I am just emailing back and forth with my good friend, and her emails are ice cold.

Oh well, I only need to alienate my daughter and sister, and that will be it.

But the God's honest truth is, that since I experienced the bomb two years ago, this friend has not been there for me as much as I was there for her when she dropped the bomb on her H two years before that. And she was pretty needy then, I can tell you. She has hardly been over to my house in the past two years, despite invitations.

She can be quite cold. And Moody. And she has that whiff of martyrdom, which I so hate. If she doesn't want to do something, she always comes up with the excuse, "But I've got to work!" said in a very self righteous way. Even when I know it is because she doesn't wish to do something. I know she has to work hard as she gets no support from her H, but it has become a convenient blanket behind which to hide.

This reminds me of my H. When we had only one computer between us at home, he used it to work on during the day. But he only worked a certain number of hours, the rest of the time he chatted with friends on forums, checked his email, looked at websites, used the programmes for his personal work, played a couple of games that we used to have etc. Any time I would ask to use it just to check my email or something, he would say, not now, I have to work! (Same tone of self-righteousness!)

At the end of the day, after dinner, when D was in bed, he would finally get off the computer and I would have a turn on it to catch up with email and other stuff. At this point he would settle down to watch a film on video (one that he had chosen from the rental place and that was seldom the kind of thing I liked to watch) and ask me to join him on the sofa. Often I declined, as I preferred to have some time on the computer.

Then H told me that I never did anything with him. (Translated to I NEVER watched HIS choice of film with him, I was ALWAYS on the computer!)

I question how much of a friend I am really losing?

Livnlearn

"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates