Youtube link to audiobook of Chapter 5 and the rest of the book!

Chapter 5

Friends are like fiddle strings, they must not be screwed too tight
English Proverb

From:

Subject:  3.1415 … infinity …

To:

“Asu49991 could take its place alongside others in a new class of small molecular compounds that selectively destroy cells with abnormalities.” –Robert Solomon, Ph.D.

That’s some funny stuff. Sounds like your brother’s had a breakthough. Hey, does he know that you have a friend named Rutherford who hasn’t showered in almost 11 days? 

I’ll speak with thou later.

Rutherford

Lori decided to pay her first visit in a long time to Angela, who was residing in the cramped attic of her parents’ 1925 Colonial along with her four de-clawed and neutered cats. She was led up a long flight of wooden stairs that guarded a corner of an unheated garage, and that led to a small A-frame room with nothing but Angela’s four-post bed and a dresser propped up against a window. A lengthy, narrow crawl space, filled with rumpled clothing and linen, led from the attic into the bedroom Angela’s sister had grown up in. Her parents were just a yodel away in their master bedroom down the hall.

Lori had met Angela the year before at school during a college theater production of The Pirates of Penzance, in which they both had been allotted minor parts. In the backstage dressing room one evening, several hours before their first rehearsal, Lori had found the raven-haired, buxom Angela sobbing loudly into the silky scarlet sleeve of a costume hanging on a nearby rack.  While trying to console her, Lori learned that Angela was devastated over not having landed the role of Mabel, and that she had always been the star of every play she had ever acted in since the age of six and a half. And how dare this particular troupe overlook her vast experience in theatre and hard-earned credentials- which arced back to her elementary school days for heaven’s sake- in favor of someone Angela knew was far inferior in terms of vocal projection, demeanor, and overall onstage presence? 

Perhaps it was her brazen sassiness made Lori feel instantaneously spiritually and intellectually connected. Perhaps it was the things Angela said and the amazingly open way that she said them that spoke directly to Lori, and that made Lori want to know more of her.  Lori didn’t know why, exactly, but she felt an instant kinship.

“So Lori,” Angela said, shutting the door to her closet-sized bathroom to keep the cats from wandering in. “You’ll never guess what station I’ve been assigned to.”

“Belchertown.”  

“Springfield Regional Broadcasting Network just took on five new local clients, Belchertown being one of them. They’ve got me doing their midday news.” She walked over to her bed and sat on its edge. “Take a seat,” she said to Lori, pointing to a rattan chair perched against a wall. “Guess who’s taking my feeds?”

Lori’s heart started to pound.

“That guy Nick, would you believe it? You’re right about him being a flirt.”

“What do you mean?” Lori asked.

“He’s just… so flirty… asking me what I look like, inviting me out to Belchertown… He sounds kinda cute. What does he look like?”

“No one you’d be interested in,” Lori said, feeling the muscles in her neck tense up. She tilted her head from one side to the other and tried to massage the tightness in her shoulders away.

“Did you know that he had a heart transplant? I can’t imagine… Did he ever tell you about that? I mean, that’s some pretty heavy stuff. It’s hard to picture, someone his age, going through that.”

Lori stopped kneading her neck muscles and let her hands flop down into in her lap. She cusped them, and started to make her thumb nails wrestle with each other.

“He said doctors are giving him ten years, plus or minus a few,” Angela said, her voice shrill. “Could you imagine?”

Lori shook her head quietly.

“What’s wrong, Lori? You got quiet on me.”

Lori’s eyes dropped to the floor.

“It is something that has to do with Nick? Lori…” Angela said. “Did you do anything with that guy?”

“Yeah,” Lori said, continuing to stare down at her feet. “But it’s over. I mean, since we stopped working together on weekends, I haven’t seen him. And I haven’t heard from him. And I really don’t care. Or honestly feel like talking about it. If you don’t mind.”

“Well, Lori…” Angela stood up and walked over to her dresser. She picked up a pilled teddy bear and began playing with its paws.  “It’s not like I’m really all that interested or anything like that. It was just flirting. Light flirting. And it’s not like it’d ever go anywhere. Not with someone like him.” She placed the bear back on the surface of the dresser and turned to face Lori. “Hey, come with me. I want to show you something.”

Lori followed Angela through the crawl space leading into her sister’s old bedroom. They tip-toed past the master bedroom where Angela’s mother was sleeping and they headed into Angela’s parents’ living room where a big beautiful parlor grand piano sat to one side of a soapstone fireplace. 

