You Sit Around Getting Older, There's A Joke Here Somewhere And It's On Me, I'll Shake This World Off My Shoulders, Come, Baby, This Laugh's On Me

--"Dancing in the Dark", Bruce Springsteen

Nancy Drew turns twenty-two today.

Normally, I wouldn't even mention it since she and I aren't exactly on the best of terms right now, but it's hard not to think about it when her birthday reminder pops up every time I start Facebook. It's a little regretful when I think that last year at this time she and I were out celebrating this birthday and this year I'm considering allowing the date to slide by without incident. Sometimes I think it's amazing how much can change in the course of a year. Last year at this time I was thinking that she and I would remain on good terms even after she moved to wherever she found a job. This year I most often can't even be bothered to call her to wish her well--fight or no fight.

I'm not a huge advocate of making a big deal about birthdays at any rate--there's only a few of them each year that I genuinely remember off the top of my head and most of those don't rate more than a text or comment in passing--but I generally at least acknowledge the fact it is a huge milestone for people. Ilessa's birthday, though, only dredges up the fact of how far and fast we've fallen. I don't much feel like celebrating any aspect of it. I suppose it's the same sense of dread people get around the holidays. Rather than reveling in the fact that they are with family and friends, they choose to dwell on how alone and miserable they are. That's me. All I can think of this year is how much better we were last year.

Part of me wants to bury the hatchet and just call the girl. The other part is still telling me, "Fuck her. You don't need here. She only makes you miserable." I don't know which part will prevail. I'm predisposed to think it will be the latter. In my life I've always found it easier to walk away from people who've squandered all their good faith with me. While it isn't exactly a system of three strikes and you're out, I do have a personal sense of how much I'm willing to take from a person. I'm not a saint, but I do have feelings. When someone like her repeatedly steps all over them and tries to placate me by saying, "that's just the way she is," it bothers me. More to the point, it annoys me. I mean--I can take someone being rude. I'm not the model of grace and decorum either. I can take someone having a temper. I have one as well. I can even take someone I have trouble conversing with at times. Not everyone likes to talk for talking's sake. However, in the few years I've known her, she's pressed on these specific buttons of mine time and time again.

Her blowing up back in early June was just an excuse for me to walk away from someone I consider extremely volatile and quite possibly the type of person I should be avoiding.

And yet.

And yet I'm stuck in the quandary of the fact that we've been friends for a few years now. Coupled to the fact that I'm not exactly swarming with friends, I'm questioning just how awful is awful in regards to her. It's not like she blew up and then walked away. She blew up and then tried to apologize a few days later. That, in some small way, is respectable. No one likes someone who's being mean-tempered, but I can at least recognize the effort it takes to admit you're wrong and the swallowing of pride it takes to offer an apology. It kind of falls to me not to be the asshole now and accept her peace offering. And, while I'm sure she'll do something to break the fences just as quickly as she's mended them, I'm also staring at the fact she is a genuine person, prone to act out on emotion, which I've been accused of myself more than once. Possibly, as Brandy says, the reason I get so fed up with Nancy is the fact I recognize she possesses some of the same off-putting personality faults that I see in myself. Maybe the same reasons she and I get along or also the same reasons she elicits thoughts of abandonment so easily.

I don't know what to do. Her birthday is the perfect opportunity to get the dialogue flowing again. It would be nice to hear from her again. On the other hand, there has been a comforting sense of serenity in my life since we stopped talking. Actually, ever since Miss Flib and Miss Nancy Drew departed from being so front and center in my thoughts, I rarely get all wrapped up in trying to be impressive for anyone. That's a huge weight off my shoulders. There's a peacefulness that can only exist within when you eliminate those people who do nothing but stir disappointment and apprehension time and time again. Sure, they'll provide that sense of adventure too--that's the nature of their ken, stirring passions both scintillating and poisonous--but that sense never lasts. It's their inconstancy that makes them great to be around, but also makes them a pain in the arse to deal with the longer you have to stay around them at one time. She's the type of person that's better experienced in short bursts. I've always thought that. It could be that all I'm experiencing is the same old pattern where I get to missing her and have to renew relations. Then, in a few weeks or whenever, I'll remember what a constant struggle it is to keep my tongue in check around her. Then it'll be back to cooling things off again.

Maybe all I'm experiencing is the fact that this is the longest I've gone without talking to her since we met.

I'm starting to think it's inevitable. Ilessa is that rare creature who's bad enough to be a nuisance at times, but not bad enough to leave completely. I can think of a dozen reasons why she isn't the best friend I've ever had, but none of them separately or put together are enough for me to say I'm done with her for good.

Somehow I get the feeling when her next birthday rolls around I'll be having the same exact argument with myself that I'm having now.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers