If you missed the first half of the story, please read it here or in the post below.
YAZMIN.
Yazmin receives a call from Jessica. She doesn’t really have time to talk, she thinks, but she knows Jessica will be upset if she doesn’t take the call. Jessica has recently moved, and wants to have Yazmin over for dinner. Yazmin knows she doesn’t really have the time, but she agrees anyway. She can’t make 6pm she says, she can do 6.30pm though she tells Jessica. That should buy her enough time to clear the work meeting, and if she uses her lunch break to pick up her mother’s medication, she should then have enough time to drop it off on the way to Jessica’s. Then if she stay’s at Jessica’s for 2 hours, that should be enough time, she will still have time to give the cat his medication at 9pm. She can make it work, she reasons.
It’s a particularly stressful day at work. Her computer is down for 2 hours while maintenance try to solve the issue. Thankfully her work is recovered, however she has to complete it and she has lost 2 hours. It must get done by the meeting at 5pm when her boss will ask for it. She works through her lunch hour and manages to get it finished just on time. She emails it to the boss and calls the pharmacy to order her meds ahead of time, thinking she could get there by 6.15pm to collect them and then only be a few minutes late to Jessica’s.
During the meeting, the boss clarifies that she wanted a hard copy of the project, not an email, and insists that Yazmin print it for her and place it on her desk. Yazmin is annoyed, she doesn’t have time to print it tonight, can’t her boss print it herself? Ugh. She picks up her phone after the meeting and her mum has messaged saying she needs her to look at the laptop when she arrives as the internet has stopped working. Not tonight! Yazmin exclaims to herself loudly! She gets to the pharmacy at 6.15pm somehow, and then they tell her the prescription has expired, and they need her to call the doctor’s surgery to arrange another one. Her mother needs this medication for her heart.
She does the calculations, if it takes the doctor half an hour to send the prescription it will be 6.45pm and then 7pm by the time she gets to her mother’s. Then by the time she fixes her laptop it will be 7.30pm. It will be close to 8pm by the time she even makes it to Jessica’s and she has to leave at 8.30pm at the latest. She decides to shoot Jessica a short message to cancel while she is on hold with the doctor’s office. She knows Jessica will be upset, but she is glad she has cancelled when the doctor takes an hour to send the prescription not half an hour!
It is 7.30pm by the time she gets to her mother’s, and 8.30pm before she leaves there to head home after getting the internet connected again. (She had to plug it in with an ethernet cable, so she will have to call the telecommunications people tomorrow to come and fix it properly.) When she gets home, it is 9pm. She takes the cat’s medication out of the fridge, throws a frozen meal in the microwave and mixes the cat’s medication in with his food.
Of course he refuses to eat it! Could this day get any worse?! Ugh. Flopping onto her pillow, she picks up her phone. She expects an angry response from Jessica, but when she checks the message and sees no response at all, she knows she is in trouble. She thinks back over the brief phonecall and rushing Jessica off the phone. She thinks about how she is the last friend who hasn’t made the effort to see the new house. She thinks about the last time she cancelled. It isn’t that she doesn’t want to spend time with Jessica, it’s just that time is a very limited resource for her right now. She thinks about how that makes her a bad friend, not just to Jess, but to everyone. She is always letting people down.
How can I make it up to Jess, she wonders? She decides she will apologise again and offer to cook for Jess. After all, Jess is always the one hosting and cooking, wouldn’t it be nice to be invited somewhere else? And, to be honest, it would work better for her, as she is eventually home every evening anyway, so it would be more convenient to reduce one more stop or pressure of a place to be. And even if she doesn’t get time to actually cook, they can order in.
She texts Jess. “Just got home! Long day! So sorry about tonight. Work is a nightmare at the moment. Next time for sure though, I’ll cook to make it up to you?” She sees the three dots. She is relieved that Jess is typing something, anything. She has a chance to salvage this.
The response comes in fast and cutting. “There will be no next time. In future I will only invite friends who appreciate me and value my time. Don’t bother texting me ever again!”
Yazmin throws her phone on the floor and brings her knees up to her chest. “It always comes down to this” she sobs to herself. “Why am I never good enough? Never enough at all?” She is sad, but she feels something else, something darker. Anger. Resentment. Jess doesn’t understand what Yazmin is dealing with, how little time she has and how busy she really is. She would love to be free for dinner. Doesn’t Jess consider how much she wishes she just skipped out of work and could socialise all night every night? But with her father recently passing and her mother struggling physically and emotionally…. Not to mention her elderly cat who needs constant care. And the bills. The bills for everything are through the roof. She needs to put in the extra hours to get the money, and the promotion. Things wont always be this busy, can’t she cut me some slack and be patient?
Anger passes, and self doubt starts creeping in. “I am a lousy friend, she probably is better off without me. I will hurt her again because I just can’t give her what she needs. I just don’t have time for friends at this point in my life. I would probably not want me as a friend either. I don’t want to lose her, but I don’t want to keep disappointing her either, so I will respect her wishes not to hear from me. I can’t deal with any of this now.” It is almost a relief, one less thing to worry about and try to make time for. One less person making demands of her…..
She pulls up the covers and falls asleep almost instantly. She is exhausted.
So these are the 2 sides of the story. Maybe you relate to one more than the other, but the point is they both have merit. Each is fact for the person experiencing it. But where is the middle ground?
Come back next fortnight so we can explore this some more. (Next week this broadcast will be interrupted to celebrate Easter! Sweet! haha)
❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx
