Well, it’s been some time since I posted my story about Eleanor. Since that time, I’ve made the strong decision to step far back from her. Unfortunately, Rita has not. It is causing a bit of discomfort. Rita and I, before we became involved with Eleanor, were two peas in a pod at work. Lunch, etc if you know what I mean. Well, since Eleanor came into our lives, it turned into the three amigos. But now, it seems to be, at least to Eleanor, a competition for “who gets Rita”. Childish? Yes. But she is sick, so therefore, not a mature, rational person.

So, as it stands, Rita knows I love her dearly and she is my heart. But I give her to Eleanor. I will not play this preteen lunchroom game. I will not. Eleanor is an “aholic”. She is an alcoholic, a drugaholic, a foodaholic and a friendaholic. She has no stop sign in her head and cannot put the brakes on anything. She so smothers Rita, who is finding her a bit of an annoyance at times, that anytime you see Rita, Eleanor is not far away. I will not make Rita choose. It is a stupid and childish way to behave. I will not expect Eleanor to step away. Again a childish and stupid thing to do.

So in order to self preserve, it seems I have to, in a sense, be punished for my choice. I must lose the day to day companionship of my dearest friend in order to keep my day “Eleanor free”. Sad. But what can I do. Eleanor seems to have taken this to be a competition and I will not compete. I am who I am. I will always be a dear friend of Rita’s. And she knows this. But until she stops feeling so sorry for this woman, realizes she cannot help her and steps away, this situation will continue. Eleanor telephones Rita, sometimes 4 or 5 times an evening, AFTER spending all day at work with her. She calls her almost as soon as she gets in the door. Rita has stopped answering her calls, but she continues to ring the phone for hours trying to get her.

For instance, this evening, Rita and I attended a wake for the father of a coworker we’ve known for many years, and Eleanor called her on her cell phone three times and left two voice messages. It is typical. Rita says she has stepped back, and she has, somewhat. But not to the extent that I have. I have made a total break. She cannot. I guess in that respect, she and I are very, very different. But Eleanor has become a tattoo on Rita’s body at work. It’s amazing the woman gets any work done. She is always around Rita. But I am not in her work unit, nor am I her supervisor. As I’ve said, the supervisors don’t wish to acknowledge the problem, because they would have to do something about it officially. God Forbid!!

And so, here I am. But today, Eleanor did not have lunch with Rita. She had to “run some errands”. She reeks of mouthwash today. She is binging. So Rita and I have our lunch hour back. At least for the time being.

I find the thought of retirement at 25yrs a goal of mine. I currently have 20yrs under my belt. Now I will be only 53, and that may not be possible. But if the NYS legislature revamps our retirement requirements (which is currently on the table), I may be able to swing it. If I can, I’m outta there!! There are so many other things I’d rather be doing.

Now don’t misunderstand me, I am extremely grateful for this job…. It pays more than the work deserves, I get fantastic medical coverage and generous time off. I am able to get by with my bills and still be able to live in a decent apartment in the boros of NYC without too much consumer debt, which as anyone who’s ever lived here knows, is difficult.  But I’ve had enough. It’s a personal thing really. I know many people I work with that have no intention of retiring even when they reach age and time. They like coming to work. It gives them something to do everyday. They have no outside interests.

But as for me, I have many, many things I could do.  Writing for one. I’d love to make a living writing. It would be liberating to be able to not only do something I love, which I find little time for now, but to get paid doing it. I used to dream about being an artist with a studio that I’d go to everyday and create art for the world, who would then buy it at showings and commissions. It was something I dreamed of. But alas life got in the way of that one, and I didn’t take that leap when I was young enough to have no fear of the attempt. And I never thought I was good enough. Self criticism can be a killer.

But writing came a close second. I’ve dreamed of sitting in the middle of the hubbub of man’s/woman’s  struggle to earn a living and observe, writing about the world as it ran past me. I’d travel from city to city, with laptop, notebook, et al and write, write, write. I always wanted to have a regular column in the Village Voice. Ah dreams. But as I get older, I’ve been thinking about this, daydreaming, more and more. Perhaps my second half of life can be a new beginning. Maybe the Village Voice would consider my writings for a column, maybe. Dreams, dreams, dreams. NYS Legislature it’s all up to you!! Get me the hell outta there!!!

