The Giver

Lainne Wilkins

I always thought of myself as a giver. I thought that in order to be a great friend, daughter, sibling, and significant other, you had to do certain things. Give the best presents for special occasions, take off work after someone has a breakup to make sure they are okay, take care of friends on a night out if they drink too much, and overall just do what needs to be done to make others happy. I know what you’re thinking: what did I get out of this? I honestly don’t know. I guess I just felt like making others happy was more important than my own happiness. I forgave when I should not have; I gave when I needed to focus on myself; I lived in a constant roundabout of feeling like shit and feeling extraordinary—that is until Abby. 

I am writing this essay knowing that I may not be ready to give you a “why.” I am writing this essay so I can come to terms with all that has happened to me. Where did it all start? The starting point was not Abby, but the friendships and relationships before Abby. When I want to pinpoint a moment, I think of Molly Packer. My first official “best friend” that I made in high school. Molly was the stereotypical high school girl who was obsessed with partying and finding the next boy to sleep with. I was the exact opposite of her. I liked getting my homework done on time and staying away from wild things so I could stay in my bubble of not doing anything to mess up my future. I could explain story after story of all the things Molly introduced me to or made me do, but instead I’ll explain what she did not do. On our senior trip to Mexico, our parents gave us one rule: “Do not leave the resort.” On our last night, Molly met some boys by the beach who wanted us to go to a club. The other girl and I pleaded with Molly to not go, but she did not care. The other girl grabbed Molly’s arm and said, “You are not going.” Molly turned around and slapped the girl’s cheek so hard that crowds of people whipped around to see the scene. I then went up to her. “This has gone too far, Molly,” I said. “If you care about us at all, you won’t go.” She looked right through me and said, “Fuck you, Lainne, I am going to do what I want.” She does not remember this night, but the basic fact is I tried to forgive her, and this is just one instance of forgiveness I gave Molly. Time and time again she would put me in questionable scenarios like this, and I would let it go or ask her to not do it again, getting no positive result. After a few months, she was fed up with me, and now we are no longer friends. She ended the friendship. I could not let go of this person I cared so much about, but she could. Frankly, I am better off without her in my life, but I would have never known that if she did not drop me. 

I sometimes wondered why I had such a hard time letting go of things. I sometimes wondered why I had to give everything I had for people who would never do the same. Maybe it was because along with giving, I tried to fix everything. I know that nobody can be fixed, but my brain still tells me to try to do so. I even had a boyfriend in high school who was slightly into drugs. I thought for months I was fixing him. In reality, he was just lying about using, while I thought I was making this big difference. I never was. I never have. I just have an urge so strong that it makes me feel a need to. 

Then I got to college and met Abby May Johnson. I did not meet her right off the bat; I just knew who she was. This was because EVERYONE loved her, and it seemed like she had the whole college thing down. She made friends super easily, and all the boys were obsessed with her. I remember my roommate and I would say phrases like, “She has to be mean, nobody can be that perfect.” She honestly annoyed us before we even got the chance to know her. When she started to become one of my good friends, it seemed true that she was, in fact, a perfect human. She was everything my roommate and I said she could never be. She was deceiving in that way.

I remember thinking I finally found someone that was a giver like me.

As the second semester started, we hung out a lot more. One night Abby and I were on our way to the gym after I got off the phone with my boyfriend and I broke out in tears. I was embarrassed that I was crying in front of this friend I had just made. She grabbed my shoulder and said, “Just let it out. I will be here for you when you’re ready to talk about it.” I continued to sob and she continued to be a calming presence. It was like she knew exactly what I was feeling and how to comfort me. The next day, I woke up to a text that could have been a two-page essay. She explained how much she cared for me and how she thought we were going to be great friends. She said that no matter what, she would be there for me and she couldn’t wait for our friendship to continue growing. I remember thinking I finally found someone that was a giver like me. It felt like we were one and the same. For once I would be sharing the responsibility of giving—I was not used to this. I think this is why I got so attached to this friendship and the possibility of having a friend just like me. She was going to be my rock, and I was going to be hers. Looking back it almost seems ironic because she did to me exactly what Molly and my high school boyfriend did, but this time I actually believed she was different. 

The week after our trip to the gym was spring break. Abby lived in Montana and I in Washington, so I didn’t get to hang out with her for awhile after this. On the last day of spring break, our campus sent out an email explaining that school was being shut down and classes were being put online due to the pandemic that had just started. Abby and I stayed in touch though. We Facetimed every week just to update each other on our lives. I learned a lot about Abby during this time. She had a dysfunctional family, to say the least, with many siblings, each with their own set of problems. I wondered during this time how Abby was this sane with all the family drama she went through. She talked so highly of her family, but they disappointed her in every way. I did not want to be the burden that her family had been throughout the years. I wanted to give her a friendship to treasure and help pull her out of the negative atmosphere she had been living in for so long. I started to understand how much she needed me, but I was not yet convinced she was different from me. 

