I’ve known Dalby for half my life, 20 years. We met on the same job and from there went our separate ways, often for years at a time in separate states.
Now we’re in the same state, although he’s too far away for causal visits. He’s
lived with the same woman now for about 12 years. I’ve never lived with a woman. He’s into a bunch of stupid shit, I’m into a different bunch of shit, most of it probably stupid to him.
Our friendship is dead. It may surprise one who hasn’t experienced it to have a
friendship die of natural causes. It happens, and why not? Relationships die all
the time, not just the ones peppered with declarations of love and fucking.
Even before Dalby started seeing a shrink, I knew it was over. Very infrequently did I contact him, nor do I seek his counsel. I cat-sitted at his place while he went on vacation.
The last time I saw him was yesterday and the night before. I drove two hours in horrible traffic and rain but was eager the whole way. I stayed overnight and left yesterday afternoon simmering in anger, anger that only now is beginning to dissipate.
What changed? Well, there’s a core of respect in every friendship, and no longer does Dalby honor it. In every relationship, one person leads and one follows, even if only slightly. The best friendships alternate who leads and who follows, depending on circumstances. Dalby now ignores that equation entirely, meaning even if he’s being passive, he maintains an arrogance too intense for friendship. I’m not the type of person that demands unearned respect, but after all these years I’m not even getting the basics from him.
Those are the long-term problems; the immediate problem is his fucking shrink. I have a feeling she’s full of shit, perhaps no more than the rest of us, except she’s demanding payment for it. It’s not even her that’s the problem, it’s the stink of shrinkology itself.
Have you noticed that everyone who comes in contact with shrinks or shrinkology suddenly fancies themselves studious observers of the human race who automatically know everyone else’s problems and (oh goody!) knows how to solve them? You’re duty-bound to meet someone like this eventually, you might even be that person.
So Dalby is attempting to remove negativity from his life. I would argue that it’s more important to recognize and remove obstacles from one’s path, be they negatives OR positives. A pie-in-the-sky hope can be just as crippling as an automatic sour grapes attitude. Dalby and his shrink’s shadow don’t see this distinction. I was greatly offended by two things he said, the first that he remembers my compassion for others over the years being limited to leaving some quarters behind for the next person at a self-service car wash (although he thanked me for it, I also bought 60 bucks worth of food for us over the 1.25 days I was there).
Dalby also remembers the time I invited him to fly to and from our home state when he was on one side of the country and I the other (we both flew into the home state) and put him up my entire week-long vacation, but apparently fails to remember I paid for all of it (unless things get extreme, true friends don’t keep running tabs on every kindness and coin bestowed).
An interlude: over dinner, Dalby was being rude with his cell, to the point his own girl told him to stop texting her and enjoy our time together. I actually demanded he give me the phone (to put it out of reach) when he got pissy. From the casual reader’s perspective, and most people today in love with their phones, such a request might seem outrageous. The casual reader misses the point: the standoff with the phone was the moment a 20-year-friendship truly ended. It wasn’t about a phone, it was about respect. My recognition of the end was confirmed shortly thereafter when Dalby went on about the girl he lived with before his current girl. Though she was no saint, he admitted he treated her like shit.
“Why did she stay?”
“I don’t know. She thought she could change me.”
It didn’t paint Dalby in a favorable light.
The second outrageous thing he said was more a recounted cluster of events revolving around his being “lost” in our early years, how he’d found my other friends and me and embraced our misanthropy. Dalby wasn’t recounting these tales of youthful angst with any fondness, he was portraying himself as an innocent and duped victim of the negative influences we all generated. More of the shrink’s stinking shadow in the background.
When I asked if a person who pointed out how things don’t fit together is as valuable to the world as the opposite, he demurred, implying his father had been the former and taken the same negative attitude towards his own kids (apparently the shrink is big on having patients talk to their inner child).
He also mentioned a random girl who was a psychic vampire (a term I taught him 15 years ago) who would come over for a few hours, after which Dalby and his girlfriend would just want to sleep. The implication was that I may be having the same effect on him., otherwise why bring it up?
What Dalby doesn’t understand–beyond the obvious that the friendship is over and done–is that a true psychic vampire seeks others just like an extrovert does. I, on the other hand, would be happy never to see or hear about 99.999% of the human race ever again. I don’t need them or him, the bulk of our shared karma is complete, and since he’s turned to shrinkology, don’t want to be near him.
(Another fringe benefit of being a shrink’s victim is feeling completely justified in being an asshole, since you “put in the work” to rationalize your own behavior).
I know when to be kind or at least diplomatic, but I’ll be a son of a bitch if I’m going to waste any time around people who require everyone around them to keep in line, limiting what they’re allowed to say, and sometimes even think.
It’s a terrible world, or if you want to be charitable, a mostly terrible world. Humor and sarcasm are my sword and shield, and if people don’t like it, they’re free to go off and listen to One Direction or suck a shotgun barrel.
So that’s it for Dalby. What to do about it I don’t know. Nothing, probably. He lives far away enough that it doesn’t matter, I rarely see him, and after this last meeting, have no real desire to see him again.
Friendships can and do die. Of natural causes.
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