MRI scanning tunnels. My god, they’re a nasty invention. Well, no they’re not really because they provide excellent scans which doctors can use but the experience itself is not one I’d like to repeat. You are led into a room and asked to lie on what I can only describe as a slab. Whichever part of your body is to be looked at is strapped into a contraption of metal and straps. You are given earplugs and told to put them in because it gets very noisy. Comforting. A button is pressed and the slab you are on starts to move, sending you as if you are on a conveyor belt on the generation game into a tunnel just big enough to fit your body in. in my case, it was my leg, so I was fortunate to be left with just my head protruding from the casing. Above you is a little microphone. I guess this is so you can yell for help because as soon as you are stuck in this thing, the staff leave the room and go into the room next-door where they look at you though a pane of glass. You then get bursts of activity 166
which last a few minutes each where what you hear alternatives between a loud clunking sound and what can only be described as someone with pneumatic drill in there with you. You must be in there for about twenty minutes. It’s not painful at all, it’s just eerie and makes you feel like you’re in a morgue.
If you’re due for one of these scans please don’t believe any of the above. It’s just peachy.
Rationale. Some people have a bizarre way of integrating a moment into the hive of information they already hold in their brains. People interpret things in their own ways. It’s a human characteristic. Two people in the same room, entertaining exactly the same conversation can come to very different conclusions. And what’s worse, both people believe their way of seeing things is the right way.
Why would a friend refuse to see your point of view?
Why would a person who knows you inside out goad you and prod you? Why when push comes to shove would you simply sit on the fence with the attitude of
‘I’m alright here’. Where does this selfish attitude come from? A friend who doesn’t listen to what she doesn’t want to hear. That way it’s never been said? A friend who believes adamantly that you’re always wrong, that you always misread situations, that you cause all the problems. A friend that can’t see past the nose on her own face. Yes I’m angry. I’m fucking furious.
I believe friendship means looking out for one another more than anything else. A real sense that someone would go out of their way to help you. Sure, the ability to have fun together counts for a lot but at the end of the day, it’s a deeper bond that makes the friendship a truly special one. Having someone you can talk to, cry with, rely on. There are some people 167
that you can have the surface level stuff with but when that’s gone, there’s not much left. To have a friend for a long time and just realize that the friendship doesn’t run as deep as you always thought it had is hard to swallow. To comprehend that you put so much into believing that this was the friendship that would last until one of you died because you needed to believe it is just awful.
I have a friend. A very good friend. I needed to believe. I convinced myself that here was a person I could lean on if I needed to. The only problem was she fell over. It’s my own fault really. For seeing something that wasn’t there. She’s not to blame. I didn’t tell her when we met that I’d one day expect so much of her, that I’d expect her to stand up for me, that one day this would cause a huge row between us.
I crossed a line. I opened up and she saw me inside.
Vulnerable. Pitiful. And somewhere somebody laughed.