The Company You Keep

Is that even a valid statement?  "The Company You Keep"  Is that supposed to mean that the people you associate with are the same as you?  Maybe, a little.  Do you share interests?  Probably.  Do you act the same?  Maybe.

I was talking with Jess today about her Gram.  Gram lives with Jess's parents and in recent years started to show signs of Alzheimers.  While talking with Jess about a recent episode her Gram had I was reminded of a girl I used to be best of friends with in High School.

Emily, her sister Alecia, and her brother Tony moved to IL to live with her Grammy and Gramps when their father passed away.  Emily was a Freshman (14/15), Alecia was in 8th grade (13/14), and Tony was in 5th or 6th grade.  I found out after befriending Emily that their mother walked out on the family when Emily was 6 years old, and her father was an alcoholic who drank himself to death.  Which is why they had to come live with Grammy.  Emily had a hard time adjusting to living with Grammy and her Gramps, who had Alzheimers.  From the age of 6 Emily was the "woman" of the house and her siblings were her responsibility.  As was the housework.  She suddenly was thrust into this life where she wasn't responsible for any of that anymore and we had some... I'll just say, fun times.

I used to love to go to Emmy's house.  We were dirty smokers (aren't most high schoolers at some point?) and Gramps would hound us FOREVER to find him a smoke if he smelled the cigarette smoke on us.  He loved to sit us at the kitchen table and force us to play Gin Rummy for HOURS.  Em and I would have to beg him to let us go upstairs.  We'd go downstairs later for something to drink and Gramps would have forgotten we just played Gin with him and he'd guilt us into playing again...  

As time went by Gramps' Alzheimers got worse.  They had to change the dead bolts on the doors to ones that used a key from both sides because Gramps started to get up in the middle of the night and would get out of the house.  After several of these nocturnal trips, and visits to the police station to pick him up, they decided the best answer was the double keyed deadbolt.  That was a pain in the ass in the middle of January when Em and I'd be all ready to go outside to smoke only to find out that she'd left her key somewhere upstairs.  Everything had to come off and we'd have to go hunt for the key.

After a few years, Em and I slowly drifted apart.  She had a boyfriend who was a complete douche tool.  He was abusive to her both physically and verbally.  I never witnessed this because our separation had already started by that point, but I did still keep in contact with her and her sister on a semi-regular basis and that was the story I'd get from Alecia.  Looking back I wish I'd known what to look for.  As an adult I can say with finality that she was definitely abused.  She became withdrawn, and skittish, and on a couple occasions had unexplained bruises on her arms.

Senior year I moved to an alternative school and was living with (my now ex-husband) boyfriend.  When I had come back into town after graduation for a night with some friends, I happened to run into Alecia.  She'd told me that the day after graduation, Emily had packed her stuff and left.  No one had heard from her and it had been about 3 or 4 months.

I didn't run into any of Em's family nor really think about them again until Em contacted me through Facebook about 1 1/2 years ago.  She told me she had left Grammy's but didn't just up and leave; that Grammy had kicked her out.  She had gone to Florida in an attempt to locate her mother.  She found her mother - and a boat load of trouble.  She never got into specifics except to tell me that she and her boyfriend at the time had been kicked out of the State of Florida.  I'm still unsure of how one manages to get themselves kicked out of a State.  She was, at them time I last talked to her, living in Seattle and trying to find a way to get back to Illinois, Alecia had married an abusive drunk and had three kids who were equally abused, Tony was a convicted sex offender in relation to kiddie porn, and Grammy had  kicked Tony out of the house when he graduated high school and then she disappeared with their inheritance.  No one in the family had heard from her in years.  In the email that Em shared all this you could hear the hatred that she had for her family.  It was really sad.  She actually said that she hoped her Grammy had fallen overboard off a cruise ship and into shark infested water, and that her sister and brother would just kill themselves.

I knew Em had had a very rough time growing up.  I knew that living with her grandparents was NOT what she wanted to do.  I knew that she harbored resentment towards her mom for abandoning them, but that someday she'd look for her.  I never knew that she'd end up as bitter as she sounded in that single email, and as much as I wanted to help my old friend out - I don't remember if I ever replied to that email.

What does that say about me as a person then?  Does the company you keep as a teenager reflect on who you become as an adult?  Or does every kid go through that time of figuring out where they fit?