When Friends Step In

You know, I think I might be on the verge of truly hating summers. Not so much for its heat, but rather for the pure amount of crap that goes down each time the sweltering season arrives. This streak started two summers back and already it seems as if it might decide to keep with its new found tradition and come to torment the unfortunate. At the moment I'm not angry but the closer it gets the more anxious I become - nervous perhaps...

Here's a question for any who feels they could answer or even add their own opinion. If you have a really close friend, the kind of friend who you'd do anything for no matter what. And she is in a bad situation and finally decides she's had enough and is going to do what is necessary to change her situation. Her solution might not be the best and you are terribly worried about her but there is nothing you can do to help. Then she does finally tell you what you can do to help her and it turns out that you are to be helping her do what it is that you are most worried about her doing. You are afraid to lose her yet it hurts to see her in so much pain. You first make up excuses as to why you can't help her and then you finally break down and tell her you've lied and you don't want to help because you are afraid, afraid of being without her. She gets angry and marks you as a selfish person and wants nothing more to do with you. Her friend agrees that you are selfish beyond humanly possible and thinks it is totally right for that person to cut herself off from you. The person telling me this suddenly asks one of those rhetorical questions which only required a nod or some form of agreement from me, which she thought she was sure to see. Utterly shocked she was that I sympathized with the concerned friend. "Sympathized" being the operative word here. I understand how she must be feeling. I put myself in her place and thought of it as if it were my closest friend in her friend's place (la gadr Allah!). It would probably kill me to allow her to do such a thing but it would probably - actually I Know it would hurt even more to see her suffering. But then that is just how I'd operate, and maybe this girl really can't bear to be without her friend, or the thought of losing her overshadows the fact that her friend is suffering and she feels it more important for her to remain in that situation so that she remains with her rather than going with her alternative. I got a weird look when I tried to explain this to the one telling me about these two. She sees no justification whatsoever and feels that the concerned friend is likely to turn into a liability. She went on a tirade about friends taking liberties that aren't theirs to take and overstepping boundaries. Made me think of some of the things I've taken the liberty to do in the name of being a person's friend and it makes me wonder what is considered the limit to how much a friend can step into another's personal affairs without it crossing over into being repugnantly wrong?? For my own role in this whole affair I'm starting to have doubts and wonder if I am doing the right thing or even if we put right or wrong aside... maybe there is an alternative that I should have come up with, or should have suggested or something other than what I am doing.

I'm deeply considering joining volleyball at uni and taking full advantage of the serious exercise equipment they have in our sports complex. With the way things are headed, I'm going to need all the happy hormone I could muster up to get me thru this summer.