Tragic Best Friend Tales #3

Friend M is a throwback. I have (had) this friend and hotep is the closest thing I can use to describe her. Hotep may be a little harsh, but hear me out. First, let me give you the back story. Back in sixth grade this girl was actually my best friend. Then middle school hit. I can’t remember if we went to different middle schools or if she went back to her home town for a while, but we lost touch. I ran into her last year and we’ve hung out several times since. Nothing too big. We’ve grabbed a few drinks a couple times. No biggie.
        As everyone should know this year has been pretty rough on me with the death of my father. The first time I actually went out after his death was with her a few weeks after the funeral. I remember it was a Friday and I had to work that weekend. We grabbed some drinks at one of the many bars downtown, met some dudes, it was cool. Then someone decided those bars were lame and we should all go to a club on the rough side of town. I protested, and thank God the club they were trying to go to said that the guys had the pay and the dudes we were with didn’t have cash on them. In the meantime her mother needed a ride home so we drove by to pick her up. They all bitched and complained about me being a party pooper because I didn’t want to go into a rough looking nightclub probably because there were “too many black people there”, suggesting that I didn’t want to be around black folks and because I had to go to work at noon the next day. I got so agitated with everyone ganging up on me (her mom included at this point) to stay longer and to go to this shit club that I finally just had to yell “MY FATHER JUST DIED AND I’M EXHAUSTED ALL OF THE TIME! I CAN’T SLEEP!” I was so furious that it had to get to the point that I had to yell that in front of a bunch of strangers. That was strike one.
        Strike two. Every time we go out there is alcohol involved. I don’t really drink. If I do drink it’s usually something fruity or a hard cider. I definitely do not do whiskey. Well, every single time she’s constantly pressuring me to drink whatever the hell she’s drinking. She’s relentless. I should not have to tell a person tons of times that I do NOT want to drink. It’s a every time thing too.
       The third strike I felt like it was me being possibly oversensitive, but at the end of the day it still rubbed me the wrong way. This time was after we grabbed some food. Well first off when she got in my car she asked me if I still missed my dad. Oh, no. He’s only been dead a few months. Of course I don’t miss him. He’s only my DAD. *sigh* Afterwards she invited me in to meet her kids because apparently the first time I met them she was so drunk she didn’t realize that I’d already met them. I didn’t really want to go in, but I didn’t want to be an asshole so I thought I’d step in for a minute. We talked for a few minutes, and she was playing some song on her laptop and was offended that I didn’t like it when she asked if I did. Her reaction was “What? Because it’s not white music?” First off, what the fuck is “white music”? and secondly, couldn’t it just be that what she was playing was a shitty song? I think it was Tamar Braxton and I’m not really a fan. I genuinely didn’t know who it was because I am, unfortunately, at the age where I’m saying “Well music back in my day…” because I hardly know anything about musicians today. If there’s a current artist out there that I listen to it’s because I found out about them by accident (social media, a commercial, tv show/movie), or it’s a song that’s played so much you feel forced to look at that particular artists discography. It pissed me off so deep that she said that because it was so high school to me. Here we are, women in our thirties, and you’re coming out with lowkey insults I haven’t heard since I was about 17. What made it even more maddening is that a few weeks prior she wanted me to meet her after work because she was going to be with this guy she had been seeing and wanted an opinion on him. This dude LITERALLY looked like Liam Neeson and Unlce Joey from Full House had a baby and told nothing but dad jokes. He was the corniest dude I’ve ever met in life. Like how can you come for me and my music preferences and you were fucking that? Are you serious? Also anytime we go out she’ll spout out all of this pro-black bullshit while at the same time flirting with the most bro frat looking white dude in the bar. But hey, I like The Beatles so obviously I think I’m white *insert eye roll here*.
        After this third strike I stayed away from her for a few months. Not because it pissed me off, but because, as I said, with my dad’s death my emotions have been all over the place and the smallest things set me off, especially if I forget to take my antidepressants (also sorry if I have or will go off on you for no reason. My emotions have definitely been a roller coaster and I don’t mean to be a jerk). So I wasn’t sure if I was actually mad at what she said or if it was just something that set me off. Looking at it now I think it was a little of both.
        Her and I hung out on Halloween and after that I think I’m done. She’s kind of a bitter person. My opinion on why she might be like that is, she had kids very young (three boys), and probably missed out on a lot of her good party years (late teens thru twenties). Now she’s at an age where her kids are almost grown, but people our age now have small children and careers. She’s trying to get back to that party life, but can’t really find anyone to recreate that with, and since she’s been out of the loop for a while is having a hard time relating to other people in a grown woman friendship manner. I don’t know. When we go out she has no problem walking up to people and talking, but it’s the actual friendships that she seems to have a problem with. I can be bitter all on my own I don’t really need someone else who breeds negativity when I’m trying to pull myself out of my own little negative hole. She’s not a bad person. She’s just someone who speaks before she thinks, doesn’t really take others feelings into consideration, and is a little too brash. Perhaps her and I can be friends in the future, but as for right now I need people around me with a much more positive light and gentle nature. That’s what my soul needs right now.

