From a Distance

It gets to a point in one’s life where you just have to stop making excuses for your friends bad behaviors, you stop accepting all of the rubbish dished out to you and you just have to call a spade a spade and not a shovel.

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I got to this point in my relationship with Joyce my friend, we have been friends for a few years now and one particular thing always makes us quarrel, we’ve talked and talked about this particular thing over and over again but it just has a way of creating havoc every single time and we would have to start from square one again, the back and forth thingy was becoming exhausting, it was time to take a walk I told myself.

“You know what? I don’t have friends in this office, all of you are my colleagues! My freaking colleagues! I said angrily to Joyce.

“Ohhh that’s fine colleague! Bye! Joyce replied and left my office.

From what I can vividly remember that was part of the last conversation I had with my friend Joyce three weeks ago.

It’s been three solid weeks of not talking to my friend, three weeks of not being in the same space as her, and three weeks of not hearing her call my name.

“You’ll get used to it,” I tell myself, it’s been three weeks already, and like the popular saying goes whenever one does anything for three weeks it becomes a habit, so I know I’ll get used to not having her around.

On Tuesday I heard a disturbing news from my colleague who is Joyce’s assistant.

“IB! IB!” Lara ran into my office like she was being chased.

“Yes! Yes! Young lady, what is it? I asked getting all irritated with the way she called my name.

"IB the Project manager is angry at Joyce," she said quickly, at this point, I was taken aback since my friend's name was mentioned.

"Why? What happened?” I asked, wondering what the problem was as the PM rarely gets angry at people.

"You know that spreadsheet you guys usually do together? like the bulky and difficult one?"

"Yes, what about it?" I asked still trying to understand where all of what she was saying was leading to.

"Joyce couldn't finish preparing the spreadsheets on time for them to send it to Headquarters, Headquarters called and the Director was yelling at PM for not delivering it on time, so PM was mad and poured all his frustrations on Joyce"

"Oh mine, this is so bad," I said, genuinely worried this time.

"My dear ‘bad’ is an understatement, I was there when he was shouting at her, he even called her incompetent," Lara said sadly.

"Ouch!" I replied, I know how my friend Joyce gets when people term her as incompetent or make her feel she wasn’t good enough.

"Thank you Lara for telling me," I said to her politely.

"IB honestly, you both need to work things out, she does need a friend right now," she said pitifully.

"No problem I have heard you and thanks again."

After Lara left my office I started thinking of everything she said, her words kept on playing over and over in my head, and my heart kept on wondering what Joyce was going through, how will she be able to get through all of this moving forward as gaining the PM's trust was going to be a very difficult task. What will I do? I asked myself countless times.

I felt so bad, so guilty because if we were still on talking terms I would have gladly helped her with the spreadsheets like I usually did and she would have submitted everything in record time, trust my friend Joyce never to swallow her pride to meet me for help since our friendship was a bit rocky and I honestly wouldn’t have as well.
Now the PM was mad at her and that is one bad news.

I wanted to go meet Joyce and sympathize with her and possibly mend our friendship again but I held back, I put myself in Joyce's shoes, I hate it when people who I am not in talking terms with comes to sympathize with me after hearing something bad happened to me, I term those people as fakers who take advantage of people’s vulnerabilities and I personally don't take their sympathy to heart.
To me, you didn’t try to reconcile with me when things were good, why come now?

Later that day I brought out my phone to send a short text, it isn't going to hurt to send a short text to her right?, I asked myself, I composed the text, I read, edited, and re-read it again and just when I was about to send the text I had a rethink and I deleted it.

I cleared my desk, turned off the light in my office, took my bag, and left the office, I told myself "she will be fine, she is a strong girl"

I did feel bad for my friend but sympathizing with her from afar was just the best I could do.

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