My Old Ex-Friend

You and I know one another so well we are almost like mirrors when together.  Except because of history, we tend to show each other her ugly side.

You have forgotten how to be my friend on most days.  There are momentary glimpses of recollection, when you suddenly decide to ring me and ask me over because a special dish is being served at your table.  But most times, those incidental, easily forgotten instances in between birthdays, Christmases and deaths, you no longer remember.

I thought it was just me at first until I realised that you have been doing this a lot of late.  And by that I mean the last few years.  I am not the only old friend you have chosen to keep in storage, drawn out only on special occasions.

You choose instead to flit from one new acquaintance to another, treating them like they have been there all along and understand you and your history.  They don't.  And that's the truth.

Because no matter how hard they try, they don't know what it was like watching a part of you curl up in a ball deep inside your being in retreat and grief, daring to rear its head only around Christmas.  They don't know what it was like to understand your fear of failing when it seemed as if you were.  

But then it would seem you have also forgotten what that felt like.  You hold your head high now.  You don't remember the days when you barely had enough to pay for your next meal.  Or maybe you do, but you choose not to treat it with respect, and instead run away from it in fear of it infecting your future.

The only problem is, it's already there.

The Great Pretender

I have been trying very hard to figure out why I am so downright angry with you, because in the first place, it seems like such as waste of time.

After all, you were rude to someone I love who didn't deserve your outburst.  And you were inconsiderate to a child who didn't know any better.  All because you were stone drunk the night before and didn't go to sleep at a time people normally do - even when on vacation.

I think my anger is in the way you posture and pretend.  The way you insidiously mask your social climbing tendencies with a veneer of do-gooder-ness people fall for within the first ten seconds.  Oh self-sacrificing you.  Oh you unselfish cow.

But I see you.  I see who you really are.  A girl from a poor background who still carries a huge chip on her shoulder and has a point to prove even to those uninterested.  You're a typical social climber, one who will use others' shoulders as ladders, but with enough brains to remember your please and thank yous so most people don't notice your shoeprint on their shirt collars.  All they are left with is a dull ache that bears the imprint of your foot but no clear memory of the moment when the pain would have inserted itself into the shoulder blade.

Slowly, as things unravel, you will find that people are transient in your life.  Because that is the nature of what you breed.  Long-term relations with you are unprofitable for any soul because you choose to dictate the terms of engagement.

You will be alone at some point.  With nothing but your godforsaken cats and dogs.