friends


Last Friday night my husband and I were telling a friend about a geographical location that we will be going to some time soon.  This friend proceeded to speak very negatively about this geographical location.  He went on and on about how bad it was.  Then with his last sentence he said something like, “well I have never been there.”  I did not even have to ask that obvious question he just ended the rant with it as if it were a punctuation point. 

The next time someone takes aim at a geographical location that I am looking forward to visiting I will just deliver a swift upper cut to to their jaw.  This will stop them from talking out of their ass about something that they usually know nothing about.  Thus I will aleviate myself from listening to their five minute rant and I will also save myself the agrivation of trying to make sense of their maddness.

Ok, you are right.  Violence is not the answer. Next time I will just get up and walk away. 

Two days ago, Wednesday night, Rij left a long voice mail explaining why she had a few days off work and at the end of the message Rij invited me to meet her for lunch on the following Thursday or Friday.  Thursday morning I sent a her a text message stating that Friday would work best for me and I suggested a time and a place.  Thus I got a little excited.  I started to look forward to it.  This week and next are the busiest weeks at my job so I am working about 50 hours a week and love any distraction to break in and wake me up.  Thursday night Rij called left a voicemail saying  that she might not be able to meet for lunch due to her not having any money.  In the voicemail she said she would call me back after her night class.  I never heard from her and actually did not think about it enough to call her later Thursday night.  Anyways so today is Friday and I left my house thinking we were going to have lunch today.  I did not pack my usual sandwich to bring to work as I will be going out for lunch.  It happens so infrequent that I really made too big a deal out of it. 

I sent a text message to confirm out lunch meet and she sent a reply saying she will have to take a rain check.  My first impulse was to reply with a  WTF text.  This whole lunch meet was her idea and then she finks out on her own plan.  Do you realize how much energy was put into negotiating these plans only to be at my office with no lunch and no lunch plans.  I have another friend who also pulls stunts like these and then blames it on her busy life style.  They only support my theory that when other people are involved it is better to just be impulsive instead of make any plans.  It takes too long to negotiate the plans and the other party usually decides not to show due to their inability to manage their time or inability to not do something or inability to manage money.

In life there are no rain checks.  You just miss it as time passes you by.

A veces pienso que es mejor no tener amigos en vez de tener los peores.  Pero no sé. 

 

I think that as you get older, at least as I have gotten older, I have gotten better and more precise with telling people what I think.  I used to keep it all in.  If someone hurt my feelings I would just bottle it up and move on, usually never or very infrequently speaking to them again.  Now I have lost a lot of that filter. 

I remember when having friends meant hanging out with people and doing something fun like playing soccer, surfing, watching a movie or talking about neat stuff.  Now sometimes it just feels like I am in a competition to see who can have the most drama in their life.  I ALWAYS loose because as I see it, I dont have any drama because I dont have any unsolvable problems. 

 

I live in the USA now and I have some things that I own and I have other things that I would like to have just like everyone else in the world.  When I studied at the Universidad de La Habana in Cuba I went without a lot of things.  Thus I learned that there is not much that you really need in life.  Yea there are a lot of neat things out there to buy and use but as far needs go some food, clothing and shelter go a long way in meeting needs.  Now I am off topic of what I started writing about.

I had a group of girls that I hung out with in High School and the some random times after those High School years.  There were not really my BFFs but they were really fun sometimes.  Other times there were the most self absorbed biatches that I ever met.  Since I dont really talk to any of them and I am older and dont care anymore I will not even pretend to use their fake names.  Writing is more about uncovering the truth sometimes so why hide it with BS.  So anyways Ana and Kristin smoked (cigarettes) in High School, Kathy would start later and quit a few years after starting.  I dont know if she is back at it or what anyone’s smoking status is to date. I also started, mostly because it is so much more fun, social and culturally acceptable abroad, and I quit over a year and a half ago and have not looked back.

I remember Meg, a non-smoker, always giving Kristin a hard time about smoking.  She usually did it in a joking but we all knew she was serious kind of way.  Honestly it got kind of old after a while and I was not even the one she was picking on.  I was keeping my mouth shut at that point in my life so I did not say anything.  Years later Meg would go on to marry none other than a big chain smoker.  I knew her still then briefly.  She had stopped trying to get Kristin to quit smoking. 

Sometimes I only remember the good times and wonder what it would be like if we all lived in a similar geographical area or if we all hung out again.  I dont think any of us would really get along.  If we did it would be because someone was keeping their mouth shut.  I dont think I could do that anymore and thus we move on.

Before you can answer the question, you need some background information.  The question is in regard to a conversation with a friend of mine, Austin.  She called last week and told me all about her physical symptoms.  She was unable to keep food down every time she ate.  She also stated that what was expelled appeared to have not been digested at all even though it had been 9 hours since she last ate.  She was thinking that she had no digestive juices.  My Fiancé and I were talking to her over speaker phone and since he is in nursing school he asked some questions that a nurse or doctor might ask while doing a complete medical history.  Since we know some medical background in regards to some of her lifestyle habits we advised that a doctor might advise her to stop taking so much Advil (she takes at least two 200 mg pills a day), eat a blander diet and try to sleep a regular schedule like 5-8 hours each night and try to lower her stress level.  She works full time, goes to school full time and has a son.  Her work schedule is sometimes days and sometimes nights so she frequently goes without sleep.  She advised she has a GI scheduled in the next few days.  She was going on and on about how it couldn’t be her lifestyle that is bringing on this symptom.  She pretty much argued everything we said.  I tried to explain that if she had no digestive juice i.e. no bile secretion then she probably would also be losing weight.  She has not lost any weight. 

Anyway so basically we told her if she took better care of herself then it would be easier for a doctor to pinpoint what is wrong, if anything.  She would have diminished or eliminated the effects of not sleeping, taking too much Advil, being over-stressed, over-worked and then if there was actually something wrong maybe a doctor could diagnose it.  Does no one else realize how gray the practice of medicine is?  Nothing is exact.  You dont just visit a doctor and they know what is wrong.  Mostly they start with the most obvious and start eliminating until something fits.  I bet she did not tell her doctor about her poor life style choices when she went to scheduled the GI test. 

 So the day of the GI test came and went and I did not hear from her.  All this drama before the GI and she finally has the test and now she doesn’t call with the outcome?  She is like that though.  She will talk in circles about her dramas and then the next time I talk to her she wont mention anything at all.  It is like pulling teeth trying to get her to tell me what was the resolution.  Anyway so today I bite.  Our conversation through text messages is as follows;

Me:  how was the doc appt?

Austin: ok he is putting me on two scripts and I have to go back next week.  How r u?

Me: what scripts? We r good here. Cept my cousin in hospital.  We will prolly visit her tonight.

Austin: medicines

Me: uh yea duh that is what scripts are.  If you dont want to say what they are just say that you don’t want to tell me.  The evasiveness is unnecessary.  Anyway I hope they help.

Maybe I was a little too direct but it felt good to write it.  It felt good to just come out and say it.  She has me listen to her drama and she always tells the longest version of the story.  She can’t ever give me just the facts.  Any resolution I suggest she argues with me about.  And then after everything she resolves it her own way that I usually totally disagree with and that’s the 12% of the time that I even know how she resolved it.  Normally it’s like watching the whole season of an ongoing mystery show and then missing the last episode and thus missing how it all ended.  It makes it feel like such a waste, investing all that time in paying attention to the plot, scenery and characters and then just having a big question mark in your brain as to how it all ended.  Uneasy