To my friends, I am sorry. I beg your forgiveness for who I am. I have disappointed you, or scared you, or offended you until you've all slipped away. And for that I am grieved. I am sorry that your love was not unconditional. I'm sorry that your perfection could not play with my tainted spirit. Maybe I deserved you with your lack of patience, and understanding. Sowing what I was reaping, but still, I am sorry that you left, and despite my faults, I still love you.
Friends, lovers, neighbors, classmates, all the relationships that are meant to come and go; but do they have to go so quickly? I find myself, now thirty years old, unable to have hope in new relationships. I'm afraid that soon I'll be the cat lady, people finding me too eccentric to fit into their schedule. I am left with aching memories and an album of bitter snapshots.
I've heard from many women a familiar story of pain from the circling vultures called female friends. But can you be friends with a creature that preys on the death of others? Femiphobia, how ridiculous that we have to fear our own kind. But for me, I have a fear of all relationships, male or female. On the outside, when needed, I can be socially acceptable, gregariously outgoing, but inside the little girl shrinks in fear at the outstretched hand or welcoming hello. And God forbid the probing questions of how that little girl feels or her opinion on the world's events. I try to protect her with small talk and shallow bits and pieces of myself, but inevitably someone always tries to get too close, and I have to quickly excusing us, the big girl on the outside and the small girl crying on the inside, to the restroom, or to the other side of the room where there is another person I just remembered I need to speak with immediately.
This morning is like many other mornings. I have the day off and my list is a mile long of things to eat up my time, but I find myself lethargic and nostalgic. I see pictures from when I used to be the center of attention, the breath and life to the party, and I wonder how I fooled them all to ignore my faults back then. I make myself a cup of tea, a dash of milk, half a spoon of sugar and stare at my apartment. The tea burns my lips but is already in my mouth before I can stop it, and now my tongue is scalded as well. That is how I see my time with people. Warm and inviting, smelling of roses or mint, but once they get past my closed mouth they burn me from the inside.
The doorbell buzzes and I almost drop my cup. I glance in the mirror, hair pulled into a ponytail but still disheveled, no makeup. At least I had enough time to slip into some jeans and a sweater. Oh well, I open the door but the hall is empty. I look left, the smell of unidentifiable food and muffled television noise dancing around me, but all I can see is someone's coat and boots slipping out the front door. I look down, a package. I have the sharp childlike thrill of expectation and wonder at the brown box. I pick up the mystery, but when I see the return label, I remember the order I put in last week for some new books. And my Christmas moment is over. I close the door but the package reminds me I haven't gotten my mail in two days. The small mail box must be about to burst. I slip on some shoes, grab my keys and open the door to more smells, more daytime television. How can food smell so badly? I wonder if my neighbors really can't cook, or if its the hallway's fault for the offensive mixture of odor. I breathe through my mouth, creaking down the stairs until I get to the rows of garish gold boxes. My box is full, I assume with bills and other not very exciting surprises. I flip through the pile as I shuffle back upstairs. Bill, junk, bill, and oh, the unmistakable thick and expensive paper of an invitation. That's right, the season of weddings is approaching. I toss the pile on the counter and try to ignore the bulging envelope, pretty pink and pearl. Who is it this spring? The only thing more depressing are baby announcements. Wedding invitations usually just make me mad. People you haven't spoken to in years pay way too much money to kill way too many trees to make the perfect invitation for the people they know won't come. But hopefully, this expensive investment will at least reap for them a gift of cash, or at least the jealousy of all their former vultures. I mean friends. And if they are good enough friends or family to feel obligated to come, the pretty wrapping is thrown in the trash, the invitation stuck the refrigerator, partially covered with photos and grocery lists until the appropriate day it joins the rest of the expense in the trash. What a waste of money. Despite my cynicism, I know eventually I'll give in and tear through card stock and tissue paper.
In fact, I am already walking towards the counter and towards the sparkling paper. I am sick at myself and my morbid girl curiosity. I tear open the envelope, the pearl and pink's magical embossing reveals the name of a girl I knew from college. Which, by the way, I graduated from eight years ago. Two years longer than the last time I've seen her or heard her voice.
I start to throw the invitation in the trash when a pang of guilt overcomes me. What was I thinking, I should at least RSVP that I wouldn't be there. But if she thinks she's getting a gift, she's got another thing coming...I pick up a pen and the RSVP card, my hand wavering above the check box.
To be continued....
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