The Weight to be Me

Maria and I meet in acting class. I’m 23 and I’ve just moved to New York from Seattle. She’s a native New Yorker, 30-something, charming and quite charismatic – we become fast friends. She’s very stylish and petite but tells me she used to be fat before she lost a bunch of weight on a liquid diet. Her quirky vibe reminds me a little bit of Cher in Moonstruck.

She is a talker, and I become a captive audience as she seems to enjoy telling me stories about her life. 

How she’s still getting over the end of a very short marriage to a wealthy, but boring man. 

How she has big dreams – and that she was suffocating with him.

That she makes a living doing hair – but longs to be an actress. 

That, unlike both her mother and sister, she wants more out of life than marriage and kids. 

She’s beaming as she talks about their mind-blowing honeymoon in Jamaica. “We brought a few of our friends with us and we all just lounged around the pool, drinking, and smoking these huge blunts of weed. I was crazy high the entire time!” 

But suddenly she sounds sad, “Oh Mia…it was so beautiful and luxurious – but I felt so conflicted. Here we are hanging out having the best time, while just outside the gates of our hotel, there is so much poverty.” 

She’s euphoric telling me all the details of her “Big Fat Italian Wedding.” Flipping through the photos, gushing over her beautiful dress, the elaborate cake, the several courses of delicious Italian food – and how happy her whole family was that day. 

Then she’s blue again as she stares out the window with tears streaming down her face and says “I knew the minute we got back from our honeymoon, that our marriage was already over.”

Animatedly, she lists off all the expensive gifts they received – but rapidly turns glum telling me how a few days after they got back from Jamaica, she got up, grabbed a bunch of their wedding gifts, walked out of their fancy apartment – and proceeded to set them all on the street in front of their building. 

She tells me she’s been staying at her parents Long Island home until she figures out her next move.

I’m fascinated with her exciting and dramatic stories. But her sporadic mood swings do strike me as a little odd. I chock it up to New Yorkers just being more colorful than the Seattle folks I’m used to.

Couch surfing in the city with various friends since her divorce, she sounds anxious to get out of sleeping in the twin bed of her childhood bedroom, so I invite her to stay a few nights in my studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. 

Each day I come home from work, it feels like my guest has altered my living space ever so slightly. But I’m not sure if it’s real, or if I’m imagining it. 

One day I come home to find a professional hair salon chair perched in front of a newly added mirror. I am completely caught off guard. Barely acknowledging my presence, she only stops chatting long enough to introduce me to her client and then goes back to the business of cutting his hair. 

Although it’s awkward and I’m starting to feel like an intruder in my own home, I also think “Well hey…maybe she’ll give me free haircuts!?”

I am invited to spend time with her at her parent’s home out on the Island. They are kind and friendly people and always go out of their way to make me feel welcome. Her dad gets up before we’re awake on Saturday mornings to bring us fresh donuts to have with our coffee. Her brother Anthony and sister Teresa inevitably drop by with their spouses and kids to hang out or have a BBQ. Between the big, close Italian family and all the fabulous food, I feel right at home.

Back in the city, my furniture and artwork continue to get moved around or I’ll find my things propped up in the closet. There seems to be a gradual influx of more of her things being added to the mix. 

She’s taken over an entire wall with her very large collection of hats. And while I think some of her design choices are kind of cool, I can’t help feeling she’s gone from being my friend to an unintentional roommate within a few short weeks.

Maria suggests we have a party and invite some of our fellow acting students. I have a crush on this guy Mitch, who has no idea how I feel – I’ve only shared that detail with Maria. At the party she quickly latches on to Mitch and by the end of the evening I see them making out on my couch. On MY couch. In MY apartment.

The morning after the party I tepidly approach her, “You know…this just isn’t working for me Maria. I think our friendship will be a lot better off if maybe you find your own apartment.” 

Her face changes, it’s something menacing in her eyes, and she flies into a blind rage that is both cartoonish and terrifying at the same time.

She picks up a vacuum cleaner attachment and starts running around the apartment ranting. I’ve ever seen anyone flip out with this kind of intensity before. 

She comes barreling towards me holding the vacuum wand like a weapon, screaming obscenities at me – “You fucking cunt! You’d be so boring if it weren’t for me! You fat pathetic little bitch!” 