Soon I learned all about her ex-boyfriend and friends from high school. Her friends did not sound like friends at all. She went above and beyond for them, and none of them returned the favor. The ex-boyfriend was originally my favorite part of Abby’s story. He showed her kindness and cared for her like no other person in her life did. She explained how hesitant she was to start dating him, and how sure he was when they first got together. They both ended up committed to play sports at our college their senior year, too. The relationship mutually ended when they decided to “work on themselves.” They got back together for a time freshman year (partially, I think, just because they were in the same place), but he never wanted to fully get back together with Abby. She was so attached to this one person who showed her love, that she really never got over him. He turned out to be one of her obsessions. I was so annoyed with her infatuation, and every chance I got, I urged her to move on. She listened, but never acted. I wondered why he never wanted to get back with Abby after I heard all of their history—only later did I figure out why. She was a burden to anyone who got too close to her—getting out was one of the smartest moves he could have made.

Abby’s friends and family seemed to me so important and, therefore, these parts of her story became important to me. I wanted her family to show her love so she could feel better. I wanted her ex-boyfriend to get back together with her because I felt she really cared for him. She wanted the same thing for me. She knew how I felt about giving to the people in my life and how they had let me down, and she assured me she would never do the same. Although we each had different problems in life, we seemed to be there for each other and good listeners. I believed she cared, I believed she wanted to give to me. The subject of Abby is hard to write about because there was a point where I believed she was just like me. But she broke down when I got too close to her. Maybe I break people when I get too close to them. Maybe we are similar, but in a different way than I originally thought. Maybe that’s why this is hard to write about. 

She sobbed through the phone, and I knew something had gone terribly wrong.

The first inkling then came along. I remember as the summer was coming to a close, I was sitting on my newly made bed filling out an application for an internship. I had been texting Abby throughout the day. She was acting strange in the way she texted, and I started to become concerned. I called her once. No answer. I texted my roommate to call her. No answer. I called her again. The phone rang all the way through, and right as the voicemail started to go off, “Hi this is Abby…,” she picked up. She sobbed through the phone, and I knew something had gone terribly wrong. She went on to explain how she and her mom had just had a fight. This fight sent Abby into a frenzy of feeling like nobody in her life wanted her. She explained how she drove toward the cliff at the top of her hometown, and right before she was going to drive off, she hit the brakes. I did not know what to say. How could I? I said the only thing that my brain could come up with: “I love you, Abby, and you deserve to be here.” I didn’t know if this was the right thing to say, but it seemed to help her calm down. We went on to talk about her coming to visit me in Washington. Though it never actually happened, I knew she needed something to look forward to. I tried to give her a sense of home within myself. I wanted her story to turn around and be our story. In my head everything would get better this way. 

I started to think Abby was doing better and everything would be okay. My roommate and I planned a road trip and invited Abby along. She was not at Rocky our first semester sophomore year so it was easy from afar to think a weekend with Abby would be a good idea. Before the road trip, I started to learn more things about Abby that had nothing to do with the people in her life. I started to learn things that I didn’t quite know before. She was extremely depressed. Depression runs in her family, and most of the people on her mom’s side suffer from it. She did a lot better when she took her antidepressants. She always talked about how she hated taking them though. “They never let me feel true happiness,” she said. “But at least I never get too sad.” She didn’t take them consistently. She also suffered from anxiety, and odd things would make her anxious, like not having her room clean, or using a certain face cream. 

On top of all this, she had a seizure disorder. Little did my roommate and I know that she also was not taking the medication for this. 

Freshman year she had had a seizure after a party. I did not know her well then, but it was one of the scariest things I’d ever experienced. I went to the hospital that night to make sure she was okay. Before I consciously made Abby my priority, I was one of the only people to sit by her bed. I barely knew this girl and chose to stay the night next to two smelly adults in a waiting room chair that was as comfortable as concrete. This was before I believed Abby was a person like me. Could this be my fatal flaw? Butting my way into situations where no one actually needs me, just because I feel it is the right thing to do? 

