Christy

I started a hospitality job after I arrived back from an extended European sojourn, to pay off debts and get back to everyday life. Post travel depression can hit you pretty hard after several lovely lazy months getting drunk, meeting new people and seeing the wonders of the world. Like the Wizard of Oz in reverse, life goes from glorious technicolour, to the depressing drab dray grey of crippling debt and your childhood bedroom. I however meet some lovely people in that job, particularly one called Christy. Christy and I became good friends, and after the first year we made joint managers of the cafe. We did everything together, and I mean everything. We worked all the same shifts, we hung out outside of work, we essentially lived in each other’s pockets. It was a happy time for me. Christy is an ex cheerleading coach. She was everything a cheerleader is, always perky, enthusiastic, positive and supportive.

Christy was short, blonde and a little chubby, she was also obsessed with low sugar V despite having absolutely no need for the additional pep most of us rely on for energy drinks. Our relationship was futile from the beginning.

When you spend basically every waking hour with another person it's only a matter of time before you start to get on each other’s nerves. We had a good four years of friendship but the beginning of the end began with my relationship with Jordan.

Jordan was from Newcastle, he moved down to Bligh park to live with his cousins and get a fresh start. We met on a dating app and because sometimes stereotypes exist for a reason, our first date was a drunken sex capade. The sex was damn good and like many a classical tale of woe, that’s where the trouble began. Bewitched by a fabulous shag, I allowed my life to spiral out of control like one of those porn parodies of a Disney movie. Jordan was my first long term partner, and he became my first and only priority. I was stuck in my fairy-tale parody and ignored all the warnings that my prince was a toad and no magic kiss was ever going to turn him into the prince I thought he was inside. Jordan was lazy and immature, and as much as it still hurts to acknowledge it, Jordan was using me. Jordan’s lack of drive cost me my job, my savings and my friendship with Christy. I continued to date Jordan after Christy had made it clear to me that she thought Jordan was a toad and she did not like the person he was turning me into. No longer wanting to work the same shifts as each other Christy and I took our anger out on the other staff. The café, once a lovely place of middle-class dreams and aspirations, became a poisonous place to be.

Like the hero, you dear reader have learned I am not, I ran away from my problems. I packed my bags and stood on the side of the road waiting for my dad to come and get me, and rescue me from the consequences of my actions. I once again returned to my childhood bedroom to heal my wounds, before again striking out on my own to make more mistakes my family would need to save me from. I still see Christy occasionally at events, and through mutual friends but the magic is gone and, in its place, remains a poison for which there is no antidote. I don't think Christy was very angry or had any bitterness towards me either at the time or now, but what we once had can never be salvaged. I don't think I have ever really had moved on from what I lost when I lost my friend Christy.

Christy always had a million ideas all at once, she was big on dreaming big, but never great on the follow-through. Whether this relates to the relationship we had, I don’t know. I had moved to Dee Why when I heard through the grape vine that Christy would be taking over the running of a café up at Terry Hills, only a twenty-minute drive to where I now lived. I offered to help Christy run the café the Saturday before Mother’s Day, because it is the busiest time of year for flower shop cafes. The only thing mothers love more than flowers and coffee, is coffee among the flowers, perhaps it’s some fantasy thing I will never understand, but it’s definitely somehow sexual the way mothers feel about flower shop cafes. This would be the busiest day of their year, and Christy had only been there a week but was contractually obliged to open the café. With all new staff, having an experienced cafe manager there on the day would have been a god send. I think my offer to help was too soon, and my communication was unclear. Christy thought I would be working for her all weekend, missing Mother’s Day with my own mother, I thought I would drop in on Saturday to help out in the rush. I ended up going on a bender on the Friday night and bailed on her altogether. She expected more from me than I had to give, and what I had to offer would never be enough. More often than not, there’s no going back. Some things are just not meant to be.