“Listen to this, Lori,” Angela said. “You listening?”

“Ready.” 

Angela played Lori a sweet-sounding tune she had written several days earlier.  Her singing, only slightly off-key, was still beautiful in Lori’s ears.

“I have to tell you,” Angela said. “I feel completely foolish for having sung to you just now. I must have sounded like complete crap. I’ve got this morning frog in my throat, plus I’ve got a little cold … I’m feeling so self-conscious …  like you’re just being polite saying you liked it … Could you even tell that I can, in fact, sing? I sang the song for my dad last night, and it sounded infinitely better …”

“It was one hell of a lot better than anything I could ever do,” Lori said.

“Yeah, but you see, that sounds … like you don’t really think it was that good.  Otherwise, you’d be more enthusiastic.  I mean, if it’s ‘a hell of a lot better than you could ever do,’ that might not be saying much because according to you, you can’t sing or write music at all.  See what I mean? So now I feel even worse.”

“Angela, I can sing a little. I mean, I haven’t had any professional training, but I don’t think I completely suck at it.”

“So what you’re saying … and I promise to drop it after this … is despite my ‘morning throat’ you can at least tell that I have a decent voice and can carry a tune?”

“Yes!”

“Look, I’m sorry to be so needy. I have no confidence in anything right now.  The last time I got together with my coworker Myrna from the news hub and were talking about looks, she said she couldn’t really remember what her first impression was of mine.  She said she figured she thought I was attractive, but that the more she got to know me, the more attractive I became to her.  So … what did I do with that? Interpreted it as she probably thought I was really plain looking or even ugly until she got to know me, and my personality shone through!  I obsessed about it for days… and it’s still on my mind.  I’m telling you, all anyone has to do these days is look at me cross-eyed and I freak out! I e-mailed a priest today asking for some kind of spiritual guidance.  You have no idea how on the edge I feel.”

Lori nodded quietly. 

“I honestly think that you’re more secure than I am, Lori. I mean, I think we’re a lot alike, but I go off the deep end, and you don’t. I’d love to know how you keep yourself ‘sane.'”

Lori smiled, and pressed down on some black and white keys on the far left-hand side of the piano. “Sane?” Lori echoed. “That’s a strong word to use for someone like me.”

“Well, compared to me you’re sane!” 

  Lori laughed. “Maybe I’m just… I don’t know. I mean, Angela, I also get accused of thinking and worrying too much about things. Caring too much about things. Like what people think of me. What I think of them. Wanting everything and everyone around me to be okay all the time.” 

Angela nodded.

  “But … as much as I feel this like … need to always try to make sense of things, and dissect each and every thing that’s going on that’s not sitting right with me… and then try to make everything right…  every so often I need to get outside of my head for fear of being completely taken over by it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I try throwing myself into things. Just about anything I can think of that’ll get my mind off of whatever it is I’m likely to be obsessing over.” 

“I try to do that! I honestly do, Lori! All right- for example, I love to read, so when I find myself getting worked up, I try throwing myself into a book. But then I find myself drifting away, to the point where I end up reading the same page a hundred times! It’s so frustrating, Lori. You don’t know how much it sucks to be me. I don’t want to be like this, but it feels like I can’t help it.”

“You know, I see people out there not giving a flying you-know-what about anything, and I think about how happy those people seem to be, and how miserable people like you and I know we are, and I think… something just isn’t right here,” Lori said. “Maybe the trick to enjoying life is just not taking it as seriously as we both have a tendency to?” 

“I think we just need to lighten the f- up.”

(stay tuned for chapter 6…)

Here is a link to a real-life illustration of a challenging relationship dynamic, entitled “Reeling.”

And here are some other interesting and pertinent links:

DeMars Coaching – YouTube (DeMars Coaching)

Surviving Narcissism – YouTube (Dr. Les Carter)

NARCDAILY- You Are Not Alone – YouTube (NARCDAILY- You Are Not Alone)

Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach Inc – YouTube (Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach Inc)

DoctorRamani – YouTube (DoctorRamani)

Dr. Todd Grande – YouTube (Dr. Todd Grande)

Crappy Childhood Fairy – YouTube (Anna Runkle- Crappy Childhood Fairy)

Donielle Jolie Yanez – YouTube (Donielle Jolie Yanez)