Our road trip destination was Boise, Idaho, and after an eight-hour drive, we had finally made it. We rented an airbnb with a few friends that we knew over there. The party had already begun when we stepped into the house at about nine that night. Both my roommate and Abby got to meet all of my high school friends who drove up for the weekend. That night was the start of what was going to become a horrific weekend. The first two days I don’t even remember because they were so insignificant compared to the next instance. Saturday night finally came around. A group of us decided to go out to a party. When we got there, Abby, my roommate, and I started to chug these new drinks we had found called Monacos. The house kept calling out, “Another one,” so we indeed chugged another one. Abby looked at me after that and said, “I’m gonna go talk to the cute guy upstairs.” That was something I did not think of worrying about. About an hour passed and I looked around. Abby was nowhere in sight. The first bedroom I ran into, she was face down on a bed. Laughing, she looked at me. “Why do you look scared?” I pretended I wasn’t and said it was time to go. She told me she was staying and nothing I could do would change her mind. We were at a friend’s house, and he promised nothing would happen if she stayed. We left but went back to get her within the hour because leaving her there felt wrong.

My second reason to worry occurred when she arrived back at the house we were staying at. She laid down on the half blown-up air mattress. The mattress shook. Each one of her fingers flexed. It looked like they were cramping. Her words slowly started to go away. Her eyes rolled back, not fully into her head, but enough to know. Seizure. I grabbed my phone and dialed 911. As soon as the ringing on the line stopped and the kind lady on the other end said, “911, what’s your emergency?” I panicked. Not a word came from my mouth. Everyone in the house was yelling the address of the house, her birthday, her full name, and nothing came out of my mouth. My roommate took the phone and started the process. Tears wailed from her eyes and mine, too. She felt for Abby’s pulse. She told the 911 operator every time Abby’s heart beat, “Yes, yes, yes,” and at one moment she couldn’t feel it. At this point everyone in the room had tears. The beat came back, and the ambulance arrived. The rest of the night was a blur. Hospital all night. Abby got out. Abby slept all Sunday. We drove back home Monday. 

I didn’t know much about seizures at that time, but I started to do my research after that night. The most deadly seizure is a grand mal. That is the kind of seizure that kills people, that could kill Abby. That night freshman year, Abby had a grand mal. I didn’t even know that could have been the end of her story. She didn’t have a grand mal the second time, but to me it felt like she did. I felt her life, right in front of me, fading away, and I could do nothing.

That week she told us she had not been taking her seizure medication, and that she smoked with the cute boy upstairs. Her mom told my roommate and me that smoking, drinking, and not taking her medication is more likely to cause seizures. Abby knew that and did it anyway. It was a red flag, but how could I know that back then? This girl needed friends who helped her take her medication—or that is at least what I told myself. She went back home after that weekend, and we continued with our semester. We texted her daily while she was home asking if she had taken her medication. She always answered yes. She always lied. I blamed myself for the incident in Idaho. I didn’t force her to not take her medication, or drink alcohol, or smoke weed, but somehow it still felt like my fault. I could not control her every move, but after this it felt like I had to. It felt like I was responsible. Everything in my body told me that giving to Abby, that fixing Abby, was what I had to do. 

This was the disconnect. She was not a giver, but this was the last thing on my mind. I was dead set on giving to her, not the fact that she was supposed to be the friend who also gave to me. Abby never gave me anything. We had fun together and she always talked about how much she gave to everyone, but when I look back I can’t think of a single time when she was sharing that responsibility with me. Things in our friendship just escalated so quickly, I could not come to this conclusion until a while after she left my life.

I woke her up every morning. I tried to get her to eat food. I gave her my clothes because she hated hers.

The second semester hit and she was back at Rocky. We never left each other’s sight, and life became more normal again. We did homework together, ate dinner together, and just had a good time in each other’s company. I cannot pinpoint in my mind the exact day this changed. Was it her talking about leaving the country? Was it her insecurity about her body? Was it her depression? Was it the seizure disorder? Was it her family? Or was it just me? Slowly everything shifted. I woke her up every morning. I tried to get her to eat food. I gave her my clothes because she hated hers. I listened and tried to help her with her problems. I stayed up late with her every night so she wouldn’t do anything reckless. So she wouldn’t want to kill herself. I felt like her mom. I pretty much was. 

The worst part was the anxiety. Not hers, but mine. The late nights consisted of limited sleep and barely any time to do homework. I was still in school, but that was the least important aspect of my life. I was constantly worried about a single wrong move that would end everything. I was going through these motions because I felt like I had to. I blocked everyone out of my life except her. She was not mentally stable, I was no longer mentally stable. I only talked to my roommate. I put all my troubles on her, much like Abby did with me. The three of us only had each other to worry about. Nothing else mattered. The worst part was the information I got from her. “This is where I cut myself,” “You are the only reason I am alive,” “When you don’t hang out with me, it makes me want to be done.” I called her mom, tried to get her in therapy, and nothing seemed to take. 