- Asia Aneka Anderson, 2016©

The Ramblings Inside My Creative Mind: Halloween And The Only Witches In My Circle

         Let’s be honest. Halloween is the best holiday of the year. I don’t really celebrate holidays much anymore. Like Thanksgiving is just a day to pig out. Christmas is a day to just lay around in my jammies. New Years Eve is a day I just get drunk alone in my bedroom. But Halloween is different. You get to turn yourself into something amazing, be around awesome people, and enjoy everything spooky. I love this holiday. I don’t get a chance to celebrate it as big as I’d like, but I still love it more than anything.
        For years I’ve wanted to dress up as Jessica Rabbit. I’ve had many issues with that. I’m not a fan of my body so I’ve shied away from that idea for a while. I also always notice that at Halloween stores the Jessica Rabbit costumes they have do not do the real one justice, so finding that perfect red sparkly dress is always hard. What I’m getting at is that if I’m going to dress up for Halloween it has to be perfection. I mean, I cut my own hair one year so that It looked like Harry Potter’s. This year I was torn between Jessica Rabbit and Prince. Since I got started pretty last minute I went with Prince and found 90% of what I needed one afternoon at a thrift shop. A few days before all I had to do was sew some chiffon onto my shirt to make cuffs and glue some gems on a purple jacket. I perfected my make up down to the Purple Rain mustache and I was good to go. The only problem was, I didn’t have any plans.
        I’m not one with many friends. Lots of acquaintances and very few close friends. Two to be exact. With one in Philly and one going to Cleveland with her boyfriend for the weekend that left me either alone or with an acquaintance I wasn’t too comfortable with. I ended up doing both.This is where my witches circle becomes even tighter.
         My Halloween night ended up being pretty blah. I went to a comedy show with an old friend. I’m there dressed as Prince and the only person in a costume besides the employees. This old friend complained the whole time starting before we even got there. I was running a little late, but not so late that we’d miss part of the show or not get a seat. She bitched that she’d meet me there when I was supposed to ride with her even though we still had an hour before the show started and she lived pretty much 10 minutes away from the comedy club. When we got there she then bitched about being so tired and that she wish she had stayed in bed. No one put a gun to her head to make her go. She sat there an texted on her phone, missed jokes, and had to, in turn, ask me what the comedian said. It was just awful and to top it off she kind of pissed me off the last time we hung out (I’ll get more into that in another post). Afterwards I went to get my car at her place and tossed around the idea in my head if I wanted to go downtown to the yearly Halloween celebration alone. I told her that if she wanted to go I’d drive, but she just kinda shrugged it off and went into her house. I thought to myself “You put way too much effort into this costume to just call it a night at 9pm.” I went alone. Didn’t have a whole lot of fun, but still glad I went.
            What I’m getting at is that I can’t continue to be around people who suck the fun out of things and who only want to be around because they don’t want to be alone and use me to put on this pretend friendship. On the flip side, I have to stop doing the same. I didn’t really want to be around her I just didn’t want to go out and celebrate by myself. I’ve just been in such a funk lately. I don’t want to continue to live my life doing nothing. I want to enjoy it, and if there’s someone around who doesn’t want to support me as a friend, be there for the good and the bad, then what’s the point of having them there? I can’t keep saying “no” and hiding from opportunities therefore I can’t surround myself with people who do the same. Life is literally too short to just be in the same routine and not let joy in more than every once in a while. As for now I’ve got my two best friends and I attend plenty of events by my lonesome and sometimes have a better time by myself. There’s no problem with solitude. I just have not fully embraced my own company. From now own I know who’s in my small circle of witches. It may be tiny, but they are the best.


-Asia Aneka Anderson, 2016©