To Catch A Snake
When I was 3 years old I was playing alone on our balcony when I saw a jump rope miraculously turn into a green snake and slither across the cemented ground. That's when I knew that I could see and sense things that others could not.
I had the gift of discernment. Fast forward to 2025. According to Chinese astrology, we are living in The Year of The Snake and I have been bitten, I suspect, by a good friend.
I met her nearly 20 years ago on a junior college campus where I took a Statistics course. One day after class I was walking to my candy apple red Mitsubishi Eclipse when I heard a voice addressing me from behind. The voice flagged me down with a bevy of, ”Girl, girl, girl.”
I turned around to discover a woman who was as wide as she was tall. She had dyed blonde hair and gang tattoos all over the parts of her body that I could see. I stopped to talk to her. She asked me my age. I told her. I must have been about 32. She said she was looking for a girlfriend for her son, who had to have been 6 years my junior. I let her know that I was in a relationship but that I was flattered.
The following week our instructor put us in a group together with several other students. We gravitated to each other and would hang out outside of class and group meetings.
The first thing I noticed about Linda was her loud mouth. She always had to be heard and have the last word. What I've learned in life is that the loudest person in the room is the weakest, most insecure person in the room. Let's say she was very insecure. Anyway, I passed the class but she didn't. Nonetheless, we would stay in touch.
Our friendship quickly turned rocky. We had a love/hate dynamic that I found troubling. We would go months without talking. I couldn't stand how competitive she was with me. She had been a teenage drop-out/runaway at 13 turned into a teen mom at 14. She liked to wear a facade of toughness and for the most part I would let her. I really didn't care either way.
We did the on again, off again thing some friends do as if they were lovers. I really grew to trust her because she groomed me to look at her as though she was my consigliere. You know how you get a vibe off someone that they are not cool people to be around? I catch vibes all the time as an empath. So, let me tell you how shook I was to find out that my good friend was not really a friend to me.
I suspected there was something odd about our bond when she got 2 cars just like I had– a Mitsubishi Eclipse and a Ford Focus. Wouldn't that throw up a red flag to you? On some Single Black Female shit, am I right?
I'm a Taurus and she's a Gemini. It's said that we can find harmony in our friendship but I'd have to say Katie provoked the majority of our quarrels. She would turn on me like a vicious, junkyard dog. Truth be told, she was just a mean girl.
During our last hiatus Katie (name changed for privacy) got a body by Stanford Medicine. She dropped 125 pounds and got all the surgeries to remove her flabby skin. She also had her gang tattoos removed. I was happy for her.
I, on the other hand, had picked up 25 pounds since we'd last spoken. I'd gained the weight while caring for my mother in her last days. She was very dejected to hear about my mother's passing. However, as soon as she could she had to point out the irony of her losing weight and me gaining weight. I was like, “whatever.”
I made the choice not to fall into the trap she tried to set up for me. I'm too mature to be jealous of the next female. What I felt was that I was dealing with someone with the emotional intelligence of a goldfish. In The Year of The Snake I found one that I called a friend. I began to hold her at arm's length. This is something I had to do with the contrarian. The thing is that I loved her but I love myself too much to deal with someone I can't trust. Toxicity is not my get down.
I have a gift for picking up vibrations. Katie gave up good vibes until she turns into a transformer. Then hold your hats, folks. In the last couple of years I've been single. Not much to write home about. While we were on good terms, Katie would always probe me for information about my dates. I look at it as a little invasive but I didn't see the harm of sharing these things with someone I considered to be a good friend.
One thing I noticed about Katie that I never liked is the amount of gossiping she engaged in. I should have known that she was spilling my tea as much as she spilled everyone else's.
Her treachery was confirmed to me last week when we fell out for good. It started with a simple text I sent her on what I thought was the day after her latest surgery. I basically texted her, “Tag bitch, you're it!” I didn't think much of it. We curse all the time. Well, she decided she'd get all bent out of shape. She reached deep into her gutter world to accuse me of “opening my legs” to 7 men. I was flabbergasted. First off, I'm grown. I don't report to her. Second, that's a straight lie. And third, we can't all let cobwebs form over our stuff.
I will not use this opportunity to bash her because I was raised to have more class than that. I'll just say she's in no position to judge me. None at all.
So, I find that I must ghost a good friend because she's a snake. I know with certainty that she spread my supposed business in the streets. The best parts of her will be missed. But that Alpha female energy won't be missed.
If there's one thing I learned from Coppola's Godfather saga I would say it would be to keep your friends close but your enemies even closer. I'm still trying to figure out which end of the spectrum Katie is on. Who really sent her my way. Time will tell.
