And Now You Are Collapsing

I don’t understand how people can fall so apart. How you can watch them collapse completely.

In the past four days, my friend lost her mind. I watched it disappear, and I watched her lose control of everything in her life.

I should have seen it coming. I should have recognized in her all of the things that happen to me. She became an example of what would happen to me if I didn’t have so many people around me.

She flipped out. She lost it. She took out three credit cards, changed her cell phone number, changed her name, got so fucked on drugs, stopped eating and drank for two weeks straight, stopped sleeping, cut off her hair and bleached it, and in the last week, randomly bought a fucking plane ticket to move to Vancouver. She showed up at people’s houses last week, fucked on coke and banging on the door at 3am, hysterical, and tried to sleep with my friend’s boyfriend, and lost it because he wouldn’t.

We staged an intervention this morning. There were about 13 of us trying to help her. My friend’s sister went and picked her up from her house and tricked her into thinking it was for breakfast. We all sat her down and told her that we were stepping in. I ended up taking her to the hospital. She is there now. But she was so delusional, rambling about her flight at 4pm, which we tried to trick her into thinking that it was a different time than it was. It worked, and now she thinks that she is going tomorrow. She isn’t. She’s now admitted, but still so out of it. I don’t know what happened. She lost her voice last night somehow, and she seemed even crazier today because she wouldn’t speak normally, just whisper. I only met her about a month or two ago, and I guess, in a way, I feel that I did more than her actual friends. They tried, but it was Joyce and I who ended up being there for her with her brother all day.

My mom called while I was at the hospital and bitched me out. She kept going on about how I shouldn’t get involved in people’s life, and how it’s not my responsibility to be there for me friend. She basically said that her parents should be there, and not me (it’s true that her parents should be there, but seriously. If her own parents won’t be there, then she needs someone. All the more reason for me to try and help.) She just yelled at me for everything, how I fail at life, and now I am trying to help someone else who is just like me and failing at life. She kept saying how she didn’t understand why I would go out of my way to be there for someone. I yelled at her and told her that it’s called compassion, something that she probably should have learned in the 10+ years that it took her to get her masters in Social Work. She just kept asking me why I was bothering to help her out, and why I find the need to try and help people. I was so upset with her, and I still am. I told her that I care about my friends, I don’t care how long I have known them for, and that I am doing for her what she and everyone else did for me two weeks ago when I was hospitalized. I talked to this friend from the emergency at 2:30am the other week, and she was really worried. When I got out, she came and picked me up and took me to her house and cooked me dinner. She was making sure that I was okay. This was the least that I could do for her. Why the fuck would I just leave her alone to fall apart and disappear to a huge city while she’s so fucked up? I just can’t believe that my mother would say such things about it. I just kept telling her that she looked out for me when I was in there, and that I actually care about what happens to my friends; I don’t want to just fucking hear about it through the fucking gossip train the next day. I know so much about being in there, I was actually helpful. My mom said that I don’t need to be there right now with her, and to leave because there are doctors that are paid $40 an hour to do what I am doing. That is mainly when I lost my temper, and I just shouted out “Well, I guess I can completely see why you are saying this since you wouldn’t even fucking visit me at all when I spent all of August in the psych ward alone, and I am your fucking daughter, so you are right, why should I be here for someone who is only my friend.” I hung on her after that. She tried to call me back, and I didn’t answer. She left me a message saying that if I am going to be driving around a crazy person in the vehicle that my dad pays for, then I need to return it, because they don’t want anyone getting upset in the truck, and that maybe I should think about that next time. She’s such a cunt. I’m almost the only person who can drive in my group of friends, and the reason that we didn’t walk to the hospital (it’s close) is because, like I said, it was an INTERVENTION, and she almost flipped out and ran away. We would not walk there where she could fucking run off.

I just feel that today, every one of my friends was put through shock. After we got her through emergency and into see someone, Joyce and I went back to my friends house where we were all hanging out. We all just sat there, and did nothing for 8 or 9 hours, just waiting to hear back, and waiting until we could breathe again. It was good though, because I have never seen so many people all just kind of come together to support someone. There was a huge breakfast cooked for everyone, and everyone kept getting cigarettes for those who needed to take a break. We each rotated taking turns napping or trying to talk to our friend. It was so intense. I just feel so horrible. My friend was a wreck this week, and while we all tried to kind of keep her stable or get her to take it easy and stop freaking out at everyone, we all knew that this was going to happen. Everyone has been talking about what’s going on non-stop, and we were all thinking about how fucked she was. But a few days ago, some of us just sat down and finally admitted that we were in fact terrified for her, and really sad about what was happening to her.

Gahhhh. I don’t think that what I did was wrong, either. My mother just has no heart, and no real concern for anyone but herself. I’m not going to let her make me feel like shit for trying to support someone. Especially when I’ve been through similar garbage. She had no one while this happened, and I’ve been lucky enough to have people there to help me before it’s too late.

I just… can’t even describe what it has been like to watch someone deteriorate.

~ by winterlong on March 31, 2008.