Goodbye Margot!

So - the falling out. I will change the names to protect the guilty from further embarrassment. Margot (because she's as big a mess, if not bigger than, Margot Kidder) has been in my life in some form or fashion for 22 years. She is one of those friends who's always been around. Throughout High School she was the one to organize everyone's birthday parties, she was at every event, big and small.

She has lived all over creation, sometimes for a few years at a time. Her major in college changed a dozen or so times as well. The one thing that never changed was her reliability. I guess you could rely on her unreliability. She was always late to everything - I'm not talking 15 minutes or so. She would be an hour late - a HUGE pet peeve of mine. She also has a bit of a temper that goes well with her martyrdom. I've seen her snap at the slightest thing. She's like a volcano - she will sit silent for a long time and then explode.

The volcano erupted Saturday night in New Orleans. The four of us (Stacie, Pedro, Margot, and me) were leaving the hotel for the wedding. After an unexpected stop in the gift shop for Pedro and Margot to wrap a present, we headed for the car. Margot asked Pedro if he needed to stop at an ATM for cash. Hearing this, Stacie (tired of repeated delays by the two of them) asked, "Do you really need to stop by an ATM before the wedding?"

Margot's head spun a few times, her eyes turned red, and at the top of her lungs she yelled, "Mind your own FU**ING business!" We were stunned into silence as everyone in the lobby stopped what they were doing. (OK, so her head didn't spin and her eyes didn't light up, but the rest is true.) We decided to go ahead with them to the wedding, but at this point I had decided that I was done with Margot.

We all avoided each other at the wedding and even did ok making very small talk on the way back to the hotel (it was a free ride at this point - don't judge.) When we were a few blocks from the hotel, Margot said that she hoped Stacie wasn't mad at her. Stacie told her that all she wanted was an apology, she felt she deserved that much. With that, Margot said, "Lots of people feel they deserve an apology when they really don't." If I wasn't done with her before, I was now. It was my turn to explode.

This may not seem like too big a deal to a lot of people, but we're Texans. You don't say these kinds of things to friends, no matter how mad you get. She could've said, "Don't worry about it," or "We need to tip the Valet" instead of "Mind your own fu**ing business." As angry as I've ever been with people, I've never spoken like that to a friend that I wanted to keep. There's a reason that we were the last two of Margot's friends from childhood/adolescence that would speak to her.

Needless to say the last few blocks of the drive were a bit loud. I haven't yelled like that in a long time, but it felt good to get it out after all of those years. She started cataloging all of the ways we'd wronged her, especially that weekend such as: walking too fast, excluding her, picking at her, making fun of her, making fun of her husband (he has one leg), etc. She was on an entirely different trip than Stacie and I were. Until this point, we thought the trip was going really well. Of course we were annoyed with Margot, but that's nothing new.

So, I've said my good-bye to her. I have no desire or intention of speaking to her again. I won't avoid, because I enjoy this kind of confrontation, but I won't seek her out. If she seeks me out, I'll just reinforce the fact that we are no longer friends. After the outburst and getting back to my room, I felt so relieved - a huge weight had been lifted.

Again, this might not seem like enough to end a 22 year friendship, but this was just the final straw. I've actually spent the past few years trying to stay friends with her, but she makes it very difficult. I just couldn't do it anymore, it was way too draining. It is hard to convey the dynamics of the relationship in a single post, but I've decided I won't write about it again, so this will have to suffice.