Shallow it may be, but the World Series crystalized for me that I wish I'd never met the person I called my best friend over the last 11 years.  I mean, I've hated the Yankees since long before I ever met her, so their winning anything including a Spring Training game is ALWAYS bad, but it was especially bad when they kept my Phillies from repeating as World Series champions.

But it was even worse because I kept thinking, "No.  No way.  She gets this and as a direct result I don't?  That's just wrong wrong wrong.  In fact, I'd rather she never ever ever had it again."

There's been no dramatic fight, and the story is an old one--I grew up, and she and her husband didn't.   I, unlike them, recognize that we are all of us bloody close on one side or the other to 30 years old.  Your fourth decade is a time for saving money, cooking at home, starting a family if you're married (they are; I'm not).  

It is not a time for travelling with male friends, without your husband, while not wearing your wedding ring, several times a year.  It is not a time for going out drinking every night of the week.  It is not a time for dropping your life for a few years to go to school rather than going to school while working, like adults do.   It is not a time for actively refusing to reproduce when you've been married for almost 8 years.

 I am a Christian, and my childhood best friend is a Muslim.  We have different values.  When I look at the person I called my best friend from college and how she and her husband have made their decisions (if you can call them that) over the last few years, I realize that they have no values.   Everything they do is random, like a couple of 17-year-olds left home for the weekend with car keys and working credit cards.  I can't work with that.  

 But I wonder.

We became friends on the first day of college.  We walked together through the darkest hours of those years.  We shared clothes, cosmetics, meals, memories.  I was maid of honor in their wedding.  They drove three hours to come to my house the day my grandmother died.  I reached out to them for help when something very bad very nearly happened to someone else I love.  They drove those same three hours to help me celebrate one of three good birthdays I've had this decade.  I have actually put money in the New York Yankees' pockets to give them gifts I knew they'd like.    

I've deleted them from my phone; today while her Saints snatched victory from the jaws of what would have been a humiliating defeat that I would have enjoyed immensely (thank you for nothing, Redskins), I put away the few pictures of us I still had out (one more to go, I just remembered) and unfriended and blocked them on Facebook, all the post-modern stuff.  

And I didn't feel a thing.  Shouldn't I have?  Shouldn't there have been tears, regret, anger, something? Mainly what I feel is tired, irritated, and mildly wistful.  Think, "Damn, I just wish I'd never met them"--but in the same not-exactly-outraged tone we use to say, "Damn, I forgot to pick up milk so now I'll have to go back to the grocery store tomorrow."

On the one hand, I feel like, she can have her 27 rings (and cram them you know where); she can even have the Super Bowl if that's the way it's going.  I have adulthood, dignity, the ability to reason . . . and some not exactly rusty World Series rings from recent years (cue Britomart smile).

On the other hand, I wonder if I'm a sociopath.  Why don't I feel sad or regretful?  Why don't I wonder if I could have done anything differently?  Why don't I care if I ever talk to them again?   

 On the other hand (I know, there is no other hand--old joke), I'm afraid. Will God punish me for being cruel in my heart?  Will something bad happen to me or someone else I love now because I feel this way?  Will The One one day feel the way I do now about them and bail on me with no explanation?

And shouldn't I feel something? 

**I'm not going to close comments, but I will be very quick to hit "delete."  The point here is that people I loved have violated very basic expectations I had about human decency and maturity.  I don't need it from strangers too.**