hear this:

It is one thing to say what I say here. It is another to have it facing me. I can't say that I hate them. They didn't know that they were so important to me, that I spent so much time wailing about their weirdness, wondering what their problem was, deciding that I just simply couldn't deal with them. I also can't say that I like them. For the most part, there is nothing wrong with them. The only thing I could say was that they just were not my kind of people.

At my birthday, my glorious friend Annie had the exact phrase for her, the precise term to describe her nature, the thing that I couldn't find to explain her.

She took three years of my grappling and came up with it in less than ten minutes. I had not told her one bad thing about them, about her, I left that in the past. I did nothing to preface my introduction, I simply let them exist and gave them a chance to be themselves. And that was my friend's assessment and she could not have gotten it any more clear.

The problem is, the problem was, they are his best friends, his kind of people, and I know that they come with him, they are part of his list of people to give xmas presents to, they are part of his life. If I want him, I get them. If I want to spend the rest of my life with him, I will have this relationship to contend with.

Ten minutes in her presence and I get gripped by irrational anger. How this dowdy, unpleasant, unattractive woman manages it is through her flaunting of her intimacy with him. She has always done it, perhaps to reassure herself that he cares for her, to publicly mark her territory, or maybe, just to get on my nerves.

I smile secretly with the knowledge that my friend has pegged her just with one penetrating glance.

Her meddling, her siding with him constantly, her absolute doggedness to be with him is odd, but it is a fleeting thing. He is mine and I am his and there is nothing she can do, no bragging she can claim, and his smile is just for me and she sees that.

She is my nemesis, my enemy, she is someone that I will never trust. She is a fun sponge.