I remember when I was a child in the NYC Public School System, around this time of year; the teachers would have their classes make holiday ornaments. Now being a public school, there were quite a few different religions in any one class at any one time. But whatever our religious practices were, we were asked to make an ornament that reflected our holidays. Each student, with crayons, paper, scissors, glue, glitter, etc, constructed an ornament that reflected our own cultures and religions. Then each of us would get to stand up in front of the class and tell the others about their holiday and what the ornaments meant for us. They were all displayed in the classroom until the Christmas holiday recess, when we got to take them home. Each year when I was in elementary school, we had this yearly ritual. It was a great way to teach each of us about other religions and cultures without proselytizing or preaching. It was great. It made us excited about the holiday season. It was such fun! We learned that there was a world outside our own homes and our own families. I believe it made us a more open and tolerant group of kids. It made us open to new ideas and people different than ourselves.

Civics. Remember civics class? How to live in the world and be good citizens of the world was what we were taught in civics class. We were taught about the world around us and how to treat each other in public and at home. We learned how to address an envelope, how to write a letter, how to answer the telephone. Remember learning about UNICEF and collecting cans of food for the starving children in Bangladesh? Remember watching films of Dr .Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech in assembly? We made posters for National Brotherhood Week. Every year. We planted a tree every Arbor Day.

Now I’m not too naïve to believe that this made us a society of diversity loving, open minded adults. We still were influenced by the adults that raised us and the society we lived in. There were still serious social issues going on when I was a child in the 1960’s. They were turbulent and scary times to be a kid.

But now, those same kids, now adults and parents themselves, have objected to every expression of religious display, have eliminated civics and social studies classes (world studies…. a very watered down version)in the school systems,  and music and art classes have been cut from most school curriculums. Teachers’ hands are tied at every juncture, cutting budgets, overcrowding classes, censoring books, etc. Those same children of the 60’s, the “Flower children”, have eliminated Brotherhood Week, Arbor Day and United Nations Day from the school year. What happened? When did the Flower children turn into such a narrow-minded and conservative generation of people, fearful and judgmental of those cultures and religions different from our own? When did we start raising our children to be intolerant of others? I thought we were the generation that was going to change the world. The generation that was going to show all those generations that came before us, how to live in a world of love and tolerance. What happened to civics class?

I have a friend. A friend with a great deal of baggage. She is a good person. In fact she is a wonderful, giving and generous person. The kind of friend that would be there in a New York minute if you needed someone no matter when, no matter where. A truly nice woman. She has some tremendous problems however. I suppose nothing is perfect, least of all life. My friend, I’ll call her Eleanor for this writing, has an addictive personality. Alcohol is her main addiction, possibly pills in addition( I believe Vicodin or Oxycontin). Previously she had (and still does have) a food addiction, which led to a gastric bypass surgery. She is slowly gaining back her weight despite the surgery. She is not a healthy person. She is only 43.

My closest friend and I have tried to help her. We have spent days and nights worrying about her. We fear for her. My close friend, (I’ll call her Rita), who is about 18yrs older than her is much more involved in trying to help her than I am. She has the gift for that. She has a calming affect. A mothering way. She has a way with seeing the light. But even she cannot help her. Rita’s husband is a drug counselor. So is Rita’s middle son. They have tried to help her also. But Eleanor lies. She is in terrible denial most of the time. And when she does admit she has a problem, she quickly retracts it the next day. She tries to self-rehab. It doesn’t work. She drains us.

Eleanor lies. About everything. It is gotten so bad that anything she says is presumed to be a lie. No matter what. I would say, without exaggeration, that if you asked her what color her underwear is, she’d lie. And she doesn’t remember, so she contradicts herself almost immediately. And so it goes. Day after day after day.

Her skin is blotchy. Her words slur.  On days when she does not smell from alcohol, I suspect she is upbeat and steady because of other reasons. She misses an awful lot of work. She comes up with the most outrageous stories. We refer to her as the Perils of Pauline. Constant drama. Constant emergencies. Constant excuses. Everyone at work knows. Everyone talks about her. She is oblivious. She thinks no one notices. She wreaks from beer. It is coming out of the pores of her skin, when it is not on her breath. (I pulled up behind her at the curb when I was parking my car one morning, she didn’t notice me, and I watched her down two cans of beer before she got out of her car to go into the job at 8:45am).She has been reassigned to a different department, one where her absenteeism isn’t affecting her coworkers directly. This job will not do anything. It is a civil service job. No one will take any official action. The unions are strong. No one will put their careers on the line for her. There is no random drug or alcohol testing. There is no mandatory rehab. We just have to stand by and watch her fall. And unfortunately she will fall hard. When we tried to help her, she became furious. We tried to have our union rep speak to her, off the record. She screamed at her. We tried to have the Chief speak to her, and he has, several times. She denies a problem, and further threatens to get whoever it is that is trying to get her into trouble. She is adamantly denying her problem. She doesn’t think anyone else sees it. She is still in denial. She believes to have things under control. She tries to self rehab time and time again. She’s okay for a few days and then boom! Back off the wagon she falls. Her childhood friends are all alcoholics who never grew up. She is in trouble. She lies about EVERYTHING. She doesn’t remember what she says from minute to minute, so catching her is easy, natural.

