Frenemies

I hate unfinished business, so I still have dreams about this woman. For the sake of privacy, I'm going to call her simply E. E and I met as children and were thrown together, despite a one-year age gap, when we were in the same class. It was a divided class, half sixth graders, half seventh graders, if I remember correctly. It doesn't matter, though if E were to read this, I'm sure she would recall it with the prodigious photographic memory she prides herself on.

Once again, based on my merely human and therefore fallible recall, I remember that E pursued the friendship. At first I saw her as the weird little girl with the oddly sausage-curled hair (her grandmother's idea). But she kept befriending me and calling me, and though my mother disliked her intensely, I grew to realize that E was one of the few people who saw past the dull borders and mindset of our little town. It was widely accepted that she was brilliant. She played piano for school assemblies even when she was a mere child, and if our school had permitted skipping grades, no doubt she would have been passed up beyond the grade in which she was placed.

It is a story far too long to blog about, and of course, most people have a similar broken friendship, but this isn't the story of two people who just grew apart because their lives took different paths. This is the story of a naive person (me) who eventually realized that she was being manipulated, that she had been manipulated, since childhood. The manipulator was E, who did not confine her string-pulling to mere friends. She manipulated everyone: teachers were the easiest, of course, and everyone tried to manipulate them. But friends were supposed to have each other's backs. I thought that was the relationship we had until I finally realized that she did not have the same definition of friendship that I had. She faked it well enough, until finally even I realized that to a large degree, I was merely a useful tool for her. When I stopped being that useful tool, she stopped being my friend.

Now I know that she was never really my friend, but I've never had a chance to say anything to her. Our lives are drastically different in many ways, yet oddly similar in others. (It used to please her that some people at school thought we looked alike. I never understood why that pleased her. It made me uncomfortable.) We don't keep in touch anymore, but I have checked up on her via the internet from time to time. She's doing well for herself in her chosen career, and her Facebook page shows an updated photo of her with long white hair. She looks heavier than in the past, one of the things she always chided me about. She'd say such things as that my husband was going to leave me because of my weight. (Hey, guess what, E? He and I have been married for nearly 38 years now, through thick and thin, and he still loves me, and he still thinks I'm beautiful, and he still can't stand you!)

What else would I say to E if I could? I'd tell her that I feel betrayed by her, that I feel belittled by her, that I feel disrespected by her. For decades I held her in such high regard, only to realize that she considered me to be vastly inferior to her. (If so, E, why did you want everything--or should I say "everyone"--that I had?) I'd tell her that I think she's a fake and a charlatan. I'd tell her that whenever I hear that song about the woman who saved the snake from the cold on the mountaintop by bringing it to warm itself in front of her fire, only to have the snake fatally bite her, that I think of her.

Most of all, I want to ask her, "Why?"