Follow-up to "Fun with traumatic memories #1"

TonyN asked for the rest of the story of my friend’s bitchy mom. What happened to the friend?

Betty (fake name) and I drifted apart. We had an incident involving a boy she liked, and that kind of sealed the deal on ending our relationship. I got new friends, I didn’t really miss her. That much.

Her family moved to Atlanta, and occasionally I’d get letters or phone calls from her. Her life seemed surreal and spacey when I heard from her. She was so happy, but none of it made sense. She told me that when she had sex with her boyfriend, it was so powerful that their bodies made perfume. His mother would ask, “What incense were you burning? You smell wonderful.” Is that as weird as I thought it was at the time?

Her letters sounded like a magical place full of non-reality and imperviousness to the ordinary slings and arrows of life. A friend totaled her car badly, and she spoke of it like a wonderful adventure with no consequences: “We ran up on a curb and he broke the axle…,” but no result. Just happening, now, no tomorrow. Maybe it was because her parents were rich: all problems could disappear.

I don’t mean the letters or phone calls stopped, but I lost touch with her. We had no connection anymore, no relationship to one another, though the communication continued. I didn’t understand her world, couldn’t live there or even see or comprehend it. My world was full of consequence and result, and hers was blank of external authority.

I still hear about her through the grapevine, and she’s back in Kentucky. She has two sons, but that’s all I know. I still imagine her magical world where life just happens like a swirl of dyed silk, and I can’t relate. I don’t know, maybe she’s changed. Maybe children have brought a grounding to her life.

I have a hard time relating to people with children—I hope that doesn’t sound cruel. I don’t want children, and I’m not around them, so I just don’t understand. She moved from one world of surreal disconnection from me to another.

So, no, we’re not in touch, really. I avoid large swaths of my past, and she’s part of that cloth.