Hard to See

I so want to help a friend, but there is a problem...

I've know this friend for many years.  Mid-last year she returned to my life and, as with many people who only see each other now and then, we resumed our friendship.  She shared with me her impending divorce, impending move, her desire to change jobs and she seemed to be on the verge of a breakdown in regards to sending her youngest off to college.  By the end of last August, we were very tight, talking in various methods two to three times a day.  She then started to try to move ahead with the monumental hurdles she had to jump.

She slowly became the invisible woman.  It didn't happen over night, she sort of just started to slip away.  Down to one communication a day, every other day, every few days, unreturned calls, texts and e-mails.  My wife invited her to my surprise birthday party and she never responded and by the time of her birthday in late fall, she never even said thank you for her birthday gift.

Why did she disappear?  I do not know.  As God as my witness, there was no attempt at 'upgrading' our relationship.  She is bright and bubbly, sincere and honest and she is quite attractive, but frankly, I'm not looking and even if I was, she's just not my type.  The perfect friend.  I had actually banked a lot personally on her after my scorched earth policy of a friendship last year, and I missed her.  My guess was she might have found another guy.  My wife's hairstylist, after being relayed the pertinent info at an appointment, became convinced she had fallen in love with me.  I don't see how, and even though my wife questioned it at times, I don't think she really bought that idea either.   I just hoped she wasn't depressed.  I kept imagining asking her "are you lonely?", and her answering "yes."

Yesterday, my phone gave me a message saying my usable memory was almost out.  I pulled up the storage page and quickly identified a few different apps to delete.  Looking at the size of my phone and text usage, I decided to do some housekeeping there.  I cleaned out a lot of phone messages and the call logs.  I got rid of more than a few text message files, eventually coming across the back and forth I had had with my friend.  The last message was from early February, when I told her I was still here.  I decided to not delete it.  Instead, I messaged her a very generic update on what we've been up to.  I finished with "remember, I'm here."

I got a cryptic message back from her an hour later telling me she was in the hospital.  I quickly followed up, asking what was wrong and I got an even vaguer text saying it had been a bad year.  Now I'm wondering, if on top of everything else, did she get word of a serious health issue last fall.  I've asked a few mutual friends if they know what's up but I stopped.  It felt like digging through someone else's trash.

The perfect friend for me indeed.  Wanting to help so bad, and not being able to.  Sigh...