Page 32 of Not My Friend
She opened a can of wet food – the cat’s favorite – and after dishing it out into his bowl, she returned to the couch, sitting next to me and putting her arm around me.
“Do you want to sleep over tonight?” she asked.
“I’d better not, I have an early meeting tomorrow,” I said. “We have some foundation officers that want to have a breakfast meeting with us at eight.”
“It’s funny how you’re the same person as before but not the same,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re still funny and quirky and sweet. But when we dated before, you’d hint around about staying over and kind of pout if I didn’t ask you first, and then if I did, you’d never leave. After a while I wanted to hang out at your house just so I could leave when I wanted to.”
I winced and she added, “I’m not saying that to make you feel bad, I swear. We were both at fault in that situation. I could have been clear that I didn’t want you to stay over or if I needed space, but instead I just sulked. I’m just struck from time to time when I notice the difference in us and how we interact with each other now. It’s cool.”
“The thing about growing up feeling like your family doesn’t love you or care what happens to you is that you sometimes have a tendency to latch onto people who give you even a crumb of affection,” I explained. “But over the past few years, I’ve learned how to be okay alone, and how to not let other people’s actions define me the way I used to.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for my part in what went wrong in our relationship.”
“I’m sorry I accused you of cheating on me, and I’m really sorry I dumped all your shit on the lawn.”
“It was wet too. Some of my stuff got ruined.”
I winced. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“Maybe we can just agree to let bygones be bygones,” she suggested. “We were brought into each other’s lives for a reason, and I don’t want to ruin it by reliving the past.”
“Sounds good.”
“How’s work going besides your foundation breakfast tomorrow?” Kimberly asked, changing the subject. “You haven’t said too much about it lately.”
“We had another family move into permanent housing,” I said proudly. “While she was at the shelter the mom participated in a women in trades program and now she’s going to be an apprentice HVAC technician specializing in heat pump installation.”
“Wow, that’s so cool.”
“Yeah, I went to her trades program graduation a few weeks ago with our shelter manager Julia and the client’s kids were in the front row with her parents cheering their heads off, it was really inspiring.”
“I’m glad you found your place in the world,” she said. “I know you liked the youth program too, but it seemed to frustrate you a lot.”
“It did. Management wasn’t good, at least not for my program. And youth are a hard population to serve, they tend to have a lot of setbacks and it’s super hard to earn their trust. But also I didn’t know how to manage the vicarious trauma of social work jobs the way I do now. It just added to the issues I was having then.”
I hated the fact that I’d been a basket case back when we were dating, but I felt proud of the way I’d moved past it and become a better person.
“Vicarious trauma?” Kimberly asked.
“It’s like you get traumatized by hearing all the horrible things that other people experience, especially when it reminds you of your own issues,” I explained. “Often our clients will tell you the most awful stories of things that happened in their homes or on the street and after you hear all these stories of people being beat up or raped or robbed or abused, if you don’t set boundaries and develop some emotional shields, eventually it all wears you down and you either start having issues like not sleeping, becoming bitter or cynical, having panic attacks, stuff like that.”
“That explains why you seemed to both love and hate your job with the youth,” she noted.
“Yeah. In the end, my getting laid off was the best thing for me, because when I started working at the Sunrise program, I’d dealt with all that. I have healthier coping mechanism now.”
I stood up. “I’d really better get going now.”
“I love you,” Kimberly blurted out unexpectedly. “I just want you to know that.”
I paused, drinking in the moment, feeling relief and gratitude that we’d gotten to this point despite everything that had happened in the past.
“I love you too.”
Vader made a loud hissing noise from the kitchen and I laughed. “Even if your cat hates me.”
