Post #171 - Friendships In Lockdown

Yes, it's Wednesday, 10th June 2020 and the UK is still locked down.  There are racial tensions erupting seemingly everywhere and the whole world has gone stir crazy.  For a person with Asperger's this is a very difficult thing to cope with - for example, I'm never really sure how to react and I'm finding that people's particular quirks are really getting on my nerves.  Here's an example:

I have a friend, I've written about her before, but let's call her Mary for ease of use.  She's a really good friend and I've known her since my late teens.  Now Mary almost certainly has OCD, but I don't believe that she thinks that she's got any form of mental health condition and is, quite frankly, rather dismissive of people who do.  Mary lives alone and is long-term single, in fact, she bought a three bedroom mid terrace house without telling anyone about it - she announced it as a fait accompli.  There's a very secretive side to her personality and she rarely, if ever, allows anyone to scratch the surface.

She's been visiting my house on a Saturday every six to eight weeks or so to chat, eat pizza and generally watch my 55in TV which boasts access to Virgin TV Cable, Amazon Prime Video and NowTV (previously I had a Netflix subscription.)  The trouble is that I'm getting really resentful that she cannot or will not reciprocate.  She goes on two to three expensive foreign holidays per year but hasn't furnished her house at all - her TV is tiny and sits on one of those foldable TV dinner tables making it unstable and is positioned so far away from the sofa, it's very difficult for me to see.  She's lived there for nearly seven years now and has done absolutely nothing to the place, it literally echoes because there's so little furniture in it.  As you can imagine, it's a very awkward place to visit - I get stress neck because she's so starchy and formal to be around.

She attended a cookery course last year and instead of starting with the basics as one would expect - omelette, boiled egg etc, she's jumped straight in with complex desserts and they are, without exception, bloody awful.  My husband and son both have a gluten intolerance so I don't really get to eat the full range of desserts that a greedy person such as me would like and it was always her chosen role to bring around a supermarket dessert.  Now she presents me with her home-made concoctions and they are pretty inedible - the only thing of note was the Tiramisu, but because she wanted her bowl back immediately I had to upened it into one of my dishes and it all went gooey.  She's been leaving home-baked goods in my porch, along with magazines and I'm not a fan - I even feel like my home is being invaded and I don't want to lie and say that they're nice because she'd bring around more, nor do I want to discourage her from cooking in general.

So, that's my dilemma.

Post #76: Friends (Not The TV Show)

Yesterday afternoon and evening one of my (few) friends came over, let's call her Sarah for the purposes of this blog.  She tends to visit every six-eight weeks or so - the process is always the same: she brings over back copies of Red magazine in exchange for my old Esquires (we both get them free as part of our bank account benefits.) Sarah brings dessert and a bottle of wine, always purchased from Asda. We drink tea, make polite conversation then switch the TV on.  Sarah, who's long-term single moved out from the sanctity of her parental home in her late thirties and now, three years on, she's still not upgraded her bed to a 4ft 6in double or even a 5ft King Size (ooohhh) and remains loyal to her 2ft 6in small single divan.

I think that Sarah was secretly gutted that I'd downgraded the Virgin Cable TV package since her last visit because, quite frankly, we weren't watching 90% of the content and it was a waste of money.  Oh well, it's my life.  I did get the distinct impression that she disapproved of my current lack of employment and the fact that she rises at the (ungodly) hour of 05:30 every morning is the only suitable life choice for the working woman (she's made many a disparaging comment about working parents in her time ...)

The thing that did make me laugh was her tales about her having to undertake excessive lawn mowing in the back and front gardens of her terraced property(!) and the fact that she refuses to place anything in the council-provided recycling boxes, choosing to recycle via the bottle bank network(!) whilst out and about. It's fair enough if you're single, but purrrllessseeee?  Yes, I know that I shouldn't be unduly judgemental and maybe, just maybe she shows traits of OCD, but would never admit it, nor seek any suitable support to address the condition, which isn't the way that I'd choose to live my life, but when's all said and done, I'm a completely different person.