I am the Ears

She looks at herself in the mirror one more time before exiting the house. I follow behind her without thinking as we get into her car and she turns up the radio. It’s a new CD, she always has a new CD. It’s a band she has “recently become obsessed with”. Like I haven’t heard that before. As she drives she sings loudly and I wonder if she looked all the lyrics up on the internet. Anything to appear like she knows it all. She does this almost every time I see her and I wonder why it has suddenly become so painfully obvious to me.
That’s right.
I’ve been away from her so long I’m starting to notice all of the things proximity friendships hide. I was always just minutes away from her that it seemed easier to go to her place and hang out than to drive to another one of my friends’ houses.
Distance doesn’t matter anymore. Except right now. Right now when I would give almost anything to not be in this car with her.
“Ooops,” she says as she makes a hasty right turn and nearly runs over a curb. A classic move. She’s one of the worst drivers I know and yet she always complains when someone is driving too fast.
She turns the radio down and asks me about college boys. That’s all she wants to know about. College boys. As if boys suddenly mature once they hit university. Earth to CosmoGirl, that’s not how it works. I tell her the usual, I’m still single. Not that it really matters, I’m not really into dating or love, or any of that other shit TV and magazines try to trick us into believing can “work out”.
She talks about Charlieissocoollike and how funny he is. How she wants to marry him someday. I have Charlie’s latest album. I downloaded it the day it came out. She acts like he only exists for her.
She acts like she doesn’t care what she looks like when she goes out. She tells me she looks like shit every twenty minutes. I don’t say anything. I know she really doesn’t want me to. She doesn’t want to know that I have these thoughts about her. Negative thoughts. She would rather me constantly tell her she’s beautiful and that everything will work out.
I used to be that person for her. The person who would console her when she cried. The friend who laughed about everything with her. But it can never be that way again. Because once you find the flaws, they don’t suddenly evaporate or even shrink a little.
At first you notice how she does most of the talking. Then you notice how she only asks about your life in terms of boys. Then you realize she complains about everything even when you have problems that are bigger. But I never tell her my problems. She doesn’t really want to hear them.
She pretends like she is this tortured soul. This girl misfortune barfed on. She is not really that girl. You can see it in the way she smiles and the car she drives. The way she talks about her problems so openly and often. Those are the problems of girls who can’t decide what dress they should wear to the dance.
Oh the tragedy.
I never tell her my problems. One day she notices this and gets angry. Suddenly I am distant and not very communicative in our friendship. I do not tell her I was always just the ears. She wouldn’t comprehend.
I have always been the ears listens to her friends.