Breaking up with a friend

I am eating Peanut Butter Panda Puffs, which I adore and hardly ever purchase. And they are making me think of a friend I broke up with.

Breaking up with friends is weird. When you break up with a boyfriend, there's usually a damn good reason -- he isn't treating you right, he's making you miserable, he's impeding your life's progress somehow... But friends aren't generally in that category. I mean, after all, they're just friends. They don't have the power to impede you or make you all that miserable.

But I did, in fact, break up with a friend a while back. I had tried ignoring and avoiding for a long time, and finally had to be straight, with a "we're on different paths" kind of e-mail.

Now, of course I had a good reason. "We're on different paths" is a generic reason. Without getting into all the specifics, I'll just say that after many years of friendship (many of those years long-distance), I realized that 100% percent of her conversation involved saying mean things about others, aggrandizing herself (often in well-rehearsed stories I'd heard 100 times), competing with me, slyly insulting my choices in life, bulldozing anyone else in the conversation, then bemoaning the fact that the rest of her friends had distanced themselves "for no apparent reason."

But it was still heart-wrenching to break up. Even after discovering that she, well, wasn't really a very nice person, I had no intention of hurting her, and if I'd thought I could get away with the occasional e-mail and NEVER seeing her again, I'd have kept up the friendly pretense. But I just couldn't sit through one more lunch where she was mean to the waiter, criticized the cafe, and asked for 16 substitutions. It was draining.

But as I eat my Peanut Butter Panda Puffs, I realize there are things I have to be thankful for from those years. For example, I have spent a lot of time in Santa Cruz because she used to live there. I went to the Virgin Islands to visit her, a trip I'd have never taken otherwise. I know about Bonny Doon wines because of her (and have been to the tasting room several times, an experience I highly recommend if you like wine and find yourself in the area). I first had Lindt chocolates at her house. I first tasted apples and pears with blue cheese on crackers with her. I think I went to sushi for the first time with her. I am almost certain I first tried hot chai at an Indian restaurant with her in San Francisco. When she lived in S.F., we went to several cool local cafes and movie theaters. She and her husband taught me mah jong, along with several other fun board and card games. I saw Totoro because she lent it to me. My life is enriched because she was in it. Now that some time has passed, I can be thankful for that. Not enough to call her (shudder!), but thankful.