Then my boyfriend came for the weekend. I knew this was going to be bad. Abby couldn’t be away from me for more than a few hours without saying or doing something that made me worry. I almost told him not to come. My roommate and I made a plan. She would take on Abby for the three days my boyfriend was here. Wake her up, get her to eat, stay up with her, and, most importantly, keep her alive. The first day it worked. The next we were almost in the clear. We went out with a group of people to an ice skating rink, and Abby was acting like she was having a good time. But I could see right through her. She was faking it and I knew. I ignored it. I wanted to have fun and not worry about her. I was selfish. After the ice skating rink, she left to go for a drive. A drive with a sixteen pack of Truly’s. A drive to the Rims, a ledge that stretches over the top of the town of Billings. A drive with the intention to end her life. My roommate and I tracked her location and saw where she was. I called Abby. No answer. My roommate called Abby. No answer. I called her again and she picked up. I could tell she was drunk. She said, “I’m just chilling, leave me alone, you’re not my mom.” I pleaded with her only to get an empty line a few moments later. My roommate took the lead and drove up to her. When she got there, Abby’s ex-boyfriend was there. He knew all too well why both he and my roommate were standing next to her car. Abby was a bomb that exploded on the people closest to her, and she did it to everyone. Her mom, her ex-boyfriend, and now me. My roommate put her phone on speaker so I could listen to Abby. I could hear Abby’s emotionless voice. I could hear the Truly’s talking for her. I could hear my roommate bawling. Abby said, “Go home. I don’t need you. Go away.” My roommate said, “Fuck you, Abby. You can’t see how much I care.” My roommate left. The ex-boyfriend stayed. Abby didn’t drive off the cliff. 

The next week she came into our dorm room. She had made a list. A hand-written list of all the things we had done wrong, the ways we had hurt her. We didn’t help her clean her room when she needed it. We didn’t go to the gym with her, making her not have motivation. We acted like her parents and not her friends. After the list reading, we tried to explain ourselves. She then had a panic attack and stormed out. When she came back the next week, everything changed again. We didn’t act like her parents anymore, we rarely talked to her except to go to the gym. She left Rocky within the next month. She completely stopped talking to my roommate but still Facetimed me every once in a while. Life didn’t seem to get better though, because of the way I had neglected the relationships outside of Abby during those two semesters. I started to resent this friendship I had so longingly held on to. I questioned myself and why I fought so hard, why I tried to be her rock. But I was never her rock, maybe more like a tumbleweed. I lived her life and along the way, forgot I had one, too. The first week after Abby had moved away she called me and explained how good she was doing and how everything was “getting better.” Each month her life update got better than the last, and I started to believe it. I was happy she was doing better, but it made me feel like I was her problem all along. The moment I stopped giving to Abby was the same moment she started to do better. 

She left and that is the only reason she is no longer in my life. I would have never stopped relentlessly giving to her. I still have not fully stopped. I still Snapchat her and every once in a while she wants to talk on the phone. I still cater to her needs even though she is six hundred miles away from me. I will never fully get out of this role because being there for Abby is something I feel I have to do. I can’t let go, I can’t stop giving, but just to her. I am more closed off now. I no longer do the things I thought a friend, sibling, daughter, or significant other should theoretically do. I rarely make new friends. I can’t get too close to anyone. The one thing I always knew about myself, my giving, is no longer true with the remaining people that have stayed in my life. People leave when I get too close, when I give too much, when I try to fix. There is no permanent resolution; there is just life and the way you live it. I live differently now. In fiction I would say I live better and this taught me some grand solution to my life, but in reality this could not be more false.

I should have never been a giver. Being a giver has only brought people into my life that I end up resenting. Being a giver has hurt others enough to leave. I wish I could stop, but I can’t. I can’t let new people in knowing that this shit will continue to happen. It’s an ongoing cycle. Maybe it’s the people I chose to bring into my life. I latch onto people that I feel need fixing, that are good at taking. I’m attracted to this kind of friendship. I do have some significant people in my life, but I do not know how to act with them anymore. They know about these previous friends. How can I start over when they already know the damage I have caused, that the takers have caused? If, and when, I chose to let someone new into my life, I hope it can be the right person. A person who does not take, who I do not feel the need to fix, who can give and receive. I cannot undo being a giver, but maybe, just maybe I will be able to look past the takers of the world.