Her personal life is a shambles. Her mother passed away several years ago. On her deathbed she made Eleanor promise to take care of her older brother. Her brother the crack cocaine, prescription drug addict. Her brother, the son who struck his mother, mooched off her, stole from her and took her money. The son who she knew beat Eleanor. The son who was in and out of jail. Eleanor took her promise to heart. She takes care of him. Her older brother, who because of his addictions, is considered disabled by the government and collects SSD and Medicaid. She has an order of protection against him, but because of guilt, allowed him back into her apartment, let him use her car (with a revoked license). He violated the order. He is currently serving 6 months in jail. She feels guilty. She has paid for his lawyer, his storage bills, his other expenses while he is serving his time. She has been evicted. Recently. She has no money. Destitute. Rita and I wonder where her money is. She hasn’t paid rent for the past 7 months during the eviction proceedings. She has no bills, other than her car insurance, her cell phone and her cable TV bill. Nothing else. Her salary nets her approx $2000.00 per month. Where is her money? Even if she drank a case of Coors a day, it would only cost her about $15.00 a case.

But by now, she is probably out of annual leave and sick time on the job, and is not getting paid for the days she misses, and the minutes late she is docked when she clocks in. Although she has told us she has about 90 hours accumulated, we can’t imagine how, because she uses her days faster than she earns them. (she accumulates one annual leave day per bi-weekly schedule and ½ day of sick time per same time period.) Of course. Another lie. She has been absent 12 days out the last 15. She will not lose her job. It is extremely difficult to lose a civil service job. Luckily for her.

I’ve decided that this woman is more than I can handle. I love her dearly. And I know this will sound selfish, but I must take a step back. I have to remove myself from her daily drama. I can go on and on. There is so much I have not told you. It would take too much time and too much space. I cannot help her. She feels I am against her. She has told Rita as much, because I have begun to call her on the discrepancies in her stories. Not in a nasty way, just with questions, such as, “I thought you said it happened (another way)?” She perceives me as being untrustworthy of her confidences now. In a way it’s a relief. Rita is still with her. She cannot step back. She has tried. She has cried for her and over her. She has said so many times, how she just can’t deal with this anymore. She has stated time and time again that she is done. But she can’t let go. Rita’s husband is frustrated with Rita. She feels that Eleanor is not her child, and she should not be taking her problems so personally. But she can’t let go. She can’t step back.

I have never met anyone like this before. I have never been so close to someone with so many problems. It is difficult to watch someone you love self destruct. I am not strong enough to be so involved with her. I feel guilty. I feel like I am being extremely selfish. But she is draining the life from me. She is choking my creativity. Her drama is absorbing. Constant. I’m so tired. I have my own problems. I have my own health and personal issues that require my attention. I cannot help her. She is not willing to be helped. So I stand back from the inner circle. Rita keeps me informed about her for the most part, because Rita and I are the closest of friends, and she feels she can share what is happening to Eleanor with me. But I do not reveal to Eleanor what I am being told. I cannot let her know that I know. It will pull me back into her drama. But I worry. I worry and pray that she will not do harm to herself, or God forbid, to anyone else. I worry that she will get behind the wheel one day and get into a horrible accident. I worry that she will hurt herself. I worry that her brother will kill her.

I don’t know what else to do. I have to self preserve. Do you understand what I am trying to say? I’m so torn. I feel like I have failed her. I feel like I am being a hardened bitch. But I cannot do it. Shame on me. It is harsh, but she is not my family. I don’t love her enough to put myself on the line for her. I have people in my life that I would. But she is not one of them. I hope God forgives me. I hope she does too.

“Could anything else go wrong today?” she told herself, looking up to God as she stood on the shoulder of the parkway, hood up, engine steaming, hazard lights flashing. She wiped the sweat that was pouring off her forehead as she drew her shirt up to her face, not caring what she exposed and to whom. It had to be the hottest day of the year, she thought silently.

