a bad friend - quotes and descriptions to inspire creative writing
You were a bad friend, perhaps because you are yet to learn what a friend is. What was going on inside of you at that time was difficult, from the way you behaved it must have been painful. Yet there are times we must protect the self, protect our own hearts and souls if the damage from a friend is too much. I wanted to walk with you through any and every storm, but it was akin to trying to hold a toddler who scratched and bit for years whilst alone. And though I tried, you broke me, literally, in pieces. So I'm taking this rebuilt version of myself, "Me 2.0," and I'm going to find friends who love me and treat me well. I would always stay with a friend in any storm, yet walking into the same storm that once left me for dead, not a chance in hell.
What was going on inside of you at that time was difficult, from the way you behaved it must have been painful. Yet there are times we must protect the self, protect our own hearts and souls if the damage from a friend is too much. I wanted to walk with you through any and every storm, but it was akin to trying to hold a toddler who scratched and bit for years whilst alone. And though I tried, you broke me, literally, in pieces. So I'm taking this rebuilt version of myself, "Me 2.0," and I'm going to find friends who love me and treat me well. I would always stay with a friend in any storm, yet walking into the same storm that once left me for dead, not a chance in hell.
As long as I follow Amy's conversational leads we are friends. She chats in her animated way about her life and petty grievances while I show concern, empathy and drop in helpful suggestions. But no sooner have I changed track she's fidgeting and her eyes keep flicking to her phone. Already her attention span has gone and I might as well be talking to the wall. My flow dies in my throat as I watch her face sag into boredom, then in the second that the air is empty she starts talking about her life again. By the end of her visit my thoughts and feelings are so compacted I feel like my chest will go super nova...
If you ever find Derek at the bottom of a well just leave him there, or better yet throw a rock on his head. But I'm not that lucky, like a bad penny he'll always show up when he needs something. Never once has he listened to a concern of mine and said something even related to it back to me. If I say my computer went of the fritz, he'll say "Did you watch The Flash last night?" or "Could you lend a few quid for lunch?" The one time I needed him, when Mum got the cancer diagnosis, he was harder to find than empathy at a psychopath conference. After that I put him in his right place in my mind, he was a friend of convenience and nothing more.
Tory flung a pencil over without so much as a backward glance, lime green and sharpened so much that there was barely enough left to grip. Even the blunt end bore signs of an abandoned attempt at sharpening. I'd probably get about two sentences done before it broke again. It wasn't the pencil that bothered me though, it was Tory's huff, almost lost in the drone of the room, just audible to me. Her irritated posture and fixed forward gaze were the first concrete signs of what she'd been doing for several weeks - shifting allegiances to those who could help her the most and this time it was not in my favour.
When I had money and fancy clothes I was everything Tina wanted. She needed someone who looked good to compliment her, follow her around and laugh at her jokes. I didn't think that at the start; I dunno, maybe I was as bad as her. Then my life got turned upside-down as easy as catching the flu. Dad lost his job and Mom got sick, real sick. Without the extra health insurance that came with his job our cash flow dried up real fast. After that Tina avoided me like poverty was contagious.
In just weeks I was not the appreciator of her humour, but the target. Tina couldn't distance herself from me fast enough, like I'd done it on purpose just to embarrass her. She even made me into several unflattering memes that caught on fast. "In Kara's house, you don't feed cat, cat feeds you." "In Kara's house you don't hire maid, maid hires you." I had a choice, knuckle down and get my grade 12 exams or cave in. There were days I walked the wire between the two, but the worst of them were when Tina was around me more. Cruelty from strangers is easier to wear, but from her... from my "friend"... it's something I'm finding difficult to forgive.
"Gina, you say I have cool emotions yet yours are hot. You parade your pains of eight years long as if they are fresh, even on the very day I break. You are mistaken. My feelings are so deep that they must stay below the surface like ocean currents. I simply don't parade them like you do, don't act out in such an infantile way. Don't belittle what I feel. Don't take my pain as an opportunity to make yourself look better, to stand on my heart even as you pretend to lend a hand."