Goodbye, good friend

When a friend emails you at 8 a.m. on a Saturday, then sends a private message on Facebook, and then texts you to see if you got her messages, you would be inclined to think something important has come up. But logic would suggest if it were truly important, perhaps that friend would just call?

I recently received these alerts of urgency from a friend who was asking that I send her money using Western Union. She wasn't on vacation; she wasn't out of town; she told me she had car trouble and needed $120.00, but would definitely be able to pay me back in just a few days when she received her work check.  She actually went so far as to give me a specific date.

Whether it was my kindness or me being illogical, I called her to verify someone hadn't stolen her phone, and then I agreed to loan her the money. Western Union has significant fees to make money immediately available. Using our credit card to pay for this loan also incurred fees against our account. The total out of our pocket ended up at $155.00.  We confirmed with her that she was okay with this amount when it came time to pay us back.

Four days go by and I am relieved to see her text on the Friday she would be repaying the loan. Until I read her words asking for more money. Uh oh. New job; sick cat; rent due early. We heard excuse after excuse for weeks. Meanwhile, the money had been saved for a vacation to Las Vegas we had planned, but it was now unavailable for our trip. While on that vacation my cousin died, and I explained to my friend the money would really help with costs associated in attending his funeral. But this did not matter to our friend either. She did not care about the reasons I wanted repayment, but she also did not know that those weren't actually the most important thing to me. I needed the repayment in order to remain her friend.


Saying goodbye to less than $200 isn't really the upsetting thing here. It's that I trusted a friend whom I've known a long time. She came to our wedding, she recently left a surprise gift on our porch, and we've had a lot of fun times together at baseball games and bars. She has been a good friend and I feel like I've always been appreciative of that. But now it's time to say goodbye to her.

I guess I could have ignored her texts. I honestly hoped deep down that she really was having car trouble that early Saturday morning, but I also knew better. I could have said that we didn't have the money; or that we didn't want to loan it to her. But I hoped that if I were in a position where I needed to ask friends for money, someone would be willing to help me. I was that someone for her, but I don't think I helped anything. I certainly didn't help us stay friends. No good came of this loan. And now I have to say goodbye, good friend.  Perhaps, we both should have been reminded to "just say no."  I certainly would if I had it to do over again.