“I know you’re sad, but you don’t have to be so selfish,” she said, demanding dating advice in the middle of my own mother’s wake.
This was my best friend of twenty years. A two-decade-long masterclass in being an emotional dumping ground for a world-class narcissist.
Every one of her minor inconveniences was a category five hurricane, while my actual, life-shattering tragedies were just static she had to talk over. I had swallowed my own grief and anger for years, chalking it up to loyalty and a shared history.
But standing there in a room full of mourners, her stunning lack of humanity was no longer a flaw I could ignore. It was a declaration of war.
She expected me to swallow my grief and cater to her as I always had, but she was about to become the star of a one-act play she never auditioned for, where my voice was the only thing on the script and the final scene was her own humiliation.
The Invisible Anchor: The Daily Tithe
The phone buzzes against the wood of my desk, a frantic vibration that can only mean one thing. Jessica. I glance at the caller ID, my stomach doing a slow, familiar clench. My cursor blinks in the middle of a budget projection spreadsheet that’s already threatening to give me a migraine.
I should let it go to voicemail. I really should. But the guilt is a pre-programmed response, a muscle memory trained over twenty years of friendship. I sigh, clicking the green icon. “Hey, Jess. What’s up?”
“Oh my god, Maria, you are not going to believe the day I’m having. It’s a total dumpster fire.” Her voice is a rapid-fire assault, leaving no room for a response. “So, first, the barista at Starbucks—the one with the stupid nose ring—completely messed up my order. I said *oat milk*, not almond. Does he not know I’m practically allergic? My whole system is going to be thrown off.”
I stare at a cell on my screen showing a thirty-thousand-dollar deficit. “That’s rough.”
“Rough? It’s just the beginning! Then I get to work and find out that Brenda from accounting copied my presentation idea. The one I told you about last week? The one about synergistic market integration? She just stole it. Can you believe the nerve? My boss is going to think she’s the genius, and I’m just… me.”
I close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Jess, I’m really swamped right now. We have a quarterly review and…”
“I know, I know, you’re always busy,” she cuts in, the words a subtle jab. “But I just really needed to talk to my best friend. You’re the only one who gets it. David hasn’t texted me back since yesterday morning, and I’m starting to spiral. Do you think I should text him? Or is that too desperate? Maybe I should post a really hot story on Instagram so he sees what he’s missing…”
The drone of her voice fades into the background hum of the office. I think about my mother. About the call from the doctor this morning. The words “progressive decline” and “we need to discuss next steps” are a cold weight in my gut. I open my mouth to say something, to share even a fraction of this anchor dragging me down.
“Jess, listen, I got some news about my mom…”
“Oh my god, that reminds me!” she bulldozes on, seamless. “My mom called me this morning and spent twenty minutes complaining about her arthritis. It’s like, I have *real* problems, you know? A career, a dating life… I can’t just drop everything because her knee is acting up.”
I go silent. The space I tried to carve out for myself is gone, paved over and built upon in seconds. There’s no room for my mother’s illness in the towering skyscraper of Jessica’s daily grievances.
“Anyway,” she huffs, finally winding down. “I just needed to vent. I feel so much better. Thanks for listening, you’re the best. I gotta run, I have a spin class. Love you, bye!”
The line clicks dead. I’m left holding a silent phone, staring at a spreadsheet that suddenly feels insignificant. I didn’t say a single thing about my life. I was just a receptacle, a human voicemail box. And the worst part is, I feel a hundred pounds heavier than I did before I answered.
The Friendship Tax
Mark finds me staring into the refrigerator later that night, not seeing any of the food inside. He comes up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and resting his chin on my shoulder.
“Tough day?” he asks, his voice a low rumble.
“The usual,” I mumble. “And a Jessica download.”
He sighs, a sound of profound, weary understanding. “Let me guess. A work catastrophe, a dating inconvenience, and a minor consumer complaint, all treated with the gravity of a UN Security Council meeting.”
I can’t help the small, bitter laugh that escapes me. “You forgot the part where she’s the victim in every scenario.”
“Ah, yes. My mistake.” He kisses my temple. “Did you get a chance to tell her about your mom?”
I pull a carton of milk out and shut the fridge door, turning to face him. “I tried. The topic of my ailing mother reminded her of her own mother’s annoying arthritis.”
Mark’s expression hardens just a little. He’s never been a fan of the dynamic. He calls it the “Jessica Tax”—the emotional price of admission I have to pay just to keep her in my life. He remembers the last time she had a “real crisis.” It was three years ago, when she decided to move apartments on a whim. She’d called me in a panic at six in the morning on a Saturday, sobbing because her movers had canceled.
Of course, I’d spent my entire weekend packing her mismatched kitchenware and hauling dusty boxes down three flights of stairs, all while she directed traffic from a stool, complaining about a chipped nail. Mark and our son, Leo, had ended up helping, too. At the end of it all, she’d thanked us by ordering a single pizza and then complaining that pepperoni made her bloated. She never once asked about the big work project I’d had to postpone to help her.
“Maria,” Mark says softly, pulling me from the memory. “This has been going on for years. It’s not a friendship. It’s a service you provide.”
“She’s just… a lot,” I say, the excuse sounding flimsy even to my own ears. “She’s been my friend since we were in our twenties. There’s history there.”
“History isn’t a blank check for bad behavior,” he counters. “Twenty years of taking doesn’t entitle her to a twenty-first.”
I know he’s right. Deep down, in the quiet place I rarely visit, I know this friendship is a hollowed-out shell. But cutting it off feels like an amputation. It feels like admitting failure. So I just lean into his chest, letting him hold the weight of it, and say nothing.
