Part of what made the ballet fun was the exaggeration and 'camp' thrown into what is actually more traditional dance. Ballerinas gossiping and arguing and slipping and tripping added the comedic edge to what was an impressive display of dance, which included very tall men en pointe, which was almost frightening.
So the ballet was good. After which all four of us went to this Japanese restaurant by Holborn Station. So far so good, though to keep the story correct, it's sort of important to interject here that everyone had been drinking.
Anyway, dinner was good, though it was clear that MR was pretty toasted. But that was okay, and conversation and things were moving on in the usual random fashion as people dug into their yummy vegetable tempura, really unusual sushi rolls and pieces, and other assorted Japanese goodness.
Then I went to the bathroom.
I sort of wish I hadn't gone to the bathroom, but I really had to pee. MO had already gone and I got down there laughing to myself at the karaoke I could hear coming from the private room that was downstairs with the toilets as well as the clear plastic toilet seats with the colorful fish embedded in them. I was already planning my amusing commentary for when I got back upstairs. I flushed. I washed my hands. I was on my way out the door... when tlsd walked in.
"It's all over, the friendship is over, Australia is over, I can't take this fucking shit anymore!"
What the.... I was very confused. I was still thinking about the fish on the toilet seat. "What? What just happened?"
I could go on to describe each moment of the evening but I think it's better if I cut to the morning when I called MO just to let her know what had happened (I had gotten a text) and also to get the unbiased story (as MO doesn't really know either of them that well). MO said pretty much what I expected. MR went in with some snarky comment about vacuuming to which tlsd responded badly, which exacerbated MR who continued to hammer and escalate the conversation. In MOs version, each statement made didn't have much to do with the one before it and upped the ante until MR was just going off on the cats and how they smell and shed hair and tlsd said, "Well, if you don't like it that much, then move out.", to which MR responded, "Oh fine tlsd, that's a great response. Everything is over, the friendship is over, just make it all over."
Huh. MO was a bit horrified by the whole thing, but at the time put a good face on it. She said obviously there were way deeper issues and problems being dragged up because she could barely follow the venom. I told her that was pretty much the case.
But anyway, after what MR said, that's when tlsd went down to the toilets, and that's when I saw her. And when I was back and she was back, conversation had stopped, because the damage was already done (or so I thought).
All I did was go pee!
So we paid up and got ready to go and MR said she was going to the toilets and that we should go home and she'd see us all tomorrow. MO and I said, "Are you sure?" and she reiterated that we should go on, and she'd see us tomorrow and yes.
So we leave.
Tlsd wanted to wait for her, but that didn't seem like a good idea. First of all, she'd said to go, and secondly, they weren't in any fit state to be together. So both MO and I thought it was a pretty good idea for tlsd to head on home and MR would follow later so they could have some space apart. We had to convince her twice to move on. She kept saying MR didn't know how to get home (though we were close to a tube station and the bus stop, and even if she didn't, it would have been easy to figure out) and also she said to leave.
The whole bus ride home I talked to tlsd about how these situations escalate. About how the living together is tense. About how they don't really reset themselves to 'fine' but more like 'just before the explosion'. And that this was all clearly alcohol fueled and sort of silly and pointless and the best thing she could do was just let it go and not make a big deal out of it.
That's when she got the bad text. MR saying how the friendship was over, how she was moving out tomorrow, how tlsd was selfish and horrible. I thought to myself, how the hell did we get to that from vacuuming? But we were right at tlsds stop so she got off and I decided to call MR myself just to say, calm down, and I thought that text was a bit over the top.
And she was hysterical. And screaming. And clearly upset. Upset that tlsd had left her. Upset that tlsd had told her to move out. And I instantly felt bad because MO and I had insisted that tlsd leave, because MR said so. So I tried to tell her this. I said, "Look, I take full responsibility but MO and I made tlsd leave twice. She wanted to wait for you and was concerned about you but you had said to go and we thought it would be better if you were apart and we made her go, she didn't want to go, and you can't hold that against her, that's our fault."
But she was inconsolable. She was just screaming into the phone. I couldn't understand half the things she was saying actually, but was glad to at least get out of her that she was at least on the bus.
Then I called tlsd. I told her what happened. I repeated my story. I again took responsibility for encouraging her to leave. Tlsd was upset because that helped explain the leap in MRs attitude from mildly upset to wildly upset. But it didn't really fix anything. Because they're both on such short fuses and it doesn't take anything to make it explode. It's just consistent and battering.
And horrible to watch.
I mean really horrible to watch. Earlier in the evening at dinner MR was going on about how she loved tlsd and was so happy they'd been friends for 10 years. And to go from the one extreme to the other, it's sad. It's worse than sad, it's horrible. It's one of the worst things that can happen, when good friendships go wonky. And I hate watching them hammer at each other and fuel the all consuming fire, even when neither of them really want it to happen they can't really seem to stop it either.
It just wasn't cool. Just a couple weeks and they're both away. Just a couple weeks and everything changes. When they're back, MR can look for her new flat, and once she moves out into her own space and new life I firmly believe that things can calm down and get back to normal.
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