What about your friends?

I was at home by myself yesterday evening and an old friend popped into my mind. I haven’t seen or spoken to her in about five years, but for whatever reason, I started wondering what she was up to. I guess it’s because my dad pulled out my high school yearbook and I started to reminisce.

I miss my buddy, but I refuse to contact her.

Maybe it’s my pride… it’s totally my pride.

Her actions hurt me so badly – this was the person I had been best friends with since I was 12. I always thought that she would be in my wedding and godmother to my kids. We went to our first Carifiesta party together. We went to Caribana together. We did pretty much everything together.

Things don’t always work out how you think they would.

When I took the long drive down the 401 to Toronto in 1998, I didn’t think my friend and I wouldn’t keep in touch. We had started to grow apart – she was focused on a boyfriend that I couldn’t stand. I was focused on getting my tail out of Quebec. But just because we were concentrating on different things didn’t mean that we couldn’t remain strong friends.

She said to me, when I told her I was leaving, “I can’t believe my buddy is leaving me!”

I was already soured by some of her antics: being too busy to talk or forgetting that we made plans because she was hanging out with some dude. But we were like chalk and cheese or batty and bench.

In the beginning, she would visit – well, she would visit her boyfriend in Toronto and stay with me. We would hang out, but she was here to visit her man. When the man treated her poorly and I said something, she said to me: “You’re not in a relationship. You don’t understand. That’s why I like to talk to my friends who aren’t single.”

Why don’t you slap me in my face? Good advice is good advice whether you’re in a couple or not, but a lot of women just don’t want to hear about their men.

Once she and the man broke up, she wouldn’t visit as often, but we’d talk.

Then she hooked up with a blasted idiot. He refused to let – you read it right – her wear makeup. He would drape her up in public talking about ‘you’re disrespecting me!’ and try to bang down her parents’ front door when she had had enough and broke up with him.

He said after meeting me, my sister and some other friends that he didn’t like university-educated women. Friends would tell me they didn’t understand why she was with him. I had my ideas, but when I broached the subject, she told me: “He says that you’re jealous of our relationship.”

I met the man once and he tried to rough me up at Harbourfront. Jealous of the relationship? No. A big, dirty, dislike for his black ass? Yes.

After that conversation, the friendship started to drop off.

I’d call, she’d be busy. I’d e-mail, she wouldn’t respond. When I went back home to visit, I’d call, but she wouldn’t call back until it was too late to make plans.

When I visited Montreal about a year or so after I moved to Toronto, my best friend, another friend, Corey and I were supposed to meet downtown for dinner. I got to the restaurant to see a grinning Corey, but no best friend.

“She said she had something to do,” Corey said sympathetically. Maybe she did have something else to do, but she couldn’t take a few hours out of her Friday night?

One thing made it very clear that she wasn’t making any effort to be my friend: Easter Weekend, she and Corey decided to visit Toronto.

Corey called me and said, “Hey Urban Sista, we’re in Toronto!” It was Good Friday.

“Cool!” I said. “What are you up to?”

“We’re going to visit my uncle in Mississauga and then maybe we can hook up.”

“Is [INSERT NAME] there?”

“Oh, she’s in the bathroom.”

“OK, well, I’ll be home. Give me a call and we’ll do something.”

Friday, came and went. Saturday, came and went. Sunday came and went. Late Sunday evening I got a call. Not from my best friend, but from Corey. They were heading to Mississauga and wouldn’t have a chance to visit me.

I wanted to cry. I missed my parents – I couldn’t go home for Easter and my so-called best friend couldn’t even pick up the phone to call and make plans to see me. Folks, I waited by the phone not wanting to miss the call.

I was hurt. If the friendship was done, why couldn’t she just say something? What you would say, I don’t know, but something. I don’t know what I did to offend her – if anything.

It wasn’t the first time she had hurt my feelings, but this time it was blatant. How are you going to visit Toronto and not visit me? I could understand if you were here for a wedding or something and just didn't have the time, but you’re just coming to visit.

That’s when I smartened up.

Friendship is a two-way street, not me trying to be your friend and you choosing when and how you’ll be my friend. I stopped calling. I stopped e-mailing. I stopped trying to make an effort to see her.

Like I told my friend Steve, I make an effort to see someone who makes the effort to see me. She never made the effort to see me. So, why would I go out of my way to see her?

She let a man get between our friendship – it wasn’t the first time. The dude in Toronto also said I was jealous of their relationship. I was annoyed by how he treated her (if a man ignores you all night, then at 3 a.m. wants to take you home, that isn’t love. It’s a booty call), but she preferred believe that I was envious of that she had a boyfriend and she didn’t.

Maybe because she had been envious of other people having boyfriends when she was single.

This experience has taught me a lot:

• I always make time for my girlfriends. I have a boyfriend and I love spending time with him, but I love being with my girls. I balance my time – sometimes to the point where he complains that I have to schedule him in between my outings with friends.
• If a man is constantly telling you that your friends are jealous of the relationship, dash the man, he’s up to no good.
• Never want a man so desperately that you put up with mess from him.
• Appreciate your girlfriends.

Anyway, Corey and I are still friends, she’s moved to Toronto and we hang out every now and then. I’ve become friends with some wonderful women and we have pure jokes when we’re together.

I don’t know if I’m going to try to get in touch with my ex-best friend. Every now and then I hear that she’s with/not with the man and I know I don’t want that drama in my life.

But that being said, if she was to reach out to me, I’d definitely reach back.