I was thinking earlier today about someone from my past. She was a bartender in South West Side (I’ll call her L) in the old area. When I first meet L she was at the bar doing what she does. She had quite a way of doing her job, and just observing her it seemed more like a passion than it did a function of her employment. She had quite a time with the patrons, laughing and joking, serving them with endless energy. At the time I thought it was all about conducting herself in a manner that would make what she was doing believable, but since I’ve learned differently.

Over the years, getting to know L better, I found out that this lady was just full of energy and she had to just let it out, so to speak. She was very charismatic, seemingly high on life. She was always very “up”….full of energy, always on the go, the lady just didn’t stop until somebody said “That’s it. Game over.” Then she would sleep for hours on end, until it was time to get up and be “up” until the next time someone said, “Stop”. I suspected at the time, not knowing her that well, that it had to be some sort of a chemically induced high….whether it was drugs or alcohol or whatever, I didn’t know.

L was a blonde headed, heavier set gal. She didn’t always look healthy. It was probably a lack of sleep, or some other deprivation going on. Not seeing her all the time, it was hard to know what was really going on, but during the times that we saw each other (not in a ‘dating’ sense, but in the sense of being at the same functions, or seeing each other at the bar) I could tell that something wasn’t quite right. She didn’t look healthy, like something was wrong, physically. I was concerned about L, in a brotherly type fashion.

About 2-1/2 years after I first met L, my work moved me away from the area. It was about 6 months after I had moved away that I found out that she had been found in her apartment, suffering from a diabetic coma. She had been there, they think, for upwards of 24-36 hours before she was found. She was taken to the hospital where she was hooked up to all the equipment….IV’s, all kinds of tubes sticking out of here and there, dialysis for kidney malfunction. The doctors told me that if they didn’t get a liver for her, she may have 6 months or so to live. It was at this time that our friendship really blossomed. It is really something when someone that you care about is facing death. It is really amazing to me, the bells and whistles that go off, that alert you to the fact that, my goodness, this friend that I have, may not be here very long. I need to communicate with them, correspond with them…something. It’s impossible to be there all the time when they are in the hospital, because of work and other responsibilities. So we started corresponding by phone, basically on a twice or three times a week schedule.

As time went by, her liver started regenerating itself. The doctors were absolutely amazed at the progress she had made in such a short time. I can’t tell you how glad I was. It was, I believe, this time of trouble that we both realized the uniqueness of our friendship. It was like we were friends, but we didn’t talk that much or have that much interaction. We were more just social friends. But then, bang, boom, you’re faced with something like this and it changes everything. L got out of the hospital and she had a pretty good network of help, to help her get better. When she was able, she came down to NW LA to visit us. When she arrived, I was on the road traveling for work. When I got home, L was there, sleeping on the couch. I could not believe my eyes. This lady was absolute skin and bones. Major visual shock, seeing her lying there. She couldn’t have weighed more than 75 pounds. I was like, this can’t be L……she was a woman who weighed 230-240 pounds the last time I saw her. It was really something. Getting to see her was very special. We had been talking and writing and really getting to know each other a lot better. While she was there, we really had a good time…watching movies, putting her on the horses and leading them around…she was limited as to what she could do…..we took her to the pond to go fishing. Even though her health problems had taken their toll on her body, I could see the energy and zest for life that I first knew in her, returning again. She was becoming the old L.

Over the next couple years, as she got better, she put on some weight and actually started looking healthy again. That’s when everything started going absolutely crazy. My wife was not handling this friendship at all. She wanted L to come out and visit, but when she would, she’d be mad at L….because we were friends. If we talked on the phone, even when my wife was sitting right there, she’d get mad. If either of us sent an email to the other….basic, generic emails, even jokes and stuff, my wife would get mad. And our phone calls were always “conference calls”….I was on one phone, my wife on the other, and L on the other end of the line. So here comes the big crash a few years later…my wife and I divorced and that basically ended the friendship between me and L. Why, you ask? Because my ex wife and L are sisters. Yes….my wife was jealous of me being friends with her sister. But that is not the issue that I want to speak about. The issue is invisible lines.

What I mean by that is that when you start a friendship, no matter who the person is…whether it is a male-female friendship or male-male friendship….it is irrelevant because the old term “shit happens” really comes into play when you can’t see the invisible lines. When you become friends with someone, whether they are your own immediate family, your spouses family, friends of the family, ex-friends of the family…whoever they are, why does the friendship have to end? Just because one relationship ends, why do friendships have to suffer? It is very frustrating. Does this mean that it was not truly a friendship? Does it mean that it was only an acquaintance based on matrimony? I really don’t know the answers to these questions, but I remain frustrated anyway.

The last time that I talked to L, was after my divorce and she said it would be too difficult for her to maintain a friendship with me because of my ex wife. I can honestly say she didn’t want to end the friendship, but just knowing the ex wife, it would have been literally impossible for her to remain friends with me. I don’t know what happened, but a couple years later, I received a wedding invitation from L. I would assume it was sent on purpose, not accidentally. I didn’t go to the wedding….for obvious reasons….my ex wife would be there. To this day, I often think of L and how she is doing. I wonder all the time how her marriage worked out, how her health is. I just wish we could talk.

So what of these invisible lines? Are they truly invisible or are they just something that invade our lives? Or are they something more? How does one overcome them? How many friends do you currently have that are acquaintances of family by marriage? I know people right now who are friends and “relatives” in a sense, and yet they have both said that if something happens with the relative part of the scene, they will be done as friends…they will not be able to be friends after that. All because they don’t want to betray their sister, their brother, their father, their mother, whomever. Is this right? It doesn’t seem fair to me.

What do you think?