In the beginning, Linda and I were friends perfectly suited to one another. I came from a long, pathetic line of givers and she came from an equally long and even more pathetic line of takers.

            Our relationship started right where my needy generosity fed her generous need. The Devil dressed up like Jesus one afternoon and introduced me to the person who would eventually eat every solid I had to offer and guzzle every ounce of liquid I could spare.

            It took ten years for me to finally show Linda my empty cupboards, my well that had run dry. And on the day that happened, instead of offering me a much-deserved apology, or even a half-hearted thanks, she walked away and never looked back. And I didn’t watch her go. I simply walked back inside my home, closed the door and locked it. I’d just unloaded a decade full of unspoken demands and impossible expectations to which nobody smart, especially not an intelligent woman like me, should cling. That’s what stings the most about this story. I should have known better.

            Takers like Linda, people who have never known anything but that which others give them, are skilled at looking like abandoned kittens upon first meeting. But once they discover you’ll put out a bowl of milk every morning, they’ll reveal their true lion selves. They’ll start demanding fresh meat, and they don’t care where you get it, as long as you show up with the finest of cuts. And the first morning you show up empty-handed, with neither meat nor milk, you’ll see that kitten-turned-beast open up her gaping mouth to reveal the sharpest fangs you can imagine. And I don’t care how Christian you are, you’ll regret the day you bent over to pat that pitiful, helpless kitten in the first place.

            The minute I discovered that Linda was practically without friends or family who were willing to help her, I should have headed for the hills. I should have picked up my needy, Christian, little do-gooder self and moved on to some other pool, one that was less murky and threatening. But I didn’t. I stayed in the trenches, and allowed Linda’s sad and hopeless story to unfold itself around me like some sort of intricately folded Origami creature. Before I knew it, I was a willing, major player in her drama. What I didn’t realize for a very long time, is that I was just one of a long line of characters, former friends and fed up family, who had also emptied their pantries and hearts on her behalf.

            It took me awhile to see that Linda had chosen much of her lot in life all by herself. And once I started to figure this out, once I started to see just how wide she could open that cavernous mouth of teeth, I started to feel frightened and trapped by the very woman I’d championed, the woman whose story I threw upon my back like it was my own.  

            I carried Linda’s sad little tale around with me like a heavy load. And every time something good came my way, some good fortune of even the smallest consequence, I couldn’t allow myself to enjoy it. Instead, I compared my bounty to her absence of it, and ended up wallowing in and succumbing to her sad existence, which always seemed devoid of hope or promise because that’s how she wanted it.