Disappearing Friend, v.2

Ok, this one's just sad, whereas the previous one was nothing short of excruciating. No book, just a vent.

So I met a chick through one of my husband's friends. She was crazy-introverted, never smiled, and so forth, but for some flippin' reason, I befriended her. Mostly, I suppose it was pity, because she seemed so incredibly sad and lonely and unloved, like a dog that has just been kicked its whole life... once in a (GREAT) while, those kinds of dogs will blossom when they're put into even a mostly sane home. I guess the old Flo Nightengale in me just couldn't resist. Ah well.

So, chick has a kid, whom she says (and I have no reason at that point to doubt her) is the product of a bad marriage to a crack-addicted wife-beater. EGADS! Chick's kid is a mushmouth, rather lacking in the brains department, only so very very much that I actually find myself thinking of Einstein, and how it's said he didn't speak a word until after his fourth birthday. Somehow, I suppose largely in part due to her insistence that her poor anemic progeny was actually just brilliant, I got it in my head that the kid just really needed adequate stimulation, and his problem wasn't actual retardation, but rather the deplorable conditions at the welfare-mother-daycare he had to attend because it was all she could afford and then just barely. In a frenzy to get everything fixed (that's what I do, after all, fix things), I get all the arrangements made so the local jackwads at the Exceptional Students Office will screen the pitiful little waif for giftedness. Um, it didn't go well. They didn't actually say the words, "Uh, I'm not sure you understand, ma'am, the screening for the DISABLED CHILDREN is at the other end of the hall," but it was pretty loud and clear even so. Wow, nice fix, eh?

Anyway, we stay friends, have coffee at my place every morning, our kids play together with relatively few altercations, and it seems ok. My little Pet Project. I'm such an ASS! Of course, there's the day hers and mine play in my back yard, hers inadvertenly scoops up a handful of dog poo (it should be noted here that he was trying to pick up a rock to throw AT my son's head. It's kind of a good thing he's in like the 20th percentile for brains AND brawn, because being so small, mine pitied him during those strange outbursts, where he might well have knocked the shucks out of a child of normal stature) and then carries it into my house, gagging and heaving all the way. Sad, sad, sad, the boy couldn't figure out the part where you drop the retch-inducing mess in your hand! A fair amount of clothing bypassed the washer altogether in favor of the trash that day, and I decided that my two had suffered enough of being essentially forced to try to get along with the neglected misanthrope. My two, even the one that is three years hers' junior, were utterly dumbfounded by the whole afternoon, and much very NOT Politically-Correct language was heard that evening from their mouths. Not a pretty scene, but at least they waited until their, um, target, had left.

Gently as I could, I informed her of our decision to keep the boys, read hers and ours, APART for an undetermined amount of time. I was as kind as I could be, and basically blamed it all on my own children, saying that I didn't like the way they behaved around hers, and that I didn't think it was right to subject ANY of us to all of that, when it was fairly clear the whole thing was just a bad mix. I insisted that she and I could remain friends... but she didn't buy it. I was SOOOOOO relieved! Except that by the end of the week, she was calling me again, begging to please PLEASE not lose the chance to be my friend. Aggggg. Fine, whatever, as long as the kids don't have to play together. Preferably EVER.

But then, like two months later, I swear she developed a case of MPD or something. Called me on my birthday, after no contact for WEEKS and my having figured she'd bailed altogether, and said some kind of cryptic b.s. that I couldn't make sense of no matter how hard I tried. I emailed her a few times after that, eventually actually spelling out to her that I was taking her lack of response/reply as an indirect but very clear desire to not be friends, and that I was in total acceptance, if somewhat puzzled as to what had gone awry. I got back some STRANGE messages, and then received a handwritten letter in the mail a month or so later. She freakin' stalked me... but in a fairly benign way... showing up behind me in line at the drugstore drivethrough, driving by my house ten times a week, and my receiving a sudden rash of hang-up calls from a person named "UNKNOWN." Eventually, it died down, and finally stopped altogether.

I don't miss the drama. I don't miss the weirdness of it. I don't actually miss her, because she is an incredibly difficult person to be around, and adding her very challenged child to the mix makes it unbearable. Still, that rational part of my brain, the part that has been mostly on hiatus for the last three weeks, sometimes turns it all over in my head again, like a sore on the inside of your cheek that you just can't quite leave alone and so it never heals, wondering what the hell happened. It doesn't matter, and it is a tremendous lightening of my daily toils to not have that to deal with anymore. It doesn't matter, but it's like a jigsaw with ONE missing piece, and it bugs the crap out of me. I hope she's well, I suppose, but no more so than I hope any stranger I see in the grocery store is well. I just wish I could complete the damned puzzle.

Hell, maybe she found the right, mostly sane surroundings, and is existing peacefully these days, rather than attacking and ripping to shreds anyone who tries to show her kindness. Stranger things have been known to happen.