic thing to do would be to stop taking your phone calls altogether. So, I’ll do the opposite. I’ll take your calls. The dramatic thing to do when taking your calls would be to get angry and emotional. So, I’ll do the opposite. I’ll be friendly. And while I’m at it I will be as emotionally unavailable as you were to me during my time of greatest need. I do not accept into my support system someone who is not willing to give any support.

I had a friend. I had a girl friend. Not to be confused with girlfriend. We were friends for nearly a decade, give or take a couple of years. Her name is still not relevant. We were there for each other through a lot of bad shit, but no longer. Farewell, friend.