Another Reconnect

I have heard, twice now, that an old friend wants to reconnect with me.  She has put the ball in my court by giving her contact information to my mom.  T and I were great friends growing up.  Our families were great friends.  We spent weekends at their families cottage on the lake during the summers.  She had a sibling the same age as all of mine so they all had great friends in this family too.

As the years went by, T and I stayed friends through the teen years even though we went to different schools.  We hung out, went looking for boys, even had our first interracial double dates together... oh the scandal!  lol   I was in her wedding.  She was in mine.  I took her to the hospital when she thought she was in labor with her first child.  I slept with her brother... oh wait, she doesn't know that lol  Basically I'm saying, we were best of friends.

Like a lot of friends you have throughout your life, you drift.  We drifted and then would come back to each other and it was like no time had passed.  We had that sync.  But we'd always drift again.  I blamed a lot of it on her husband.  He did not like me.  Not at all.  I was too weird and he didn't like me hanging out with her.  He even tried to get her to kick me out of the wedding party.  When they started having kids she kept pressuring me about doing the same.  No matter what I said about not wanting to have kids, she did not believe me.  And the more she asked, the further I started to drift.  I had enough pressure from my family in this regard.  I didn't need it from my friends too.  So when my sister in law (at the time) told me she ran into T at a baseball game and T proceeded to grill her about my fertility problems and trouble conceiving, that was the final straw for me.  Since when isn't my word on the matter good enough?  I had no reason to lie.  I did not want kids.  Period.  I stopped trying to reach out to her at all after that and many years went by before we spoke again.

Several years ago, one of her brothers passed away.  I was in the midst of my own deep drama of anxiety, anti-depressants, and days on end crying jags, but I pulled it together enough to make an appearance at the funeral and we promised we'd reconnect and get together.  We didn't.   Not long after that I found out she was getting divorced so I sent her a card with my number and offered to be there for her.  She never called.

Then my father got sick.  I was in a place where I really needed my friends.  I needed them to reach out to me, be there for me.  She didn't.   She didn't call me at all.  Not even once in the whole year long trauma that we endured.  Her brother called my brother often.  Her mother called my mother often.  She never bothered to see how I was.  And it hurt.  It hurt a lot.  Because I tried to always be there for her and she could never see her way to returning the favor.  So I basically wrote her off.  My mom would tell me what she was up to after having talked to her mom, but we have had no direct contact for about six years (I think, which was when I saw her at her brother's funeral).

Which brings us to present day, and she's sick.  It's bad, but she still does not have a direct diagnosis.  But she is very ill and alone.  Divorced, children grown, boyfriend gone, and she is in need of something familiar.  Something she can trust.  And she wants me.  As much as I would like to tell you I went rushing to her side, I can't.  Because I haven't made the decision yet on if I will let her back into my life.  That probably sounds really cold, but I can't always be the one that people run to when I don't get it back.  I'm nobodies fucking doormat or last resort.  And then at the same time, I feel bad.  I feel like I should be there for her when she needs it most.  Does it matter so much that she wasn't there for me?  Do I always have to be the bigger person?  What happens if I don't reach out to her and, God forbid, she dies?   Can I live with that?  Is it just sour grapes or being selfish on my part that I am so apprehensive about contacting her or am I just protecting my heart from more pain?  If the tables were turned would she come to me and does it matter?   That's what I'm trying to figure out.