For the sake of friendship?

Friends. They’re like 4-leaf clovers: hard to find but you consider yourself lucky when you do. Good friends are like that pot of gold at the end of a rainbow arch: it takes a journey to find them but when you do your life is richer for the experience. Toxic friends are like food poisoning: you can trace the whole horrible experience straight back to that very first bite. The distinctions are clear. But some of us choose to ignore it. Who wants to have to say, “Hey friend. You’re a jerk!” I’ve logged a few personal experiences here. You know about some of the people I’ve folded into the fabric of my life and called “friends”. Jo is the one who took the cake, though. She was my best friend from high school who lied and told me she was out of the country for a funeral just to avoid meeting me for drinks one night. Naturally, the facts were fairly easy to check and in fact she was not out of the country.

And now, Jo has come up with some fantastical scheme. I would laugh if I didn’t feel like crying instead. To avoid incrimination and also to avoid leaking my identity I’ll only give an abbreviated version of the situation. She’s looking for work and wants to borrow an official document of mine. Forgery. I had to read the email three times to make sure I didn’t misunderstand. But each time I read my stomach tightened and twisted like a caustic pretzel. I took a few swallows and tried to stay calm. She mentioned our old close friendship in the email as a way of proving her trustworthiness. She declared that I knew she would “do anything for me”. But just this once she needed “a big favor”. I have to say that I was wounded. It was so obvious what she was trying to manipulate me. And as I opened a fresh document to respond, I knew I wouldn’t and couldn’t help her. This goes beyond forging a piece of paper. If she thinks she can get away with this she has a deeper issue than I can help her with.

And of course, it comes back to the topic of whether or not I even want to help her. I’ve given myself the pep talk... the one that says I don’t owe her anything. Even if she had 75 cents and needed a quarter to save her life, I don’t owe it to her. Our friendship was more one-sided than anything. I gave her a lot and got back very little. So it’s not like she gave me a kidney back in the 90s. The other side of me, a very small corner of my conscience is screaming for me to help her. After all, we were best friends. We shared a bed a few times. We ate off the same plate. We shared perverse secrets and outrageous thoughts with each other. Is it too much to ask of an ex-partner in crime??? Yes. As a matter of fact, I think it is.

I wrote about this in my diary. I fretted and worried because I wanted to be a nice person. After all she has a son. A mouth to feed. But I realized that we used to be best friends. We aren’t anymore. Why should I put myself out there for someone who’s not even my best pal? I would do something like this for a best pal. But then again I know a truly good pal would never ask me to do anything like this in the first place. They would never ask me to compromise my morals for the sake of friendship.