Perpetual Smile

None of this is ever going to be resolved if no one is going to be honest with each other or themselves. I am tired of all of this whispery, kindergarten stuff. I am tired of no one being willing to just say what is on their minds or to admit that they’ve been wrong. It doesn’t even really frustrate me anymore. It just sucks all of my energy.

“Jude” doesn’t seem to realize that she’s done anything wrong even though I have told her time after time what my problem is with her, but none of it seems to be sinking in. She blows me off left and right for “Tommy.” She doesn’t ever listen to my problems. She has started hanging out with a bad crowd. I’ve discussed these things with her over and over. Most recently, “Zeppelin” and I picked her up and were halfway out of town to go to Big Y and Blockbuster when she made us turn around and bring her home so she could attend to “Tommy,” who didn’t want to sit around by himself with her father while she went out with her friends. But this is nothing new.

Every time I try to point these things out to her, she acts as if I’m also partially at fault. She acts as if she has only blown me off once, and acts as if I’m always too busy for her. I’ve tried to be patient. I’ve tried to tell her how she was treating me like shit. She didn’t listen. I decided to distance myself and when she finally got the hint she pulled guilt trips. She still failed to see what she had done wrong.

Worse, “Zeppelin” is letting “Jude” think that she’s not hanging out with her until “Jude” and I make up, when in reality “Zeppelin” is just as exhausted as I am. “Zep” is just as overwhelmed as I am with school, work and other stuff, so I can almost understand. She would just rather be dishonest with “Jude” and clear up everything later, while I’d rather be honest and maybe clear things up later.

I wrote pages and pages of a letter to “Jude” the other night, spelling everything out for her. I told her exactly why I can’t be friends with her anymore and how frustrating it is that she seems to not know why I’ve stopped talking to her. The truth is, there is only so much shit one person can take. There are only so many times I can just sit back and let someone stomp all over me, not showing up for plans made ahead of time or ditching me just when things are getting good. There is only so much advice I can give when someone I care about is doing something wrong and doesn’t want to hear what I have to say. I think, in all honesty, she knows everything that she is doing and has done. I think she just doesn’t want to admit it, because she would rather put the blame on someone else than see herself for what she truly is.

I am not saying that she’s entirely bad, because there have been many times when we had fun or she was there for me. It’s just not enough, when you compare how much I have given her. It’s not enough when she sends me text messages that say “I miss you” or promises to take me to a movie I don’t want to see to make up for her blowing me off. It’s especially not enough when she doesn’t even apologize for what she does.

So I am not sure what I am going to do. I don’t want to lose KTC or KRB (she’s also decided to use them against me and doesn’t want me at KRB’s birthday party next weekend). She left me a voicemail Saturday afternoon wanting to talk, but I don’t really know if I want to talk to her. I’ve got so many other things on my plate and am just so overwhelmed that I just don’t want to deal with any of this right now.

You’ve gotta love the people who have never experienced life. You know, the ones who are squeamish and don’t want to hear the “bad” stuff. Like the lady at Barnes and Noble.

Last week Nikki and I went to Barnes and Noble, because we are broke and proud. We like the free water, the scent of Starbucks coffee abrewin’ and new books waiting to be read, and we like the plentiful tables that allow us to sit and talk for hours without being asked to leave.

This was the second time we’d done this. We sat and talked about everything from college to grandparents, from boyfriends and to jobs, from the economy to problems and everything in between. The conversation was flowing nicely. We weren’t being loud or obnoxious.

I can’t remember exactly what we were talking about (it may have been something along the lines of elderly bed-wetting), when I heard an irritated voice not two feet from my ear.

“Oh, let’s talk about old people shitting the bed and–”

I didn’t hear what else she said. I turned my head and looked straight at the woman sitting right behind me, who was suddenly preoccupied with the book in front of her. “It’s life, lady. Pick another table if you don’t want to hear about it.”

“Mom,” her teenage daughter, so obviously the victim here, said. She didn’t look up from her own book.

The woman didn’t say anything else. I turned back to Nikki, satisfied.

“Oh! I have to tell you the cat story!” Nikki told me about a cat she’d found in a car. “Was she talking about us?” She whispered.

I nodded. “Like I said,” I rose my voice a little higher, “there are plenty of other tables if she doesn’t want to hear it.”

I like this new, brazen version of me.