Dear Sars:

I love reading The Vine, and I’m hoping you might be able to offer some of your characteristically clever and blunt advice.

A little background: I feel that my friendship with T has reached its expiration date. He was one of my best friends in college, the kind of friend with whom I could talk about absolutely anything. Since then, it seems like we’ve grown in very different directions. We’ve made really different choices as far as careers and relationships go, which would be okay, except that he seems to feel his are more valid, not just for him, but generally, because his career is his calling and his fiancee is his one true and perfect love. He loves to talk about Big Topics like religion or politics but then gets pompous and absolutist rather than really talking.

I’ve tried to keep in touch, but at some point over the last year I realized I was putting way too much effort into a friendship with someone I don’t really like or respect anymore, because of former fond memories. It makes me sad, and for the longest time I didn’t want to say the hell with him, and I still feel bad about it, but…the hell with him, right? It’s not worth feeling hurt or resentful or pissed — or all three in quick succession — every time we talk.

The problem: He’s getting married next month, and I’m a bridesmaid. I agreed to this almost two years ago because I was still reasonably close with him and his fiancee. Since then, not so much. Frankly, I think they bring out each other’s worst qualities: his pretentiousness, her martyrdom, his controlling tendencies, her perceived fragility. I can’t opt out of being a bridesmaid at this point because it’d cause a huge fuss, and while I don’t like them much anymore, I like confrontation less. Plus it’s not so horrible to smile and bite my tongue for a few days in the spirit of former friendship, right? I figure that after the wedding, we can just go our separate ways, returning phone calls and emails less…and less…and less…

Anyway, now he’s asked if he can stay with me for a few days the week before the wedding. He mentioned this some time ago, but we haven’t talked for two months, and I assumed he’d made other arrangements. After all, he hasn’t had time to see me the last few times he’s been in the area. Frankly, I suspect he’s just too cheap to stay at a hotel. He’s also an extremely demanding and sometimes downright rude houseguest.

So…what’s a proper response to his self-invitation? I guess I can’t say, “No, sorry, I don’t like you anymore, and even if I did, my fiance/roommate absolutely vetoed it because he finds you so obnoxious.” Not with his wedding looming. But T is just rude enough that if I vaguely say, “No, sorry, we’ve made other plans,” he might ask what plans. What’s a girl to do? Should I just invent fake plans for every night of the week and not care if he gets irritated?

Sincerely,
Do I Just Need a Stronger Spine?

I would tell him something along the lines of “we’ve made other plans” or “I’m sorry, that won’t work out after all,” and if he asks what other plans or why not, just smile and say in a kind but firm tone that he needn’t concern himself with that. Don’t explain, or justify yourself; just say you can’t do it.

What’s the worst that could happen — he freaks and throws you out of the wedding? Yeah, that’s awkward, but it probably won’t get to that, and if he gets angry, well, let him; he’s the rude one, and after the wedding, you plan to let him drift anyway. I suppose you could just tolerate him this one last time, but…meh. I’d tell him it’s impossible and let the chips fall where they may.

Hey Sars,

This question is not about a boy. Nor is it about a crazy family member, addiction, mental illness, et cetera. This is regarding the question that keeps me up at night, and that is: How did you figure out what you were going to do with your life? This is not to say that you have written your life path in stone, but assuming that you are content doing whatever it is that you do in whatever place that you do it, how did you come to that place? (Which might beg the question: Are you happy? If so, was it hard to get there? Elaborate, by all means.)

The set-up: I graduated from a liberal arts college last May, then went to a publishing graduate program immediately afterward, then picked up and moved to New York and got a job working for a large trade publishing house. Yay for me, right? This is what I thought I always wanted. HOWEVER, now that I’m here, I’m not sure that this is what I want. Does everyone feel this way early on in their post-graduate lives? I would venture to say “probably.” This doesn’t keep me from wondering how it is that people go about figuring out what will make really and truly them happy. Because honestly, sometimes I daydream about quitting my job and running away.

I guess what this boils down to is that I like the job and the city is okay, but it doesn’t feel like home. Cliché or not, that is the problem, and I’m REALLY concerned that the only place that will ever feel permanent in a comforting way is this dismal little suburb I come from in Washington state. (God wouldn’t be that cruel, though, right?) I’m not stupid enough to think that I am alone in feeling this way, but I am new enough to the game to ask you, oh Sars, how to sort things out when you’ve barely just begun being (shudder) an adult.

Thanks for your help,
Far too young to be this worried

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Dear Young,

I still haven’t figured out what I’m doing with my life. I never would have thought I’d do this for a living; I was trained in poetry, and I worked on a college magazine, but I didn’t have a plan, because nobody in the want-ads was looking for a vice president of snappy comebacks. Still aren’t, dammit.

So I just…did whatever for a while. I flailed around in a bunch of jobs, some of them worthwhile, some of them shitty and soul-killing, and I sat around and talked about my process while drinking beer and not dealing with my creative work at all, and I made bad decisions about boys, but I just kept doing things — taking jobs, going out, talking to people, living my life. And things just kind of came together eventually, because I was working on things with people and then…here we are.

Yeah, that’s really vague, but you just have to keep moving forward, I think, and as you do that, things become clearer to you. You work certain jobs, and you hate them, and that rules out a bunch of work environments and vocations. You meet certain people and discover certain skills, and you pursue them. Things that don’t work fall away. It’s great to have a plan, but…most of us don’t, not super-long-term, and plans have a way of falling apart, too, sometimes.

I don’t think most people sit down, make a list of what would make them happy, and then go after it. You just…find it, or you find the opposite of it and go in the other direction. But like I said, the trick is to keep moving and trust yourself to know what you’re doing, even if you’re confused and make some mistakes. Go after some things you think you want; see where you are. That’s what we’re all doing every day, pretty much.

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O word usage, grammar, and other good stuff goddess,

Have you ever come across someone who describes and item as a “Sophie’s Choice [fill in item here]”? I’ve read the book and seen the movie and I’m just not sure what this means. Does it mean the item makes them sad? That it’s a dark secret? That they had to make an awful sacrifice to get it? That it embarrasses them?

So many choices, not sure which is Sophie’s

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Dear Take The Girl,

[If you haven’t seen Sophie’s Choice, what follows is a central spoiler, so hit “back” on your browser.]

Okay, I don’t remember every detail of the scene although I’ve seen the movie several times, but the upshot is that the Nazi commandant requires Sophie to choose which one of her children gets “selected,” and after a great deal of really upsetting pleading and arguing and wailing on Sophie’s part, I believe the commandant more or less decides to take them both because he’s fed up, so in desperation Sophie tells him to take the girl.

A Sophie’s Choice is a choice that’s so impossible and harmful that it has no up side, no matter how you choose. You hear it used sort of jokingly now, like when someone can’t decide which color to buy a pair of shoes in, but the general idea is that both the choice itself and its effects are horrendously hard to bear. You can read more here.

[8/17/05]

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Tags:   friendships   grammar   workplace