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Edited on Sat Aug-02-08 05:24 PM by Whoa_Nelly
OK...The basics of this story...
Sharing a motel room with a friend,(am calling her S. here), her daughter, daughter's 6-month old baby (S.'s grandson.) We're at a motel for an extended family wedding...too complex to explain, but we're all related to the bride by time, experience, and circumstances that go back over 30 years.
The wedding took place up in the mountains up a very winding road, no crash barriers, all along a beautiful dammed lake.
Anyway, daughter is the Maid of Honor. Bride invited her biological dad to the wedding, even though she had only seen him a couple of times in the past two years after he was released from a long stint in prison. The bio dad is also a raging alcoholic. Manages to show up at the wedding even after being dumped by family members who were supposed to bring him because he wanted to stay at a bar he made them stop at for a few more drinks, and had been rather ugly toward them: He was already super-drunk and being a nasty and foul-mouthed asshole. At the outdoor wedding reception, he takes time to rage at anyone he happens upon...I was personally verbally assaulted by the creep simply by being in proximity to the cousins who had tried to leave him behind before the wedding. This was the first time I had ever seen the guy..I didn't bother to get introduced...definitely something I wanted to stay away from.
All during the day before the early evening wedding, S. and I babysat her grandson since her daughter was with the bride-to-be prior to the weding...no problem...he's a cutie.
S.'s daughter gets roaring drunk after the wedding. S. gets pretty tipsy, too...open bar free-for all. I don't get drunk since someone had to look after the baby. However, I do have another member of the bride's family who was not drinking watch him for a few while I go get S.'s daughter out from under a park bench where she has pretty much turned to liquid booze. With help pf some other friends there, we get her into a bed at the inn where the wedding had taken place. I even help her into the bathroom to toss her cookies...she's totally blasted.
The wedding party had provided transportation to and from the motel with a hired shuttle bus. S., baby and I had taken the shuttle to the inn, so we took it back to the motel about 11 PM. We assumed that her drunk daughter would be staying at the inn up the road, but shortly after we returned to the motel, someone had brought her on down the road, and literally poured her into the motel room. The baby was asleep, but she grabbed him up anyway, had him screaming and crying because she wanted to let him know his mommy had missed him, she loved him so much, and more just drunk gushing. She almost dropped him as she was tossing him around. I took the baby from her, her mom talked her into getting out of her clothes and into bed, and I got him a bottle that was already made. Pretty quickly everything settled down.
S. and I go outside for a few minutes for a smoke. She says she's going to go party with the other wedding party members staying at the motel, and I said I was going to go to bed. I went inside, was tired, and fell asleep pretty quickly. Next thing I know, the baby is screaming like it's being hurt--he had woken up and wanted another bottle. I look at the clock...it's just after 1 AM. The daughter is not waking up...she's totally passed out and oblivious. She's lying on top of the bed in just her underwear and bra. I go get the baby, and, in a sleepy stupor (and myopic, too...am near-sighted) am trying to think if there's another bottle somewhere.
All of a sudden, from the partition side of the room, some guy steps out wearing nothing but a pair of half-zipped jeans. He's telling me to make the baby shut up. I am pissed, all the while alarm bells and sirens are screaming inside my head.
(I always get mad before I get scared..life-long reflex with me.)
"Who the hell are you?!??", I yell at him. He then says, "Give me the baby." I tell him to shut the fuck up. At first I think it's the daughter's (baby's dad) meth-head boyfriend. Then I realize it's the bride's bio dad. I shake the daughter for about two minutes..baby is still screaming...I want to know how many scoops of formula to make a bottle...she cracks her eye open, says, "Four scoops," and passes out again. Meanwhile, the asshole bio dad, is on the room's couch lying down...he's also obviously wasted, but also just as clearly a fucking asshole for having yelled at me. I am now very pissed off.
I make a bottle, zap it in the wave, get the baby settled down by his mother, then turn on the asswipe. He looks at me, then gets up to walk by me to use the bathroom. I say, "What room is S. in?" (I'm being tough..I don't know this guy from shit, had only first ever encountered him at the wedding.) He replies, "This is S.'s room", like I am stupid. I say, "You goddam fucking idiot! I know what room this is. What room is S. in right now?" "Oh," he says, "It's on the other side of the motel."
