Close Encounters of the Worst Kind

I don’t need a large circle of friends. At this stage of my life, I want quality over quantity. After the night’s events, I know this new person won’t make it out of the acquaintance circle. In fact, she won’t make it out of the stranger zone after the comment she made to me at the end of the evening.

She was a friend of a friend.

The night already started off weird, since I didn’t realize I had been invited to a group outing. That changed the vibe of the evening from the jump. I’m already not everyone’s cup of tea, least of all here in Guatemala where as a woman raised in another country, I am the estrangera in my native land. She and the woman I knew from the neighborhood had clearly been friends a long time. Once I realized I was the third wheel in this situation, I sat back and kept to myself, except when they tried really hard to include me. Something that I didn’t feel was necessary.

She didn’t sit next to me at the restaurant we went to. She actually made a point after I had scooted all the way in and she was next to me, to get up and then let the mutual friend sit in between us. I didn’t care one way or the other. I was there for the vibes, not the company.

You’re too close

So at the end of the evening we were standing outside in the awkward silence where you can tell one person wants to say something, and you are more than happy to say nothing, even though you can tell that the silence is uncomfortable. She then turns to me and asks if my pendant is hollow, like the kind that holds something. I reply that it is. She doesn’t ask what is in it. In fact, I am pretty sure she knew because she got quiet, and had this pinched look on her face. I could tell that the next words out of her mouth weren’t going to be complimentary.

I know what she is trying to imply, in not so many words. My pendant is in fact a chamber pendant, and contains the ashes of my stepson. I didn’t wear it at first, not for a few years after his passing, and then one day, I put it on and haven’t taken it off since. Her tone of voice implied that she thought it was creepy and then she made some comments that she couldn’t wear something like that, or it made her feel weird or something.

I couldn’t give a flying fuck for her opinion and was not paying too close attention to the actual words to try and translate them in my head. It is my version of turning off a hearing aid. When I don’t want to hear some bullshit, I just stop thinking in Spanish and suddenly the words are just white noise. It’s a great party trick – for me at least. Our mutual friend returned and we made our way to the car, but I knew that the evening was a bust.

I’d like to unfriend you

She was riding shotgun in the car, and during the trip home, they spent the drive criticizing the entire evening. I hope they weren’t expecting me to join in because I actually had a decent time until the end when I was left alone with this judgy bitch. At first, I was thinking the evening might be the first of many such outings. By the time they dropped me off at home, I was hoping it would be the last time they invited me out and that I would decline if they did bother to extend an invitation in the future.

I’d rather stay home than waste my time with close-minded, judgemental bitches.