Solitude in Stuff

I was tired and frustrated and hormonal yesterday and I feel like as a result I was a bad friend to Megan. I feel a little guilty about that, but I also feel a little like I’m entitled to be in a bad mood sometimes. Sometimes I feel like I’m more motherly and supportive to her than I am to my own children, and that wears on me.

She sent me a text at 10:45. I was already in bed. I glanced at it. It said, “I need someone to talk to. Are you around?” She’s involved enough in my life to know that I try to get to bed around 10:00 most nights. I suspected the tentative way she phrased the message showed she knew I might not be awake. I took that as an excuse to ignore it until the morning.

Then the phone starts vibrating. It’s her, of course. This time she’s actually calling. I think I said out lout, “damn it,” before I picked up the call. I was short with her. I told her I was mostly asleep and couldn’t talk. She said she wanted to come over. I could tell from her voice that she was crying but trying to hide it. I sighed and paused and finally said I’d meet her downstairs. I remember thinking as I walked to the door that I hoped it was something really serious. Not that I wanted anything bad to have happened, but I wanted something that would have justified relenting to her.

She came inside and crumbled into my arms with a weirdly clingy hug. She held me and cried and cried and I stood there mostly motionless wondering what the hell was going on. It felt like it took her five solid minutes to compose herself but maybe it wasn’t really that long. When she did, she said, “Are your kids around? I’m really embarrassed that I’m like this. I don’t want them to see me.” I had to laugh. Olsen was out somewhere and Mercy and Harrison were in their rooms.

We went into the living room and sat down. She cried and talked and cried. I’m not heartless, I listened and supported her. I said positive and reassuring things. But I admit most of the time she was talking and crying I was thinking about how late it was getting and how tired I would be in the morning.

Megan has no one, and the more I get to know her, the more I realize this about her. Her father lives in Boston but she has very little contact with him. He mother lives in Florida and seems very uninvolved with her children. Her two sisters both live on the west coast and I get the feeling they are happy to be several thousand miles away from Megan drama. From what I can tell, she doesn’t have a single friend other than me. She often gives me the impression that she wants to be alone and is happy to have solitude.

She’s not an unfriendly person. But she is the type that wants to be in charge and plan and make decisions. She’s exactly who you’d want if you needed someone to plan a wedding or something like that which requires that kind of willingness to work and attention to detail. But that can also be wearisome in a friendship. I don’t doubt that if I told Megan I needed help with anything, she would do it and never hesitate. And I have to remind myself of that, especially when she comes to me in a state of openness and vulnerability, a side of her that few people see.

Here’s the story from last night. She went on a date. Some woman she met somewhere, which actually surprised me because I thought everyone met online these days. She said she was eager to get to know this person and was happy to be dating after a long time since her last date. This sounded positive. I was happy for her.

She said they went back to her place and had sex. Then the woman left. Apparently she made it clear that she had accomplished what she wanted and was leaving and there was no reason for them to see each other again. From the way Megan tells it, she was blunt about it. “I just wanted to be able to say we’d had sex.” I think Megan’s expectations that this was an actual date with potential for a relationship versus how the other woman was looking at just caused her to have some kind of emotional meltdown.

I told her I was happy to listen and be supportive but maybe the fact that she was having such a severe reaction to this is an indication that she should be talking to someone professional. She stared at me for a moment like she was angry and then I could see her face change as if she suddenly realized I was right.

I told her to go home and get some sleep. She said she wasn’t going to be OK alone. I told her to sleep in the guest room and she thought about it for long time before agreeing. I have a very strong suspicion that she wanted me to invite her to sleep in my bed. I don’t know if it’s a generational thing, or if it’s just a Megan thing, but the idea of having a friend sleep in my bed with me (in a non sexual way) is really weird to me, but it seems like it’s normal for her.

She went to the guestroom and was still sound asleep when I left this morning.

Last updated May 03, 2018