I wait until he gets out of the bathroom, and gets back on the couch. I grab my jeans and a top, change quickly in the bathroom, and then go looking for S. I find her outside another room. I ask her what the fuck is that creep doing in our room. She says, "No other family members would even give him floor space to sleep on, so I said he could stay in our room." When I asked her why she didn't ask me if that was okay, she replied, "You were sleeping, and besides I already made a bottle for the baby in case he woke up. It's in the fridge.", all the while acting like it was 1) my responsibility to look after her drunk daughter, and her grandson, 2) I was pretty stupid to not agree with her, and 3) what was the big deal of having a drunk ex-felon STRANGER sleeping in our room, even though no one else would even talk to the guy, much less allow him space in which to sleep in any of their rooms. Even S. didn't know him, and had only met him that evening at the wedding, too.
By now I'm thoroughly pissed off. I go back to the room, make coffee, eat a banana, start packing my stuff up. The drunk daughter comes out of her blitzed coma, and gets up and off the bed. She's falling out of her bra, is wearing thong underwear, and begins stumbling by the bio dad lying on the couch watching her. I could tell she wanted the bathroom, but she was headed the wrong direction. I turn her around, lift up the bra cups to cover her up, and steer her the toward the toilet area. She uses the toilet, then stumbles back to bed and promptly passes out again..hell, she probably wasn't even aware she had gotten up at all.
So, about 15 minutes have gone by since I confronted S. at the room on the other side of the motel. I'm packed, have had two cups of coffee...it's now almost 2 AM. S. comes from where she had been partying, catching up with me as I was returning from taking my suitcase to my car. She follows me into our motel room. The first thing she does is open the little fridge there and says, "See? I told you there was a bottle ready." I have no reply to that, and walk on by her. I gather up the rest of my loose items into a small box I had brought. S. asks me what I'm doing. I tell her I'm leaving. She asks me why. I tell her I am very upset about all this. She then picks up my pillows that I'd brought, and follows me out to my car as I carry the box. She then proceeds to tell me that everyone is out looking for M., the brother of the bride's stepfather, because he said he was going back to his room, and his mom said he hadn't returned, and everyone was very worried...M. is about 38 years old, and I'm thinking, this is ludicrous...not one word to me, not one apology from S. about what had happened in our room with the baby, daughter, and the bio dad. I just say, "Then, I hope he is found." S. doesn't seem overly concerned that I am about to drive down a twisiting mountain road, middle of the night in pouring rain, and it being Memorial Day weekend to boot.
I drive out of the motel parking lot, get about 1/8 of a mile down the very dark road, all the while thinking there could be a drunk on this road, I am completely unfamiliar with this road, I could hit a deer, it's pouring rain, and I would have to drive around the winding lake edge, and am still pretty shaken up about all that had happened in the past hour. So, I turn around, go back to the motel, and park near the forest edge far away from the rooms. I decided I would wait it out until the rain stopped enough...and it finally did...around 5:30 Am just when the sky was lightening with dawn. I drove home, still freaked out about all that had happened, upset and dismayed that someone I considered a friend for over 30 years would be so careless and callous not only with me, but with her daughter and her grandson.
I decided that I would wait until S. called to see what she had to say for herself about all this. She finally called two days later, left no message, and I wasn't home when she called. She called again about three weeks later, left a message about her other daughter, talked about some inane stuff, and hung up. She called again last week, two months after all this happened, stating she had no idea why I stopped talking to her because I never answer my phone for her (this last time she called, I was having a Bunco party, and was letting all phone calls go to message.)
She has NO IDEA??????
A couple of friends think I should write her a letter or email, and tell her why I have been waiting for some sort of acknowledgment that she chose to be so careless to the point that it freaked me out completely, and stunned me that she could be that callous and loose about not only my personal safety, but also her daughter and grandson's welfare. But, I have to admit, I have not really missed this friendship, even though it's been a long one. S. can be obnoxious, has said mean and petty things to me, about me, about my son in the past. It really takes a lot to make me feel angry toward anyone, and for the most part have chosen to let most of what she says roll off shoulders like water on a duck's back. I have been involved with her ever since she was five months pregnant with her first child, took in that child to live with me for several months when I caught her beating her with a wooden spoon, helped her out with her kids over many years in many ways, and been there for her through her marriage to (now ex) husband who's an addict, and more. Surprisingly, she's a government employee, and supervisor of her customer service department at a local Navy base...has had the job for over twenty years.
But, even though I haven't really missed her, it obviously does bother me that she has no idea why I haven't talked to her since the wedding in May. (I think she's being passive-aggressive, and using denial of some kind about all this.)
I am tempted to write her, and tell her, but I also know that whether I do this or not, I am done with her...friends do not treat each other the way she has treated me, and this last event, albeit, a major one, pretty much has set my mind that I can do just fine with the real friends I know I can trust.
So, Lounge.
What would you do?
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