Trillium, Khanji, Dr. Thuna, The Diva and Me

I had a friend in Montreal, who broke up with her long-time boyfriend Paul to have a mad affair with a married older man, Khanji (and I THINK I keep seeing Khanji in Harvard Square and that he has relocated here, I guess I should just ASK the guy some day, "Are you Khanji from Montreal?"), but of course Paul was not happy about it and waited a long time to see what my friend would do.

Well, yes, eventually she and Khanji (who had left his long-time wife for her) did break up, and my friend moved by herself (poor Paul) to a ranch in Arizona and changed her name from Patricia to Trillium and as far as I know she is NOT now relocated in Cambridge but still lives on that ranch in Arizona. I imagine that she still has that pale Medieval face and that dark hair to her waist and wears long midnight-blue gowns, but who knows? Maybe now she is weathered and tanned with a blond bob and wears cowboy boots and chaps.

But the point I am trying to get to is that Tricia and I had a discussion once about how hard it is to break relationship patterns. We came to this analogy: If YOU finally tell your partner that it really BUGS you that he leaves the toilet seat up all the time, then HE is probably going to finally tell you that you snore at night, which will lead to YOU finally letting him know that his breath REALLY stinks in the morning, and then HE will tell you that he actually hates your hair short and always preferred it long, and well... the madness will just never end. Which is why most couples just keep their mouths shut and end up silently hating each other after 20 years together, and take vacations to Sanibel Island and go out to dinner at Gramma Dot's and barely speak a word during the whole meal, all the while staring at the one single woman in the whole place, who sits alone reading and actually looks happy (that would be me, a few years ago in Sanibel Island).

But sometimes, you know, you just have to take a chance, dive in, hold your breath, hope for the best and OPEN your damn mouth. And that is what I have done recently with a close relative who is, quite frankly, very often a total Diva Beyatch with me. She takes her stress and her crap out on me and I JUST HATE IT!!!!! So, I have started hanging up on her the minute she gets that attitude. I have also refused to let her set foot in my house for the past five months. And it's really interesting how, rather than trying to alter her behavior or even apologize, she has just gotten worse and worse, until I hang up after about thirty seconds, and sometimes less.

I figure something is about to break (as in breakthrough) or maybe we will end up with a relationship in short bursts of text only. But the harder I put my foot down, the more she just seems to want to stomp on it. Pretty painful, until I finally figured out that I need to not only put my foot DOWN, but move it the hell outta the way. We'll see what develops. I'll keep you posted.

As for Tricia or Trillium...well the other best part of her story is that we worked together grading papers for an herbalist correspondence course which was pretty much either bogus or stolen from other sources. A very old (85) crotchety mean man, Dr. Thuna, ran the place. But I think he was a figurehead, since he pretty much did nothing except complain and daydream. He was also profoundly deaf.

One day the fire alarm went off, which it had never done before. We worked in a basement office, twenty feet from Dr. Thuna, and there was only one exit. Dr. Thuna was daydreaming and had not heard the alarm.

Tricia looked at me and then Dr. Thuna, the wheels turning, and asked, "Do you think this is a real fire?" I answered, "Maybe. This IS a pretty decrepit building."

Tricia grabbed her knapsack and yanked my arm. "Then let's get the hell OUT of here!"

She ran for the exit. But I called after her. "Tricia, we can't leave Dr. Thuna!" Tricia turned to me, a burning dark fire in her eyes, some primal instinct I had never suspected nor seen before in her angelic alt-girl face. "Oh can't we?" she asked. "Just watch me!" And she ran up the stairs. To freedom. Alone. Without the Boss.

I didn't hate Dr. Thuna quite as much as Tricia, since I only worked 12 hours a week. Tricia worked 35. So I ran to his side, yelled, "FIRE" in his one slightly less-deaf ear, and helped him hobble out of the building.

In the end, there was no fire. But six months later Tricia ran off with Khanji. And poor Paul sat there shaking his head in dazed incomprehension, while I remembered that look in her eyes. She was just running for freedom, and honor or Dr. Thuna be damned. If the whole place burned down behind her, sobeit. Tricia was breaking patterns, and that takes guts. With a big helping of insanity, for good measure.