Friendship and Life

Most people, who know me, also know that I love to go to flea markets, swap meets. I love finding great old things, seeing some long forgotten items from the past that bring back memories, antiques that could tell wonderful stories. I love talking to the vendors, whether I’m negotiating a price or just listening to how they came to have certain items and the history that goes with it. Terry and I often go to the Rose Bowl swap meet, held every second Sunday of the month. Almost all the time, a girlfriend of ours goes with us. She is also my hair stylist but much more a friend than that and we always have a great time together, usually laughing most of the time.

We didn’t go this month as it fell on the morning after I had the party and it was also the day of the beginning of daylight savings time. I knew I was tired from the preparation and clean up from the party and really didn’t feel like getting up an hour earlier so we decided to miss this month.

Earlier this week, I received an email, telling me about a large flea market near the coast about a half hour from us. We’d never gone to that one and as I read about it, I became interested in seeing it. Terry thought it would be fun also. He may be a big burly man’s man but he loves shopping, especially at flea markets.

I called my girlfriend to see if she’d like to go also. She told me that her friend was coming down from Seattle to visit her parents and her this weekend. Then she wondered out loud if maybe she (the girlfriend) would be interested in coming also.
I took a deep breath, reminded myself that I was now an old lady and could express my true feelings and not be the nicey nice, people- pleaser I used to be. I told her that I would prefer not to have her girlfriend come with us. This pretty much surprised my friend and she asked me why. So I told her.

I only talked about the second time I was with her and her friend, not mentioning the first time, which wasn’t much better but didn’t seem necessary to go into. I had once gone to dinner with my friend and this other lady. While sitting at the bar, waiting for our table, I tried talking to her, doing the friendly small talk that one does with someone you don’t really know. She would look right at me, say nothing and then turn her head. Okay. So maybe this out of town friend didn’t hear me. In awhile, I tried again to talk to her, same reaction. My friend was sitting on the other side of her and was completely unaware of what was going on. All through dinner, she barely acknowledged me, talking mostly with our shared friend. She became a little more friendly in direct relation to how many Margaritas she was drinking.

It wasn’t a very memorable time for me and I felt she was rude but so what? She wasn’t my friend and I didn’t have to deal with her anymore so I never mentioned it.
I told all this to my friend, who was shocked and felt that wasn’t at all like her friend. Now my girlfriend is one of the nicest people I know but she rarely sees anything wrong with anyone else. Which is a lovely thing but not always the correct assessment of people but I figured “to each his own.” I felt good about making sure she knew that I cared about her and always would but preferred not to put myself into a situation where it became uncomfortable, where I’d have to “make nice” to someone who wasn’t very nice. And that we probably wouldn’t be together that much since her girlfriend would pretty much monopolize her and being a third wheel did not interest me.

A little later, she calls to tell me that her friend wanted to come and would I change my mind. Hello? Didn’t we talk about this in great detail? Again, I stood my ground and reiterated what I had previously told her.

One of the nice things about getting old is the ability to decide what you are willing to do and what you are not. Too many times, in my younger years, I would tolerate a lot more that I would have liked to, just to be nice. Not anymore. I will continue to treat people in a kind way and how they respond to that, tells me if I want to continue to be with them or not. If people are going to be rude, unkind, deceitful, etc, I have no time for them. Life has been difficult these last few years so I try my best to fill as much time as I can enjoying the good in life and eliminating any stressful things if I’m able to.

As of right now, I don’t know if my friend is coming (without her friend) or not. She said that she is tired and I know her life has been hard in the last year. Her mother died a year ago, she had a hysterectomy last October, her dear friend’s son died and she’s been helping her father a lot since her mother died. We talked about all that and she knows I understand because those are all things I had to deal with also, except it was my own son’s loss and not a friend’s. I teased her and said, maybe when it’s all done, you’ll go crazy like I did and run away from home. I know now that the reason I left Terry and my life here was because I had been through such awful times and when it was all over, I was trying to escape the pain. I couldn’t see that clearly at the time but I think those five months, living by myself, saved my sanity. I’ve always been a person who can get through any crisis and when it’s over, I fall apart.
I have great hope that my friend will understand and respect my reasons.

On another note, Friday I went to my appointment with my cardiologist. He’s so delighted about how well my heart has recovered from the damage the heart virus did to it. I am back to normal heart function. He took me off my meds, scheduled me for another appointment in December (just to be sure) and told me that my blood panel showed very good results in everything and I am so glad.