Either way, when it comes down to relationships, it takes more than just one person to keep it alive but it only takes one to kill it altogether.  As for family, there are few family members I will even speak to anymore because of the way I was treated in the past.  It has been my family that has forged the way I carry friendships.  Hence the reason I mention the “it takes more than just one” idea.  I spent too many years having a one sided relationship with my extended family, that I won’t accept one sided relationships any longer.  If you can’t work at your relationship with me, then I certainly won’t bother with you.  Just like if I find out you stabbed me in the back, you can forget calling me “friend” ever again.  Why would I want to change that?  Because of things like this, I have become relatively comfortable being someone who lives a life with a VERY small circle of friends.  But this very small circle of friends knows that they can always count on me to be there when they need me, regardless of what the issue at hand is.  They also know I expect the same from them. 

 Through the past few years, I have had 2 friends who were always there for me and more recently, the one I lost in the midst of a terrible double-cross and an unimaginable, calculating and deceitful coos (brought about by people who were jealous of our friendship to begin with), found herself and me again and we came to the conclusion that through everything that happened that we had missed each other so badly that it actually altered our lives.  The person I am referring to is my “sister by choice” (she knows who she is)  and out of all the friendships that were changed or lost in this horrible event and I am totally grateful that she reached out to me when she did. 

 As I have always maintained, I TOTALLY believe in Karma and because I refuse to wish ill on anyone, I removed myself from the initial situation entirely instead of becoming vengeful.  This was not the case with one particular former friend and a huge part of the initial deceivers.  I was repeatedly informed by people I trusted that she was plotting against me and wishing something horrible would happen to me and my family and threatening to do harm to myself and my property.  This person even tried to get to my emotionally challenged son through his MySpace page.  To top that off, she tried to deceive the whole community by creating an online identity almost identical to mine making the community we both belong to, think she was me.  I mean really people, EVERYONE knows me as “Abbey” or “MoonMyst Abbey” or Abbey’s Storm”, so when you see “Abbey” attached to some other name, spelled the same way, who the hell else are you going to think it is?  When you look at the big picture, it is sad.  When you look at it from my POV, it’s sick and twisted. 

  As time has gone by, I have done nothing but wish to be left alone.  This person has written vicious and deceitful blogs about me, told lies to friends we had in common by fwding personal conversations and editing them so that I looked like the bad guy when in reality she was the one being brazen and vicious.  She even portrayed herself to the community as having suffered everything that she had recently put me through…in essence, it was like she was trying to be ME.  But you know what?  I never called her out on them because I truly believed that Karma would take care of it.

 So, after all this time(nearly 3 years since it all began)  I was reading through some old emails one day and I remembered her fondly after she had helped me write a letter that I was having trouble putting into words.  So I decided I would look her MySpace page up and see if she was doing ok.  I loved her kids dearly and have always wanted better for them than they had and we were all very close for several years so that was hard to dismiss, but in light of the situation, I couldn’t be a part of it anymore.  So anyway, I had been on the road and my “sister by choice” told me that she had had a conversation with her and told her about our being friends again.  It was a couple days after their conversation that I had looked at her page.  And what I saw was just shocking.

 Her status was “Game over-YOU win!”  Now this could have been meant for someone else, but I found it odd that it came right around the time that she found out that Sis and I were still friends.  “Game over-YOU win”….if you were me, how would you see that?  My first reaction was GAME?  This was a FUCKING GAME to you?  The past 3 years of my life was a FUCKING GAME to you?  

Ok, I have that out of my system: whew! That had been stewing inside me for a week and I had to let it out.  I honestly do feel sorry for this person because Karma has taken care of business.  She apparently has no REAL friends due to alienating everyone around her.  But because she is so damned stubborn, she will never see the fault she had in the whole thing.  Everything will always be someone else’s fault.  Just like the “game over” comment.  She sees herself as having lost which in turn makes that MY fault.  See where I am coming from?  It’s a terrible situation and it’s sad and I loved her dearly but she wounded me so deeply by trying to scratch and claw her way to a position that ultimately didn’t exist-and by trying to get there, she ran over the people who cared the most about her.  I think about her every year on her birthday and hope that with each new year she receives from the goddess, she will gain wisdom that will help her cope with the unhappy existence she leads. 

 My ultimate prayer for her is that she rids herself of the toxic poison that makes her so vindictive towards others and makes her blame others for what is wrong in her own life.  She has made some incredibly bad life choices and the ones who are going to pay in the long run are her kids.  I am not by any means saying that I have made all the right life choices, but I deal with them the best way I can which includes the ability to lay blame where blame is due.

