In June, my high school best friend graduated and left me behind.

She got a job and met all new friends.

She bought a car, a brand new car. 

She was so proud and drove it over to show me and take me for a ride.

Sadly a few days later she called to tell me she had been rear-ended while she was stopped to make a turn and her cute little car had been totaled.  

Thankfully she wasn’t seriously hurt, other than her broken heart.

I felt so sad for her.

She had a new boyfriend.

I didn’t know him.

We tried to stay in touch but, she was out of school and running with a whole different crowd, going places and doing things all brand new to her and still unknown to me…..the one left behind, still in high school.

Our calls became less and less.

And then it was my turn.

I graduated and the same thing happened to me; new job, new friends and a brand new boyfriend.

I called her when I became engaged. 

A big wedding was being planned and I wanted her to be my Maid of Honor.

But, before I asked her, she told me she also was getting married.

Hers would be a very small wedding and mostly only his friends, who were now her friends were being invited, so I shouldn’t invite her to my wedding…..because I wasn’t going to be invited to hers.

It hurt but I wasn’t really surprised.

We’d grown far apart.

Strange thing is without even knowing him….I knew her boyfriend didn’t like me.

Later I would find that it wasn’t really me…..well, maybe it was in a way but mostly it was him, he was a controller.  

He didn’t want her with anyone other than who he said.

And after he got to know me well…..then he REALLY didn’t want her around me.

I was married in July and she in August. 

There was pause between us; quite a long pause.  

We lost contact and didn’t communicate at all.  

I moved first to the east coast, then the west and then to Idaho with my submariner husband.  

She and her husband moved to Indiana.

I thought of her when my first baby was born.  

I wanted to share my happy news with her so I sent her an announcement.

She sent a beautiful gift.

We began writing letters back and forth and reestablishing our friendship via the US Mail.

    

This was a time before my husband and I could afford to have a phone. Can you imagine not having a phone?

We couldn’t afford one phone for our apartment that attached to a wall and today, everybody in a family has their own phone…..attached to their bodies!

And I couldn’t afford to call her long distance from a phone booth either, so we wrote letters.

When we were discharged from the Navy it had been promised to me that we’d settle in California but that didn’t happen.

We went back to where we began…..home, Michigan.   

I called her.

Yep, we’d come up in the world, we had a phone…..on the wall!

We talked for what seemed like hours.

It felt just like it used to back in those high school days.  

Same two silly girls, just different things to talk about.

Then it was boyfriends and escaping our home lives.

Now it was husbands, kids, money and recipes.

I was living an hour away from her but before six months were over we moved again and then we were ten or fifteen minutes from each other.  

We shared two or three calls every day…..sometimes even more.

I had four little girls, they called her aunt.

She had a little girl and a little boy, they called me aunt.

They were all six close in age and we thought they got along real well.

It was much later that we found a couple of the girls weren’t real crazy about each other.

This was also a time before two-car families happened.

But, she was the exception.

She had access to the family car because her husband had a sports car…..his sports car!

 

He drove it to work and anywhere else he pleased but I don’t remember her ever getting behind the wheel of that car.

But, who cares?  

She had a car and often she and the kids would come spend the day with us.  

The kids would play on the backyard swing set, they’d have picnic lunches and cookies and Kool-Aid while she and I reminisced and wondered whatever happened to….. those that we walked the high school halls with and danced at the school dances with and cheered on and with at all the sports games?

By then I’d met her husband and she’d met mine.  

My husband was an easy, beer-mellow kind of a guy most of the time.

But hers?

Nope, he did NOT like me and to be fair, I didn’t like him either but we played the game of smiling at each other, saying something nice to each other and, I don’t know what he was thinking but I was thinking he was a jackass!!!!!

I just didn’t think he treated her right.  

I thought she deserved so much better.

She was a really good wife, mom, homekeeper, all of it but….he just wasn’t nice to her.  

It was that simple.

She was lovely and he liked to show her off like one of his possessions.

That kind of person.

Mr big-shot with the good job, nice house, sports car, even a boat and a lovely wife but still a jackass.

You must know someone like that.

She knew I didn’t like him and she didn’t care.

That left me free to verbalize my feelings.

She’d tell me things and my response was always…D I V O R C E!!!!!

And then it happened.

She called me one morning crying, she’d had enough.

She wanted a divorce but…..how?

She didn’t have access to money.

How could she get a divorce?

Driving up to a bank window and getting money using a plastic card were brand new concepts.

Neither of us had ever done it.

But, there was our answer.

She picked my up, we drove to her bank window and she pulled out every possible dollar available.

Then, we went to Sears and loaded up on school clothes and supplies for her kids with another plastic card.

Afterwards, with money in her purse and bags full of clothes for her kids, we looked at each other and………. we laughed, like we always had.

She found a job and worked out care for her kids with her girlfriend a few houses away. 

It was a hard time for her, but she was determined.  

Every now and then, Mr Ego would attempt to lure her back but her freedom from him felt way better to her than anything he could offer.

She decided she wanted a man just like my husband and we thought we found him but, we were wrong. 

I wonder if she remembers that.

Then she began dating a dude.  

He was cool and he showed her a side of life she knew nothing about, some of the wild stuff.  

It looked like she was having a good time but her life was still full of drama and stress.

About that time a dream of mine was coming true and my family was moving to California.

I didn’t like to think about leaving her but it was something I needed to do.  

The night of our going-away-party she and I sat up in my bedroom on the floor leaning against the foot of the bed.

She gave me a beautiful bracelet and told me how bad she didn’t want me to go but she knew I needed to and…..we cried.

My California dream turned into a nightmare from almost the first month we arrived.  

And, before the end of my first year, my life had fallen completely apart.  

It was one horrible happening after another and almost non-stop.

Every dream I’d had, disintegrated into a nightmare, one that I couldn’t escape because I wasn’t sleeping. 

I wanted it all to just go away.

I wanted to be back “home” in my comfortable, safe life. 

But that wasn’t gonna happen.

I cried on the phone to my girlfriend.

She urged me to come back for a visit and just get away for a while.

And eventually I did.

The plane touched ground and I was home.

(more to come)