(72) Being attacked by a "best friend"

I have a friend who trusts me enough to tell me her difficulties: over her divorce, her learning disabilities even as a middle-age adult and her problems with her old friends.

We will call her Barbara here. She has an old friend from her child hood days who has stuck to her through thick and  thin. Lately Barbara has been taking lifts regularly from that old friend, let us call this second lady Dorothy. Dorothy has two girls, one of them is definitely having some learning problems or other. Now, as a former tutor for such children, the first question I would ask is from which parent came the learning problems? It seems that even though Dorothy is a full time home-maker, one could not normally find a seat empty and ready in her sitting room. Each seat is either covered by newspaper, magazines or dried clothing that came back from the lines outdoor. I mean one may find such a state of disorganization in anyone's house once in a long while. But it seemed that it is the normal state in Dorothy's home. Looking at that, my bet is on for Dorothy to be the transmitter of those genes that her special daughter has received.

Interestingly, Dorothy began to attack Barbara for all her weaknesses: being not very co-ordinated in driving, poor directional recognition, inability to remember a sequence of steps that number more than three ... Since they have been best friends since childhood and stayed close, I doubt the attacks are personal in nature. I think Dorothy is in denial about her own shortcomings that she has more or less overcame. While her husband's millions added to what others expected of her, she resolutely refused to have a live-in maid. It does not help for others to pressure her to force her special daughter to shape up - some people thought that money could improve anyone. She herself foolishly chose to get involve in a church base charity teaching poor children with special needs. Well, actually she should have concentrated on helping her own child and achieve a certain measure of success before dabbling in other children's affair.

On top of all this, Dorothy chose to be with another mother whose young son has all the same symptoms as Dorothy's daughter at the same age. Dorothy's daughter is about five years older than this third woman's son. It is possible all these circumstances added up and pressurized Dorothy to a near breaking point. Barbara's proximity and her ineptness really irritated Dorothy and that could have been the last straw on the camel's back.

There are seven million people in our part of town. Barbara would be wise to meet Dorothy less under such circumstances. We vote with our feet where we want to go, whom we want to spend time with and what we want to do. For Barbara who has just attained a certain amount of peace and may be experiencing God's healing balm, she should not even allow a "best friend" to attack her just because the "best friend" happens to be having a raw deal. Temporary withdrawal seems to be the best policy at the moment.