Gulf Coast, June 2007.
Nothing directly to do with the post but I like the photo and it's all related.

I want to edit the last post but I can't get to it. I seems like it's been edited because some of the text looks like it's been cut and pasted incorrectly.
This is the third entry about breaking off a friendship with the same person. And like I said last time, I think this is the last time but that's what I said last time so . . .
but this might be it. I managed to get out a few of the thoughts I've developed since the previous fight. And I've been able to look back at this one clearly and see, clearly how I was more in the wrong place at the wrong time than in the wrong.
I usually write her long, thoughtful emails after such "discussions," but this time I did not. And I also blocked her from my buddy list and moved her photograph (We're not gay). But I've had it with making excuses for someone who does not know how to be a friend. The irony is that she told me several months back that she was a better friend than I am. She thinks because she is spontaneously generous and will come pick you up if your car breaks down, she's a better friend.
Once she made me take her to a guy's house, he was an out of town construction worker living in an apart. He was married and had asked her to come over earlier that night but she declined. After a night of drinking and dancing she decided she would go.without calling. When we arrived I asked her if she wanted me to wait until she got in, she said no, go on. I warned her. I said be sure because I am not going to come back and get you. It's about 2 a.m. and I've been drinking quite a bit and I don't want to expose myself to DUI arrest. She later cited that as one of the ways I've let her down in the past. Not one consideration about the consequences of being arrested for DUI. I could lose my job, my car, and who knows what else. But I was selfishly putting myself first when she needed me, because it turned out to be a big mistake to drop in on the guy because it pissed him off and he made her feel bad about herself and she was stuck there. Yet note she was not driving that night because she wanted to drink. She didn't want to drink and drive, she wanted me to.
but I've made excuses for her because of her horrible childhood. Raised by an abused mother with five or six children and an alcoholic father who beat everyone in the family. they lived in the projects in atlanta and were dirt poor. she quit school when she was 16 or so. She raised herself and had to love herself and that's hard to do on both counts. So I've focused on her good points, and she does have them. But I'm through. I will not be shouted down by someone who is in a horrible mood and is determined to control the conversation and say what she wants and then actually force me to keep quiet. No, f-ing way.
The only time a friend is a good friend to her is when that friend is doing what she wants her to do. She will not do things she deems boring with a friend and then berates a friend who won't go dancing with her as a someone who does not want to spend time with her. So the friendship is on her terms. It's not me she wants to spend time with, it's me that she wants to accompany her while she searches for whatever it is that she is looking for. There's none of the give and take of a friendship like. Me: I don't feel like dancing, what about movies? Her: okay, what about movie and then dinner after? Me: Okay.
No, it', Her: I want to go dancing, you don't want to go dancing. Okay, well I'll guess I'll stay home or I'll call someone else.
Anyway that's what I told her. She was a manipulative, self-centered bitch and I think that might just be the straw that broke the back of this decades old bond.