Get The Black Armbands Out...

Today I lost a friend. Or rather I lost a friendship.

How so? Well if I actually tried hard enough I could probably keep the friend but the friendship is another matter entirely because it's now tainted and I find it very hard to clean things that are tainted.

I'm not a bad person. Oh I can be a bitter, twisted, coniving bitch of a person and I make a shit enemy but I am also an open, forgiving and thoughtful person.

Yet today I somehow managed to lose a friendship that had it's roots planted circa 1989.

C'est La Vie and move on? Yes usually, but this one has made me a bit sad because I know it shouldn't have come to this. I should have taken a step back and waited and thought it out but time was a luxury I did not have this week. What I had this week was a business to run and a very sick child to juggle which for all my skill with balls was a trick even I could not pull off.

What I needed was help this week. What I am not and never have been good at is admitting I am failing to manage things, to admit that I am out of my depth and not quite managing. This week I have not managed...in more ways than one.

I'm sad because when someone needs my help I will move heaven, earth and often my life out the way to do what I can. I will listen, shout, sympathise. I will phone, write and travel. I will send my own time thinking about them, for them. I will look for a way to work it out be it logically or in my own crazy fashion. I will not say there is no helping them even if it seems to be a lost cause because I hate to admit defeat. I'm nothing if not competitive.

This week when I needed help I whispered for it first, then I spoke loudly and finally I shouted. Sadly the person I expected to help me didn't answer. Perhaps that's the flaw right there...I expected...did I take it for granted that they'd hear me and come? Maybe and maybe that was wrong but then again I'm damn sure that that person knows they could take for granted I'd be there if they were shouting...hell I have been a number of times.

Bizarrely it's not as though I was expecting something for nothing. I thought (again obviously incorrectly) that I was also helping them in a way by asking for their help. Ok so it was financial help but help never the less.

They think I was taking the piss. They should know by now if I was taking the piss it'd have been on a much grander scale. Anyway since when did taking the piss mean trying my hardest to retain a place for them on a schedule which doesn't necessarily need them? Or offering them extras before others because I knew they'd benefit? Or putting myself at risk by breaking the rules to try and help them one day reach that goal of actually doing something more than look at grey Edinburgh just a wee bit sooner?

Yes I can be hard but I needed a friend this week...no-one else needed anything...it was me that needed it and when I did my friend turned his cheek and mistook my cry for help as me taking the piss. Tonight my sick child sat alone in the house because I couldn't be with her. I feel like the world's worst Mother. Tomorrow I will feel the same.

However I can ease my conscience by knowing I am not the world's worst friend or boss.

I was there for you...as short a time ago as last week when I was like a sister. And I know you are in a wierd place and I know you feel the world has it in for you but you know that I would have taken all of that from you if I could, that if I could have made the sun shine on you today I would, that if I could make her love you I would....but I couldn't because just for once this week I had to make the sun shine for someone else and had to try and take the burden from someone else and I failed at that and I feel I failed you...but you need to understand that you hurt me too.

The friend will always remain but the friendship? Is it possible to polish it till it shines again? That, my friend is up to you.

Jenny xx