            Her day started with a hurried rush having been up most of the night working on her presentation for a morning board meeting, and falling asleep on the sofa. She missed the alarm when it rang on the table next to the bed, waking up fifteen minutes before she should have been leaving for work. Rushing through her shower, she quickly dressed and hurried into the kitchen to down her glass of orange juice. Drinking too fast, she quickly choked, coughing up her juice down the front of her shirt. Sigh. Changing her shirt, she grabbed her purse and ran out the front door. She was late. She was very late.

            The morning traffic was a nightmare. And as she edged her way through the bumper to bumper traffic, trying to sip her coffee between the stop and go, she sighed. What happened to that carefree young girl she used to be, living each day to its fullest? When did she turn into this stressed out, middle-aged, worrisome woman who was now trying to rush to a job that was barely paying her living expenses? As she worked her car through the traffic, she reminisced about her younger days, losing herself in her thoughts. “Snap out of it!” she scolded herself out loud. “Get a grip on reality!” she shouted.  “Those days are long gone so get over it!” she yelled. Sigh. She knew she needed to snap out of it. She was spending too much time dwelling on yesterday when she needed to look toward tomorrow. She knew it was crushing her spirit.

            And so she plowed forward through rush hour traffic, finally making it to work. She parked her car and quickly ran to the office. She glanced at her watch and knew the meeting had already begun without her. As she entered her office building, the security guard warned her that her boss had already called down to the desk asking whether she had entered the building yet. She nodded and ran as fast as she could into the elevator and up to her office. As she entered, everyone she passed warned her that the bosses were looking for her, as they stood shaking their heads with pity. She really didn’t need to hear it. She dropped her things at her cubicle and ran toward the conference room, stopping at the doors to adjust her clothes and take a deep breath. She walked as calmly as she could through the doors.

            The meeting stopped. All eyes looked to her as she entered the room, begging forgiveness and making excuses. No one smiled. As she approached the front of the room, ready to proceed with her presentation, a cold feeling came over her as she suddenly realized she left her presentation on her desk at home. A bead of sweat appeared on her brow followed by hundreds more as her heart began to pound uncontrollably. She had rushed out so quickly this morning that she had forgotten the presentation she had spent all night working on. The room grew silent. All eyes were looking toward her. Her bosses were waiting for her to begin. She felt sick. As she opened her mouth to speak, as she tried to explain, she vomited. All over the conference table in front of her. All over her boss’s Brooks Brothers suit. All over her job.

            As she rinsed her mouth and washed her face in the ladies’ room, she looked up at the woman staring back at her in the mirror. She noticed the lines on her face, the grey in her hair, the sadness in her eyes. What happened to her? Where did the years go? How long has she looked like this? And as she stood there staring at herself, the door opened and a look of pity quietly summoned her to the boss’s office. It was time. Walking past each cubicle she tried not to look at the faces staring at her, tried not to listen to the whispered pity, tried not to acknowledge when a hand reached and touched her arm. She walked down the aisle trying to hold her head high, feeling as if she was walking to an execution. It hung heavy in the air. She was waiting for someone to yell “Dead man walking”. It was all that was missing from the moment.

            As she anticipated, her boss fired her that morning. She packed up her belongings as a security guard monitored her, turned in her keys, said her goodbyes and walked out for the last time, holding her little carton of personal belongings. She got into her car and sat there for a time, tears rolling down her face uncontrollably. There was no one to call. She had no one to tell. She sat there alone. Wiping her tears, blowing her nose, she composed herself and started the car. It was 11:30am. She headed home.

            And so, as she stood on the shoulder of the parkway, halfway home, car overheated, she thought. “What am I doing here?”  She walked over to a shady spot and sat down under the trees that lined the shoulder of the road, waiting for her car to cool down. She thought again about that young girl she used to be. That carefree, happy girl she once was. And as she reminisced, it hit her, “What was keeping her here?” She has no job, no ties that bind, no one and nothing to keep her tied to this life. A smile came to her face. Her eyes brightened as her mind awakened to her possibilities. She had an epiphany. She was free. Free to start again. She stood and looked up at heaven, realizing that God had given her the answer she had been asking Him for. God had thrown open a door for her. It was up to her to step through.

            Her car started, and she headed home to pack her things and leave. She was taking only what she could pack into her car. She was headed for new possibilities. She was headed for new adventures. She smiled. The young girl inside her started to emerge once again. She rolled down all the windows and sang a favorite song from her college days as she sped along the parkway.  Her fear of living dissipated. It was replaced with excitement and anticipation. She felt released and she knew she would be alright.