I know that I promised to tell you more about myself, but I must interrupt myself with a rant. You will see that I rant frequently, for I am very easily annoyed, probably because somewhere in the back of my cynical mind lies a dreamer who longs to be correct. And I suppose it is this tiny sliver of hope that allows me to be disappointed again and again, at which point I become furious with myself for entertaining such childish disillusionment in the first place.
There lives in this world with me several people who I suppose could be called friends, for lack of a better description. I have extremely specific opinions on the definition of a friend that I will kindly explain at a later date, so let us not quibble about the term for now. These friends I met through my husband. They are actually his friends, a small collection of various misfits and oddities, who see each other once every 5 years lamenting about how long it has been since they last met whilst avoiding having their photograph taken with each other. It is quite a pathetic and nauseating experience to spend an evening with them, drinking in their copious amounts of duplicity and snideness. These people, whom I call The Friends without any sense of affection, do not enjoy the company of each other. In fact, they seem to take immense pleasure in pointing out the negative attributes of whichever person is not present.
Caroline is vain and self-centered. She enjoys having professional photographs taken every 6 months, sending vast and pointless emails about her life to everyone on her email list and telling you at every opportunity how someone in the near vicinity finds her gorgeous. She is, to date, the only person I know who is obnoxious enough to email the sales particulars of the house she is buying to all her acquaintances along with lengthy descriptions of how trendy the neighborhood is and how everything she has is astronomically better than anyone else could ever imagine.
Laura is a follower of Caroline. They are best friends, supposedly, but cannot survive an evening without quarreling. Laura is kinder and more open minded than most of The Friends. At one point I wanted desperately to be friends with her, but always found the immovable force that is Caroline barring the way. And, eventually, I learned that Laura was just as selfish and thoughtless as the others, but there will more explanation on this later.
Barbara is 28 years old but has the demeanor of a middle aged woman. She is forever obsessed with her wedding, which occurred over 5 years ago. To this day, whenever I see her, she manages to work the topic into conversation; sometimes I wonder how long she waits and whether it is very difficult for her to contain herself. She puts empty blue Tiffany bags in display cabinets in her home and, because she was a midwife, enjoys describing the atrocities of childbirth over tea and biscuits. She also has a devious, hurtful streak to her personality that I have had the misfortune to encounter.
Paul is a giant, jolly man who I am terribly fond of and who is the unfortunate husband of Barbara. My husband (shall we call him T?) was Paul's best man at his wedding. In fact, T was almost not his best man, for when Paul broke the news of his engagement, T replied "Are you sure?" However, the first choice for best man was unable to be at the wedding and T was asked to take his place. T introduced Paul to Barbara and is largely responsible for what I deem to be their sham of a marriage. They are dishonest to and about each other and create strange situations in which to pretend their are shocked or angry by each other's actions. For instance, Paul is a smoker. Barbara is fully aware that he is a smoker, but insists that he pretend that he does not smoke when in her presence. And, should she find him smoking, even though she knows very well that he does, she will pretend to be angry and shocked and berate him before his friends. I am not certain why they play these incessant charades, and I find it tiresome, for I cannot be sure if they are doing it for the benefit of their spectators or themselves. And Paul, however much I enjoy his humor, is most certainly cheating on her. I have no proof, other than a rather unpleasant feeling I get when he is near. It is an almost tangible sense of guilt and deviousness. He is forever flying to the USA on business trips, and I cannot see why this is necessary in light of video conferencing technology. My father went on business trips frequently, and I am quite sure it was because he found his home life rather lacking. One night stands with strangers met at hotel bars are very safe and confidential, especially if you reside in another country. Also, T told me that he suspects Paul has slept with his female cousin. He is not sure why, it is a feeling he has always had. Paul and his cousin go on holidays together and have a disturbingly close relationship.
These are the essential people that make up The Friends, with the exception of T's brother, Roger, and his wife, Jill. They deserve another blog entirely.
So, after much digressing, I come to the point of my blog. I despise, absolutely despise it when people do not reply to my emails, except for two people (T and my friend, Vincence). The creation of an email requires perhaps 10 minutes of time, so I cannot believe that people do not have the time to reply with even a sentence of acknowledgement. Also, thanks to the creation of the illustrious Facebook, I am able to find out very quickly who is ignoring my emails and who is not. For I will inevitably see who has had the time to write on walls, update photos or status, and yet not the time to display a certain amount of courtesy by replying to an email that I have sent. The Friends are such people - in particular, Caroline and Laura. Every once in a great while they will bless me with their attention by emailing me, usually because they want to extract gossip from me about people such as Roger and Jill. And, every time it seems, I allow myself to think for a moment that they care about me enough to email me and that perhaps I mean more to them than I suspected. However, I am always thoroughly disappointed. They bait me with promises of meeting up and girlie chats, only to glean the information they want from me and leave me feeling disused and angry, for they never reply to my emails, even when specific questions are asked.
Today is another such day, which has prompted my blog. Writing has always been able to relax me in times of great stress; it somehow grabs hold of my escaped neurosis and forces them back into the Pandora's Box that is my brain. As I write now, I am already feeling more at ease with my irritation.
A couple of weeks ago I emailed Laura and Caroline to apologize for having neglected to say goodbye to them at a wedding we recently attended together. I also mentioned that I hoped we could see each other again before Caroline retreats back to Australia, an idea first cultivated and proposed by Caroline herself. Of course, I received no reply. And yet, today, I find myself sent an email from Caroline - of course it is a vast and pointless email describing her life over the past 2 weeks, sent to all The Friends. It mentions that her mother has been in the hospital and therefore her 3 week holiday to the UK has not been as lavishly attention seeking as she would have hoped. And all I can think when I read this email is what a shrew she is. As I scroll downward, I am appalled to find that she had sent an email to Jill originally, asking her when she was returning from holiday and what days she might be available to get together. How amusing that, for all the scathing and derogatory remarks Caroline makes about Jill, she chooses to reply to her email and not mine, especially when the topic is the same, for I had asked Caroline when she and her boyfriend would be able to have a drink before she leaves the country. And in my frenzied state of disgust, I was tempted to reply with something both eloquent and harshly critical, such as "Fuck off. You are ugly, stupid and have an overbite. In fact, you're all a bunch of fucking wankers". Alas, as you will see, I am cowardly and chose to seek solace in my blog instead.
