Friends and Foes

So Julie wants to go on this cruise for her 30th birthday. When we decided to start discussing it - I said "don't mention to Eva just yet as we know she won't be able to go or will have to bitch about the money part for months". well.... somehow it got mentioned and now the whole trip is being replanned in one way or another so that Eva can go or so it is to something of her liking. This isn't fair considering she wasn't exactly invited and it wasn't her trip to plan. But because she is Eva we let her go on her rampages and planning sprees until we about had a nervous breakdown last week. She - as far as we knew wasnt' going to be able to go and I was going to persuade her to just do a weekend thing with us sometime. After all we have only spent hours of time together - some of which are a couple hours too many. I had a bad feeling about spending a week together on a boat. Julie I knowI can handle - she is fun, carefree, and has a great personality. Eva is an only child with attention deficiet disorder ( needs alot of attention and doesn't get any of it so she bribes it out of you). This is an annoying trait that I keep hoping will get better once she realizes that I would rather just spend time with her than be forced to spend time with her. So Tuesday we all three go for a walk at the mall before I go to work - Julie and I had decided that we need to confront Eva and tell her that she is no longer invited on the cruise. This was harsh, it was necessary - but harsh all the same. Many days I think and am told - you need to get rid of that friend. But how do you "dump" a friend. I have had a hard enough time dumping boyfriends let alone a "girl" friend. So we are walking along and suddenly ( as I am trying to think of a nice way to say it ) Julie starts out "Eva we have something to say to you and it won't be easy so we are just going to say it" Everything is calm as she says that we have scaled the trip back to just me and her and no Eva, no Gretchen, no April... and ... Eva remains calm but you can tell she is holding back tears and / or anger. She is hurt (don't blame her) but at the same time she was in the wrong and how do you politely tell someone that... Her reaction: I guess you guys just don't want to be my friend and that is fine - I never felt like I fit in anyway. So... now we are on the guilt trip.... the walk went pretty much like that for the next 30 minutes. Not much talking and if there was it was mostly about how we didn't want to be her friend anymore. As of today, she hasn't talked to Julie and I wasn't sure she would talk to me either until she returned my call tonight. It is hard - I know that the best thing would be to just not talk to her while I have the chance but I can't do that to someone. She needs a friend and I am a patient person. I just hate people that make everything all about them.... although I should be used to it by now - I have had many friends that were like that and I have survived them just fine. I just would like to have friends for once that will at least take the time to hear me out or do what I want to do or even just care about what I want to say or feel. Somehow I attract people that walk all over me - work and personal life the same. So here I am again - purposely hanging on to another negative just to make sure her feelings aren't hurt and that I am not hated. So I told her we would have coffee and a movie next Thursday if that worked. We will see what happens. She said she will not be scrapping with us anymore (for now anyway). Cruise is set up and booked for 4/29/06!!!!! To the Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.!! And we are going to SWIM WITH THE DOLPHINS!!!!