Cowering in my tiny bathroom I cry out “You need to get out of my apartment Maria!” – but it doesn’t slow her down one bit. 

She clearly has no intention of going anywhere.  I quickly grab my purse and bolt out of the apartment to the nearest payphone to call my brother. 

In heavy sobs I tell him what’s just happened. 

Patrick is no fan of drama and gives zero fucks about my predicament. “What do you want me to do about it? If you’re scared, call the police!” 

I feel so embarrassed, and I’m reluctant to get the police involved. 

Not knowing what else to do, I call the only two people who might be able to help me. Her old roommate Winifred, and her sister Teresa. 

Winifred tells me “Here’s what you are going to do. You’re going to go home and tell her to grab whatever she can carry out the door with her, and then you’re going to tell her to get the fuck out of your apartment – or you will call the police. Tell her she can pick up the rest of her things when it’s convenient for YOU. Then call a locksmith and have your locks changed. TODAY.” 

Her instructions are crystal clear, as if she’s been through this before.  

Next, I call Teresa. With her 80’s “the bigger the hair the closer to God” look, she reminds me of Melanie Griffith’s character Tess, in my favorite movie Working Girl. 

She has huge blue eyes that are even more pronounced with her heavy use of black eyeliner. 

And while we’ve developed a nice bond – Maria is still her sister, so I’m nervous to tell her what’s happened. 

But I’m at a breaking point, so I take the chance and call her, and let it all out. 

In her thick and nasal Long Island accent, she says “Oh honey. I knew this was gonna happen again. You gotta take care of yourself sweetheart. I love my sista dearly…but Maria is bat-shit CRAZY! My parents just don’t want to see it! They’re constantly bailing her out of all her messes – so she never has to get her shit together!” 

Both Winifred and Teresa provide intel about Maria I had not previously known. The most obvious – that she’s bi-polar but refuses to take medication. And that she has a history of torching bridges and self-destructing.

It’s now clear to me – it’s not personal…I’m just the latest casualty in her long history of damaged relationships and hostile takeovers.

My boss has graciously paid for a locksmith, and sends me home, with one of my co-workers, Riva, as back-up, to go meet him at my apartment. When we arrive, I breathe a sigh of relief that Maria is nowhere to be seen. Riva and I quickly go through the apartment, grabbing some of Maria’s things, stuffing a duffle bag with her clothing and some essentials, and I set them outside my apartment door for whenever she returns. She still has keys to get into the building, but she won’t be able to get into my apartment.

I attach a brief note to her things that essentially says what Winifred instructed me to say – “You can come get the rest of your things when it’s convenient for me…etc.” and I get to the business of putting my home back together the way it was before the whirlwind that is Maria found her way into my life.

My psyche has been impacted in both negative and positive ways and I do my best to recognize that all the things I’m feeling can be real and true at the same time. Maria did teach me a lot about developing my own personal style, how to take good care of my skin and hair, and some home design tips that I am incorporating into my life. But I make a vow to myself that I’ll also try to be more aware and trust my intuition when I sense people are giving me warning signs or showing me who they really are with their actions and behavior. 

No matter how much I wanted her to be an interesting and quirky friend, a lot of her moods were indicative of a deeply disturbed woman.

Her sister Teresa and I get together a few months later at her home, for what will be the last time I will ever spend time out on the Island with anyone associated with Maria. I carry this feeling like I did something wrong and feel pains of guilt for throwing Maria out the way I did, but I am reassured by Teresa that I had no choice. That I absolutely did the right and only thing I could do under the circumstances.

Winifred and I start to talk on the phone more frequently, and the solid New York friend I was longing to find was right in front of me the whole time. A positive byproduct of my brief friendship with Hurricane Maria.

Winifred is like the big sister I never had. And when I begin to question whether being an actress is really my calling and that maybe I should look at going back to school – it’s Winifred, who works at New York University, that sets up my first appointment with an advisor to see what I need to do to get enrolled.

Nothing happens by mistake. And while I’d never want to be faced with the kind of uncontrolled rage I saw in Maria that day, I manage to move forward having made a stable new friend, and with the first of many exciting New York stories under my belt.