A Letter In My Mind...

I hate it when friends become strangers but I guess you just have to get over it. When I was at high school I had this friend who was a champion Highland Flinger. The day that I met her she was wearing red-rimmed glasses- which clash with her pallid freckled skin- that is framed by her mousy brown hair that she's wearing in two long plaits. We all have on green tartan skirts and pale lemon blouses that we can see the straps of our training bras through; not that all of us have the need for one yet.

We aren't put into any of the same classes for the first year but we manage to become friends anyway, partly thanks to the fact that we are both pretty nerdy and unpopular with the boys- or at least any of the ones that we are interested in. We are both diligent students- of similar academic ability- we are among the favourites of our teachers and known for our enthusiasm for learning everything from Hieroglyphics to volunteering for trampolining after school. How gay is that?

Every January she gets a bright new pair of frames; her mother probably thinks that this might encourage the more popular children to see her daughter as 'trendy', but alas, this actuality never eventuates- however one year they are rainbow coloured, another time they were bottle green, and another time mottled brown. She has plenty of boy friends- the boys she plays handball with at lunch time think of her as one of the boys and she gives them all advice on how to ask the popular girls out.

Neither of us could get a boyfriend at all until after we left high school, a fact we would often lament after yet another school dance had passed and we were still no closer to getting our first kiss. Oh, sure, we could probably have gotten onto one of the dregs that were left over after the popular girls had made their choices- the trouble was that almost all of the girls in our grade wanted to be with only a handful of the guys- guys who weren't ugly or stupid or mean were slim pickings at our school- and certainly none of the better ones were interested in being anything more than friends with us. I think they liked us rather than 'liked' us, if you get what I'm saying. I mean we weren't the Hot Chicks; We were The Smart But Unpretty Girls; so I have to laugh now when my Hubby tells me sometimes that he would have kissed me at my school dance if he had been there.

Hah. I wish. I wish a boy like him would have looked at me. Me in clothes tht I've borrowed, without asking, from my Sister- that hang so loosely on my shapeless frame. Hah. Me- who walks like an Egyptian I'm so uncool. He was one of the popular boys who never looked at girls like me. I was the sort of girl who did his homework for him while he pashed his real girlfriend behind the sports shed. For some reason that's the sort of girl he thinks I was, one of those girls who played Sticky Finger on the back of the bus- but I wasn't- not even close.

I didn't have anything in common with those girls but I secretly wanted to be like them I think. I was one of the frigid girls who never passed the frigid test. I think I liked being frigid in public, if that makes sense. I didn't want to be thought of as a sexual creature, by anyone, for a long time. I have only become who I am, sexually speaking at least, because of my Hubby. I've never been like I am with anybody but him and I'm not like I am with just anybody. But I'm straying off the topic...

I also want you to know that I think I did a pretty good job of trying to stay in touch with those friends I had at school- even when they were no longer cool to hang out with. I mean, none of them smoked, or drank, or had sex with men. They didn't sneak off to the pub behind their Parent's backs because they were all still at home, studying for their little pieces of paper. They didn't turn up pregnant on someone's doorstep and worm their way into a new family. They all went on to travel the world and became lawyers and doctors and teachers, our respected tax payers and my welfare benefactors. They seemed liked such losers until I compared them later with some of my own loutish companions. Like Yobbo- who's gone now to King Diamond Heaven. I'm still missing you, Yob.

I don't know any of those other people anymore either- the ones who went on and became successful in life- my peers and would-were equals. I tried keeping in touch with some of them for a while but I just seemed to become an embarassment to them as the years went by- I have some awful memories of drunken speeches at twenty firsts and weddings- and eventually I just stopped getting invited to such events. And now I don't even know where they live.

That girl who wore glasses told me that I was going to be invited to her wedding but then no invitation showed up for me in the mail- and then she just went and got married without so much as an explanation. The cow. I suppose she thought that would be the end of it, it was a pretty direct stab in the back after all, a pretty clear message that our friendship was over- but instead I thought about it constantly for three months, and analysd it from every angle, then I created a letter in my mind and got really drunk and rang her at three o'clock in the morning to let her know how unhappy I was because of what she had 'done' to me.

She had the hide to say that she didn't think we were all that close anymore- a fact, yes, if I think about it now, and a certain fact today- but only because of her inability, or unwillingness, at the time to maintain a simple freinship. Honestly, how hard is it?

I was there for her when she was struggling through her law degree and could hardly afford the rent on her up market student digs that she just had to have. I knew she didn't have much time for me because of her heavy workload at uni and that any free time she had she wanted to spend with her fiancee. But I think we both knew the real reason that she didn't want to be friends with me anymore; that being that I didn't fit in with her new 'set' of swanky lawyer friends that she had acquired from some poxy cafe or another that serves iced chocolates for eight dollars a pop. I think she thought I would embarrass her by getting drunk in front of all those Two-Glass-Wonders. Doesn't she know they are the worst people to drink with? Seasoned drunks drink a lot every day, not just at some poncy wedding every six months or so. I can out drink the lot of those wankers. If anyone was going to get embarrassingly drunk after only a few glasses, it was going to be one of her new-found friends, not Me.

Not that I care much anymore. I'm told that it pissed down rain, all day long, and that there wasn't even nearly enough grog to go around. You might think it's mean of me to think that's funny, but I think it serves her right. I hate feeling betrayed and forgotten. The initial sadness I feel at losing a friend soon turns to anger; then resentment and meltdown, and then total indifference. I broke down on the phone to her that night, screaming and crying at her while she tried to kindly reason with me- to her credit, she should have just hung up on my ranting- but that's not the real reason that I couldn't care less about the fact that we're not friends anymore.

I guess that happened on the day that I realised that I had just thought we were better friends than she obviously did; that my friendship didn't mean very much to her at all. And that she no longer liked me. After I got that sorted in my mind I was alright about it. I've never spoken to her since that night and doubt that I ever will again.

And I couldn't give a shit.