So in answer to this blog’s question- Does time heal all wounds? 
While time may heal the wounds, the wounds still leave scars and everytime you see the scar, the memories come flooding back.  It may heal the wounds, but you certainly cannot forget them.

When you grow up in an atmosphere of moving all the time, you never really have the chance to make lasting friendships.  You can dream that you actually have a best friend, but in actuality your best friend is someone you probably knew less than a year or two.  If they are not as mobile as you are, then they have more chances to have lasting bonded relationships with peers.  And lets not forget the difference between being an only child versus having siblings that you go through all your trials and tribulations with. 

I grew up only going to one school for longer than the school term for the year.  My first closest friend was when I was in 4th grade and I was able to maintain a relationship with her past the time of 3 years even after I moved away and got to go spend a summer with her at her house.  But after that, we lost touch.  I still think about her often.  I know she lives in one of the Carolinas but I don’t know if it would be worth it to really try to contact her because I always feel like I things are more important to me than they are to anyone else.  She may not even remember me.  I know her brother didn’t and I broke his finger.   Not to mention I was his “girlfriend” for 2 years.  They don’t really talk so I couldn’t go further with that contact.

My next closest friend was my best friend in high school.  She and I went through some shit together!  Her parents weren’t crazy about me because they thought I was a bad influence on her when in actuality, it was her who was the bad influence on me.  I never skipped school before I met her, I never drank alcohol or smoked pot before I met her and when she went off to college  (she is 2 years older than me) she got busted with pot in her room and was expelled and she actually told her parents that it was mine!  I was 150 miles away!   I only saw her a couple times after that and the last time I spoke to her was about 20 years ago.   It broke my heart but I knew how lonesome she was and I still know the deepest darkest secret  she had and somehow that will always bond us.  She had an awesome sense of humor and I know she helped mold me into the person I am today (the good things   and I wish like hell that I could share my life with her and tell her about my kids and the things I have done in my life and find out what she ended up doing with hers.  Amy Raines, if you are out there, please write!

After what happened with Amy, I ended up not really being able to bond with anyone with the exception of an ex boyfriend’s sister in-law after we had broken up.  We used to talk periodically but then we got a lot closer after I married my first husband.  She was one of the most beautiful people I ever met.  Our kids played together, we would go out to lunch and talk on the phone for hours and when she found out she had breast cancer, she didn’t tell anyone until after she had her mastectomy and then she called me first.  I remember that day and being totally terrified for her.  It was the last time I remember seeing her with hair.  After she started chemo and radiation, she lost it all, but she could put Vogue to shame with how beautiful she looked.  One day we went to Landry’s for lunch and she wore a black and white polkadot scarf on her head and black and white hat and OMG, you would think she was a runway model!   After she had her reconstructive surgery underway, she found out that the cancer had come back and was back in chemo and radiation.  Time wise I am thinking it was about 2 years after her initial surgery.  I knew she was getting worse but she still stayed positive.  We pretty much only talked on Sundays at that point because she was still trying to work to make ends meet and the rest of the time she was at MD Anderson.  She would occasionally call me when she came up for treatment and we would talk til she felt sick.  Needless to say, as much as I wanted to talk to her all the time, I waited for her to call me because I always had a knack for calling at the wrong time.  I had not talked to her in about a month when I went to a new Dr and the receptionist was from the same town we were.  We ended up knowing a lot of the same people and through her that was the way I found out that my best friend died.  I was so blindsided by it all and at the same time infuriated that no one told me.  I didn’t even get to say goodbye.  I walked out of the office after a completely useless appointment and immediately called my ex’s mother.  When I told her that I had just found out and HOW I had just found out she started apologizing thinking that ex had told me.  So I spent the next hour sitting in a parking garage on the phone with her bawling our eyes out.   I still think about Kay all the time…every day almost.  I have pink ribbons all over my office and pins I wear on my coat.  She will have been gone for 11 years this May 15th.  She was only 36. Katherine Schroeder King, I miss you!

After losing Kay, it seemed like everything in my world fell apart.  I messed my back up again, my reunion with my sister went horribly horribly wrong, my mother had to move in with us, I had my own cancer scare, my husband lost his job the day before my birthday that year, I had back surgery, dislocated my knee, broke my foot in that fall which was 2 weeks after my back surgery, was negligently overdosed on steroids by the pharmacist and just when we think everything is going to get better and my husband gets a job and we have the prospect of moving away from everything that was killing us, the day I left town to look for our new home, we had a house fire.  I was still recouperating from my bodily damage and was on a walker and have to rush back home to see how much of my home was destroyed.  The best way to end 98 and the worst way to begin 99.    3 months later, I am pregnant.  1 year to the day of my back surgery, I give birth to my youngest love. 

~Stay tuned for part 2 of  *The Love of A Friend*