Sooey Says

A few years ago, a friend of mine fell in love with my boyfriend. I didn't blame her, really. In fact, I almost expected it, but she's very determined and I knew in relatively short order that it wasn't something that would just blow over. Like most things in life, I wish I'd handled it all differently, but like most things in life, it may not have made much difference if I had.

It's hard to stop a moving train.

Anyway, we'd been friends in need for years, both of us commiserating over our married situations. I was aware that she had a tendency to take my advice (which I learned to actually think about before I gave it, accordingly) because the very first time I met her and she was telling a story about the slacker drug addicts at her old job who never cleaned the staff kitchen (we met at work) I said, "I guess their lives weren't conducive to tidiness". She found that very intriguing (she had trouble understanding why people didn't always act "right") and one bit of conversation led to another which led to her saying, "I don't know how to be normal".

So I said, not thinking much of it, "Just act normal. Find someone you think is passing as normal and copy her."

She really took that to heart because every so often I'd hear her telling someone what I'd said and how she'd followed my "advice" and that now everything was going great for her. Which it wasn't. Not at all. But she had her own perceptions and stuck to them like gum to a shoe.

It took me until she fell in love with my boyfriend to realize that I was the person she'd decided to copy in order to be normal. I know, I know. But looking back, there'd been a series of copycat moves that even others had commented on but which I'd pretty much poohpoohed. Oh, the poohpoohing I've done in my life. And if I'm not poohpoohing, I'm blowing it up way out of proportion. I have two reaction modes it seems: paralysis and hysteria.

Anyway, the falling in love with my boyfriend part followed a period of denial that I even had a boyfriend. Our relationship, it turned out, was based on commiserating about our husbands, and when I ended up living on my own with a new beau, she just pretended I wasn't. Until she met him. At which point she, understandably to me, wanted him, too.

Except that she's never been a passive "wanter" and after a while it became clear to me that she really wanted my life, that as much as she'd been a wonderful friend to me over the years (and I was never as good a friend to her as she was to me because my main relationship was always with my husband, which I realize now she had always denied in spite of the obvious fact to every other girl friend I'd ever had that it was) she'd be quite happy if I were to be run over by a bus.

That's a tough one, but once you realize your best friend - no offence - realizes she could live happily ever after if only you would be run over by a bus... well... it's over. It's sad, but there's no going back from that one. And this wasn't just a wishing from afar. At this point, she'd left her husband, kids, job - and was living in my apartment building. Other friends were alarmed, but I was just mad - with a tinge of regret knowing I wasn't being a very good friend and maybe never had been, that I couldn't imagine what it was like for her, wanting my life and me saying she couldn't have it.

Eventually, though, practical gal that she is, she got her own boyfriend, a new job, and things settled down to a friendly conversation every now and again when we meet in the lobby. Yes. She still lives here and I'm happy that she does. She's an inspiration, as it turns out, in moving on, letting go. She is one of those women who changed her entire way of living in middle age and is finally living the life she's always wanted to live.

And it's not normal, so I know she's stopped taking my advice, probably doesn't give a fig what I think about anything anymore. So now I'm trying to follow her lead. Funny how things work out the way they do.