Shocking

I had a friend. Well, I have a few friends, but this story is about a friend and I that parted ways.

Our friendship started when we worked together at Eaton's in Winnipeg, Christmas 1991. She was a Lauder girl and was assigned to work with a few of us in a standalone shop in the mall, called "Eaton's Soap & Scent Shop". She was one of those gorgeous girls who had the perfect hair, perfect smile, knew exactly how you should apply your make-up and was earning her MBA to boot. So basically, she was not only beautiful, but smart too!

We had lots of fun working together, I learned a few good things from working with her. I had been laid-off from my Assistant Manager position at Cineplex Odeon. It was good to get other working experience and to see if I would like to work in retail as it appeared that I would be needing a new job soon. Well, after Christmas, I was offered my old job back at Cineplex, which I was more than happy to take. I would often go back to visit my friend at the Lauder counter and in turn she would stop by the cinema with her Hubby to catch a flick.

Fast forward a year and a half... It was spring 1993 and our family had moved back to Ottawa, I was still at Cineplex and enjoying being home. Then, I got a phone call from this friend in Winnipeg, she was moving to Ottawa! I was thrilled. I got myself prepared to help her find an appartment and orient her with the new city. Which I did! I found her an appartment, took her on endless tours of the city, invited her to join my friends in the clubbing circuit, had her for family dinners, we really had lots of fun. Her husband finally joined her in Ottawa and I was able to help him adjust to being an outsider in a new city ( he was not adjusting well, and I knew exactly how he felt).

The next spring (94), I took my first trip to Mexico with her and her hubby. And that is when I learned that you never know your friends until you go on a trip with them. She was nasty!!! Although I was loving Mexico, I was certainly not loving my traveling companion. And then she got a tad bit of heat stroke and whinned like a baby for the last two days of our trip and our ride home. We continued to hang out, but I felt a strain on our relationship as I now knew what she was really like and all I could see was that she was really fake and used people to get what she wanted. I also didn't enjoy the fact that when we went out clubbing, her main goal was to see how many guys she could pick up and dump by the end of the night (yes with her Hubby waiting at home, if he only knew).

Canada Day rolled around and I had orchestrated plans for about 30 of us to get together at a club downtown. Apparently she was a little upset that I didn't check with her to see if this was OK. And when I got off the phone, I just knew, I would never speak to her again.

I have seen her around town a few times over the last 10 years and her Hubby worked at the same company I did before the lay-offs started. She hadn't appeared to change, she seemed the same. Then, yesterday, I saw her! Oh My Word!!! Of course it took three sightings to be sure it was the same person, and confirmation from my sister. The only way I could describe it, would be to say that she looked like perhaps she had been doing some hard core drugs. Her once beautiful brown hair, was bleached blonde and frizzed up and stringy. Her once perfect complextion touched with the latest hues from Esteé herself was pale and sallow, with the most hideous coulour of eyeliner possible for a bleached blonde.

I am not one to knock someone when they are down, nor am I one to judge another. But, for some sad reason, I felt a little better about myself yesterday. This is a girl who used to give me flack because I didn't use brow powder everyday on my eyebrows (good thing I never told her that I didn't pluck them!). Who used to call me up and suggest what I should wear to work that day. The same one who thought I wasn't worth something because I didn't have a man (which was by choice at that time). So, is it wrong that I walked a little taller away from her yesterday? I don't know. I have mixed feelings about it really. On one hand I feel sad, so sad for her, but on the other I feel good knowing that I am still the same person and that I never let her change me.