Les Amis, Qui Sont-Ils?

Sometimes people can surprise you. Sometimes they don't.

I can't tell which is the case with my friend Dee.

Dee and I lost touch after the "shut up" incident. I heartily admit that it was my "fault" (to the extent fault can be allocated at all) – it was, in fact, a conscious decision on my part to cease communications with her, even to the point of resisting speaking to her at a mutual friend's party later. If we are to be honest about it, though, we had been drifting apart well before the precipitating event. I was no longer a part of her life; my segue out of her life was like flipping a light switch to "off" after the circuit has already been tripped. The only difference is that I decided to sever our ties more out of malice; prior to that, we were in the natural and time-honored process of drifting apart.

The more I reflected on it, the more I realized that, more often than not, she was more of an aggravation than a friend; that I was more annoyed by her company than I was happy for it; that I would be better served meeting new friends or concentrating on other friendships than in cultivating this one. The smirk, the sneer, the condescending undertones, the air of superiority – I decided I no longer cared to endure that anymore. So I bailed.

I won't say that the decision to sever a friendship is easy. No matter what the circumstances, it's never easy. And I won't say that I was deliriously happy deleting Dee off of my cell phone. But in the end, my mind won out over my heart and I convinced myself that I was better off without her in my life. It was all good.

From time to time, I did still think about Dee. I thought about whether she thinks about me and my failure to call her. I wondered whether she even notices that I've voluntarily absented myself from her life.

And I couldn't help reaching the conclusion that if she's noticed my absence at all, she either genuinely didn't care, or she convinced herself that she didn't. I imagined conversations she had with our mutual friends, wherein my name would be mentioned and she would just dismissively say, "Dennis!? Yeah, I dunno, he stopped calling. I think he's upset with me, but whatever. If he doesn't call, he doesn't call. Whatever."

But sometimes people still surprise me, even though I've led myself to believe all these years that I've managed to insulate myself from the vagaries of interpersonal relationships.

Dee continues to include me in group emails to her friends, including announcements about an excellent jury verdict her firm obtained, and another in which she is profiled in the Washington Post. (You didn't actually think I'd provide a link to the actual story about her, did you?) While I found the tidbits interesting, my cynical side continued to wonder why she was sharing this information with me, a person with whom she had lost touch. In point of fact, the email announcing the successful jury verdict assumed that we all knew about the trial, because (presumably) she had been telling anyone who would listen about how much of her life it was taking up for the weeks preceding it. I hadn't even heard that she was going to a jury.

Most recently, though, I received an email from her that defied all my expectations of her and our erstwhile relationship. Recognizing one of my life mottos (which I'm sure I'll share with you readers later), she sent me an e-postcard of a popular cartoon character uttering my mantra with a brief message: "I couldn’t resist."

Also on the e-card was a note to the effect that, "I think you hate me."

The cynical side of me says that she doesn't really care whether I do or not. (For the record, I don't hate her: I've simply decided that, on balance, I prefer to be without her company than with.) It tells me that she's just making a random comment intended to be snarky and show me just how little she cares about our dissolved relationship.

And the sappier, more sentimental side of me says that this is her way of reaching out to make some attempt to salvage what we once had, weak as that effort may be.

I'll probably send her an email tomorrow telling her I don't hate her.