Teen Forums - View Single Post - Why is it so hard for some people grasp COMMON SENSE?

Shadow-Koumajutsu · 11-26-2007, 08:07 AM

This is kind of long, but I'd really appreciate it if you would all read it.
I don't even know where to start, but this is somewhat related to this thread I started in the Cafe. The following might be a little long, but it's important to know to answer my question.

So yeah. A summary on the background: My best friend Phalan and everyone I know are dope fiend-tweakers. But I don't really care about any of them except her. We both come from really similar backgrounds, as in, we both came from completely dysfunctional and drug-addicted families. But whereas I learned from my family and friend's mistakes, she followed in their footsteps at a very young age. As different as we are, she's one of the only people I seem to be able to connect with. From the very first day we met almost two years ago, we got along so well.

We're still just as close, and I love her as a friend, but GOD! The girl has no common sense. Like, at all. She's not stupid; as a matter of fact, she's really smart when it comes to hustling people. But when it come to things like, oh, say, KEEPING THE FEDS OFF HER BACK, she can't do it. Knowing the feds are following her, and are staked at not only her grandmother's house, but my house now as well, she's still breaking into people's cars and houses, and still smoking dope. She's all paranoid because they're following her and all and worried that one day they're going to pull her over and arrest her, and she STILL does this stupid shit. I even pointed it out to her, and she agrees. But the second someone asks her if she wants to smoke a bunch of crank or go pull a lick, she's all "SURE!!!!11 =D"

And it's not like she's not already in trouble. Back in May, she stole someone's car and got caught, and is already at risk of going to jail for 5 months for that. If she doesn't go to 3 Narcotics Anonymous meetings a week for the next 4 months, she's going to be sent to jail (this is her last chance; she's already blown the first two).
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The situation:
My dad's truck has been broken down for the last couple days and he's been working on it. Phalan gave him a ride to and from work yesterday, and agreed to do the same today. But she showed up over half an hour late and my room mate ended up having to give him a ride. Why? Because she was pulling licks! LICKS! When she promised to be at my house at a certain time to give my dad a ride. It didn't seem to be that big a deal to her, though she did agree to help me clean the kitchen to make up for it. It's like... it might be ok for tweakers to pull this kind of crap on each other, but not on me. Or anyone else important. Anyway, this kind of led to a big argument later on and I'll get to that right now.

We were at a friend's house. I wanted to go home to get ready to meet someone else; someone important. But she was taking her time as usual and I was starting to get irritated (as she does this quite often). Also, she was talking about how I'm supposedly impressionable and how she worries that I'd be easy to manipulate. I called bullshit on her, and after all I'd been through and seen, if I were how she says, I'd be pretty messed up at this point in my life. I knew she was saying this because I present myself this way and she was worried, but there is a vast difference between how certain people present themselves and how they really are, and I was trying to get her to understand that. And my frustration with the whole situation started coming through and we started getting into an argument about that, and it bled into the situation with her earlier and giving my dad a ride.

I told her I wanted to talk to her outside when we got into the car, so we left. And in the car, I started talking about the situation. She kept interrupting me, which she knows I HATE, and I kept telling her to stop, and she wouldn't. So I started yelling at her to "SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LET ME FINISH" and we started screaming at each other. Seriously, we almost ended up in a fist fight and she started screaming at me to get out of the car. I told her no, and that she had dragged me there so she was going to give me a ride back to my house, and she calmed down and agreed. On the way back, she started crying about how she knew what she was doing was wrong, but that's all she'd ever known and she didn't know how to live any other way.

And, I can say, I believe her. No one who's never been in a situation like this would know what it's like. But the thing is, is it's not the only way, even if that's how she was raised. Seriously. Just thinking about your actions before you do them, and applying a little bit of common sense to your every day thinking is all it takes.

My question:
Am I wasting my time trying to help her out? I'm fully aware that you can't change a person, and I'm not trying to, but just leaving her as she is is only going to send her into a downward spiral. She tells me I'm like her stability. She says she thinks straighter when I'm around, and she thinks about her actions more. What should I do? What can I tell her? My older sister was in deeper than Phalan is now, and she made it out and is now successful and in college.

The thing is, is this is all she knows. Aside from me, she's never had any "normal" friends (as in, one's who aren't drug addicted or directly involved in illegal activity) and she doesn't know how to function like a normal person.

Answers that seem to come so simply to me, seem to completely allude her. So, what should I do...?

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