A Dial Tone for an Answer
The next day, the hospital calls. It’s Dr. Evans. His voice is gentle, but the words are sharp, clinical. Mom had a fall. She’s stable, but her cognitive function has taken a sharp downturn. It’s time to talk about hospice.
Hospice. The word lands like a stone in my stomach. It’s the final chapter, the beginning of the end. I hang up the phone, my hand trembling. My office suddenly feels too small, the air too thin. I need to talk to someone. I need a friend.
My thumb hovers over Mark’s name, but he’s in a critical all-day meeting with a client. Leo is at school. My sister is on a flight to Japan for work. My finger, moving on its own accord, presses Jessica’s name. Maybe this time will be different. The news is so big, so undeniably serious, that she’ll have to listen. She’ll have to be the friend I remember, the one who held my hand when I got fired from my first job.
She answers on the second ring, her voice breathless and giddy. “You’re not going to believe this. David texted me back!”
The sheer, jarring dissonance of her tone throws me. “Jess…”
“He sent the *perfect* meme. It was one of those ones with the little dog in the burning house saying, ‘This is fine.’ It’s so our sense of humor, you know? I think this is a really good sign. He wants to get drinks on Friday. What should I wear? The black dress, or the red one that makes my boobs look amazing?”
My throat is tight. I can barely get the words out. “Jessica. I have to tell you something. It’s my mom.”
There’s a beat of silence. I can hear her tapping on a keyboard. “Oh, right. How is she?” The question is an afterthought, a piece of conversational lint to be flicked away.
“They’re moving her to hospice.” I say the word and it feels like a confession.
“Oh, honey, that’s… that’s really sad.” Her sympathy sounds canned, like she’s reading from a script. “Listen, I’m so sorry, but I really have to focus on this David thing. My whole future could be riding on this one date. You get it. We’ll totally talk about your mom later, okay? Send her my love or whatever.”
And before I can process the whiplash of “my whole future” and “your mom” and “or whatever,” the line goes dead.
I’m left staring at my reflection in the dark screen of my phone. There’s no anger yet. Just a profound, chilling emptiness. I asked for a lifeline, and she handed me a dial tone.
The Weight of What’s Real
I leave work early, my half-finished spreadsheet a monument to my fractured concentration. I drive straight to the hospital, the city lights blurring into long streaks of color through my tear-filled eyes.
My mother is sleeping when I arrive. Her face, usually so expressive, is slack and pale against the starchy white of the pillowcase. The room smells of antiseptic and fading flowers. A machine beeps a slow, steady rhythm, the only sound in the room.
I pull a chair up to her bedside and just sit, watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest. This is real. The quiet dignity of her breathing, the network of wrinkles around her eyes, the faint scent of the rose-scented lotion I rub on her hands every day. This is a real crisis.
The memory of my phone call with Jessica feels like it belongs to another universe. A universe of trivialities, of manufactured drama and performative emotion. A world where a text message from a man named David holds more weight than a woman’s life fading away.
For twenty years, I’ve made excuses for her. *She’s just going through a tough time. She doesn’t mean it. That’s just how she is.* I’ve carried the burden of our one-sided friendship like a religious duty. Loyalty, I called it. But sitting here, in the stark, quiet reality of this hospital room, it feels a lot more like self-flagellation.
What do you owe a person who takes and takes and never gives? When does a shared history become a shackle? The ethical calculus is dizzying. I’ve invested two decades. To walk away now feels like admitting that my investment was worthless, that I was a fool for twenty years.
But as I take my mother’s frail, cool hand in mine, another thought cuts through the noise. The most valuable thing I have is my time, my energy, my emotional capacity. And I’ve been giving it away, pouring it into a bottomless pit, while the people who truly matter, the ones who give back without a second thought—my husband, my son, my mother—get the dregs.
A quiet anger begins to smolder beneath the grief. It’s not the hot, explosive kind, but a slow, determined burn. The kind that provides light. The kind that can finally show you the way out of a very dark room.
The Unraveling: The Pressure Cooker
The next few weeks are a blur. Mom comes home, our guest room transformed into a hospice suite with a hospital bed and an oxygen tank that hisses like a small, sad dragon. Our house, once a place of noisy, chaotic comfort, is now hushed, organized around medication schedules and the quiet footsteps of the hospice nurse, a kind woman named Clara.
My life shrinks to a series of tightly managed compartments. There’s work, where I stare at my computer screen, my mind a million miles away, pushing through tasks with a grim, robotic efficiency. There’s Leo, whose teenage angst has been replaced by a quiet, watchful concern that breaks my heart. He makes me tea, helps me with Mom, and never once complains that I’ve forgotten to buy his favorite snacks.
And then there’s Mark. My rock. He handles the insurance calls, the pharmacy runs, the late-night talks when the grief and exhaustion threaten to swallow me whole. He’s the scaffolding holding me up, allowing me to focus on the one thing that matters: soaking up these last, precious moments with my mother.
We find a new rhythm. We read her old poetry books aloud. We watch black-and-white movies she loves. I tell her stories about my day, editing out the stress, focusing on the small, funny details. I am living inside a pressure cooker, the heat and intensity building with each passing day. My emotional reserves are at an all-time low, a barren landscape where only the most essential things can survive.
Jessica is not one of them. She has sent a few texts. *Thinking of you! Hope you’re holding up!* They feel like corporate platitudes, HR-approved expressions of sympathy. They require nothing of her and offer nothing to me. I reply with one-word answers. *Thanks. Fine.* I don’t have the energy for anything more. I don’t have the energy for her.
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