Follow Up to "Feelin' the tug"

Immediately after finishing yesterday’s post I was compelled to write the person in question to ask her if she wanted to meet for coffee some time this week. She wrote back a long message about how she’s grateful to hear from me because she has recently been betrayed by a couple of other people whom she had considered friends. It had come to her attention that they were going around calling her "an attention whore." In the email she proceeded to tell me that she wouldn’t be able to make any promises for an engagement this week as her poor health has been exacerbated of late and listed all the health issues that are currently plaguing her—things that I was already well-aware of. Anyone who knows her is well-aware of her many physical ailments.

In a two-line response I suggested that we aim to get together early next week as I’m looking forward to catching up with her.

In response, she said that she’ll have to let me know on Monday as to whether Tuesday or Wednesday will work for her. Her debilitating pains come on randomly. She added that the forecast for ‘bad’ weather (cloudy with risk of showers) also factors into the probability of whether she'll make it out her front door.

This person once kept me waiting an hour at a coffee shop for her before I gave up and went home. I arrived home to an email from her sent while I was at the coffee shop in which she apologized for her failure to meet me: her ailments had kept her up the night before, causing her to sleep in. We had agreed to meet at 1pm. She had sent the email about 1:20. She lives about 15 minutes away from the coffee shop, as do I. I can’t help but feel I was set up to be disappointed and she had set herself up to fail. When social engagements come so few and far between, one would think that when an opportunity for one comes up one would make the effort to show up for it. I mean, her failure to show up showed a total disregard for the effort I had made. (I learned recently that she had stood up another mutual acquaintance in the same way.)

But, as I wrote yesterday, I had been feeling “torn” as to whether I should make more efforts to be a friend to this person. Writing yesterday’s blog gave me the clue as to what to do and I did it.

The latest message from her (which, by the way, was about 5 times the length of mine, as they always are) listed (again) all the ailments that have been causing her depression lately. She also said she wonders if she should bother cultivating relationships because her health keeps her back from socializing normally and because she worries that she may bore or annoy others with her constant talk of it. It’s true—this has repulsed countless people I know.

And then, it occurred to me: she doesn’t really want a friend. For a friend, one would have to make an effort. In order to have a friend, as the saying goes, you have to be a friend. She hasn’t been a friend. She hasn’t really tried. Never once, including in this recent email exchange, has she asked me how I’m doing. I believe she thinks by constantly saying things like how I’m “so understanding,” “amazing,” “one of the most wonderful people” she’s met in this city, it’s enough to keep my attention. It’s manipulative. It's what had forced me into this feeling of being “torn," asking myself, how could I possibly be so dismissive of her when she’s been nothing but admiring of me? Ha! She has bought into the notion that ‘flattery gets you everywhere’. But flattery is just that—words. Without deeds to back it up, i.e. expressing care, they’re empty ones.

As I’ve said, she doesn’t want a friend. What she wants, rather, is an audience. This is why Facebook works for her. She can write these dire status updates hoping that it might scare us into attention. She to keep us on our toes, to leave in such a state of shock that we can't bring ourselves to change the channel (or un-Friend her or “hide” her updates, as it were). She also uses her status updates to blast her Facebook 'friends' for not paying attention to her, for not responding to her profuse posts.

I may have written yesterday that I shouldn’t hesitate to share energy (love, care, attention) with some from whom I don’t expect to be reciprocated. But in this case, I’m not sure I want to put myself in a situation in which I’d be completely effaced. And to put myself in a situation in which I’d be effaced would be to disrespect myself.

She wants an audience and not a friend: she does have a performer’s streak in her. She fancies herself a singer, telling us often of her one opportunity to sing in Madison Square Garden. She recently performed at a local burlesque show, adopting a stage name which now goes by on Facebook. (If I were to meet her for coffee, I wouldn't be sure as to which name to call her.) All over the Internet, she posts photo upon photo of herself in the past and in the present--"me with the New Wave spandex look," "me on morphine and percaset, but you wouldn't know it"-- as well as videos of her riding her biking to the Whole Foods and videos of her biking from Whole Foods.

This idea of existing only on the Internet, a forum where you can be whomever you want to be, where you can put yourself on display and have as much or as little interaction with others as you choose, reminds me of The Wrestler, the fantastic Mickey Rourke film I had recently seen. In it, Mickey plays an aging—possibly dying -- wrestler who is unable to crossover from the artificial world of professional wrestling to the real world of relationships, responsibilities, commitment, and hard work. It's the world where ‘acting’ or ‘performing’ won’t get you very far, where your efforts have to be actual, not pretend.

I had thought all her Internet activity was the expression of her loneliness and depression, but now I wonder if the loneliness and depression are the result of this life-in-performance. On the Internet, as in the wrestling ring, the image of any persona you’ve fashioned is preserved.

In this world, it's effort--not image--that matters.