...sought from my wise fellow Fandangoers. So, I will try to make a long story as short as possible, but basically, I have a good friend who has been caught in a trap for a while. She is smart and talented, but she is held back by something - laziness? Insecurity? I'm not really sure. For as long as I've known her, she goes through periods where she'll hang with a new group of friends 24/7, and is only interested in all thing pertaining to that group. Ineveitably it burns out, and suddenly her "best friends" are not even on speaking terms with her. This is in part due to the fact that she is semi-reliant on mooching, as she has not had a regular job for 4 or 5 years. She is my age, 26, and has started and dropped out of a few professional schools a few times since being unemployed. Most recently, her new group of friends (she also moved up to SF rather recently) are a bunch of bartenders, and so she was eschewing school, which she was exceling at, for partying until 5 in the morning. On Tuesdays. To compound everything, her mom, who to some degree is scraping by, is her sole monetary support.

When she is working, or being diligent, she is really working and being diligent - she's responsible, and there is no denying the fact that she is multi-talented, smart, and attractive. However, I am beginning to wonder if her life is always going to be moving towards or away from a bender at all times. Aside from just worrying about her in general, I must admit that I'm also annoyed on a personal level - whenever she has her new group of new best friends, I don't hear from her and my calls aren't returned. When there is a falling out, or she needs advice or a sympathetic ear, I hear from her. When I initially moved to SF, knowing, oh, about 4 people other than my boyfriend, despite numerous calls on my part, she didn't make actual plans to get together with me until a month and a half later. However, in one of the periods of not hearing from her, I get a frantic call from her one Saturday morning, and I drove her to the ER for a medical not-so-emergency.

Recently I just stopped calling. My last conversation with her ended with her hustling me off the phone because two of her new best friends were calling her nonstop while we were talking. Conversations before that usually consisted of her being obnoxiously drunk. The final straw was something that happened with my photo lady, who is getting married and mentioned to me that she still didn't have someone to do her hair for her wedding. I talked to my friend about it to see if she was interested and available for that date, she said she was, and I gave her info to my photo lady so that they could arrange the details. About a week later my photo lady writes me a casual e-mail saying that my friend had never called her back, and that she found someone else to do her hair. This made me seethe. It made me wonder if my friend had no interest or ambition at all.

Because I wasn't calling, my friend called me the other night and left a message. I didn't call back. My anger had subsided into apathy - she is an adult, she is my age, and she should be able to act accordingly. She called again a few days later and left a message. She called again this morning, and now sounds worried that I'm not calling her back. She wanted me to call or text her, just to let her know that I'm alright. I am going to text her, because, as lame as it is to say anything remotely serious over a text, I cannot muster a phone call for her right now. I suspect that I'm still rather pissed. Here is what I was going to write:

I’m fine, just really busy. You’re right, normally I do call - but right now I don’t really see the point. Normally I’m the one leaving messages that are not returned. I just think it’s silly for me to put any effort into our friendship when clearly I’m a third tier friend. I’m not mad, I’m just kind of over it right now.

I think it kind of sucks that you blew Melanie off for her wedding. I wish you would have just told me that you weren’t interested in doing it. I’ve been worried about you with the whole missing school/partying thing, but I’ve come to realize that you’re an adult, and that your choices are your choices. You are a multi-talented and intelligent person and I hope you see the value in that.

Let me know when you want to talk or hang for real.


Too harsh? What else to do? I think I've been tiptoeing around shit so as now to damage our friendship, but I think it's time to use the jackhammer.