Tonight I met my old pal Wendy (not to be confused with the Wendy who occasionally visits here). She and I haven't seen each other in almost 13 years! The funny thing is that she and I were very, very close when we did see each other last. We were close work buddies for 2 years, working the same shift every night and were good friends. Nothing bad happened between us; I ended up graduating and moving away. If we had been even better friends, we would have stayed in touch. I guess I could say that Wendy was very emotionally wearing on me, and after basically being her therapist for 2 years, I was a tad relieved to not have therapist duties any longer.
To be clear, Wendy was a very nice person. She was just really emotionally needy. I could ooze empathy. And I was the only one who understood her situation. Needy other person + me being excellent therapist/counselor + me being the only one with insider information = us being good friends with a slightly dysfunctional dynamic. I was more of the mother/caretaker, and she was the attention-seeking child.
There were three of us who worked together: W, me, and J. The three of us worked together for two years. W lusted after J. I couldn't stand J. He was an egocentric bad boy who was dating someone else but stringing W along...for 2 years. He was such an ass. The type of guy where I'd shake my head, roll my eyes, and want to poke my eyes out after listening to him for more than a few minutes. So very full of himself with the attitude that women were put on this planet to serve him. As a good friend does, I kept my opinions to myself when talking to W and listened to her pine away for him. And remember, he had a girlfriend.
After he strung W along for an ample amount of time, he finally broke up with his girlfriend. W was ecstatic, thinking and hoping that they would finally have a chance to be together. And what does J do? Starts dating someone else. As awful as the whole thing was to watch from my perspective, I'm kind of glad it played out that way because she was forced to realize that she would always be The Other Woman to him. I think it was the impetus for her to realize that she didn't need him and move on with her life.
She told me tonight that she's been nervous about seeing me again. It was one of the few times in her life where she wasn't proud about how she acted, and of course I saw every moment played out right in front of me. When you get down to it, that was primarily what our friendship was about. I was her J therapist. None of her other friends knew about him in more than theory because, of course, she was sneaking around with him. Even if she told her other friends, I'm sure they didn't know he was dating someone else. She probably left that detail out.
And so 13 years later here we are. Where do we go from here? I haven't really thought about that part yet. It was just so flipping WEIRD to eat dinner with someone you haven't had any interaction with for 13 years, who looks the same, who seems slightly different than who you remember, trying to find a new "normal" in your friendship.
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