The Friend Problem

I have this friend, at home, who gives things. She loves things. She understands things. I'm afraid she sees the dollar value in everything. I'm afraid of being her friend. Can I be called her friend? Does she understand friendship? Is she spoiled? Greedy? Rotten? I don't know. Am I a true friend if I overlook that part of her personality? She isn't disrespectful, really...but she must always have her way. Spoiled? Yes. Greedy and rotten, I hope not. We are not friends because of our personalities being the same. We are friends because of what we've been through together. We've helped one another through the hard times. But I can't help feeling sorry for her. She loves money, and spending it...something I have always secretly detested. I prefer to wear clothes from thrift shops...because they've been worn, and loved, and grown out of, and discarded.
But I sit there, mooching her chocolate, and using her things. Am I an accomplice? There's so much more to life than things? Am I doing what so many people do and seeing my own faults in her? Am I spoiled? I try not to be. I know I can be thankless...but that's only because I don't really understand thankfulness...does that make me horrible?
I believe that all things come from God, and not from us...God is the only one that can be thanked...that's why maybe thanking someone for something isn't really right. Also, by thanking someone for something, it's thanking them for spending money they should have kept. Thanking them for spending money that should have been given to someone who has nothing, not to me, who has everything she needs and more. What is a true gift?
These sort of thoughts are so far from the mind of my friend that I don't know how we can call each other true friends. Isn't friendship love? We tell each other, half kiddingly, that we love each other. But do we? Truly...no. It's just words.
Her family is split up. From what I can tell, her parents play against one another using her as the middle, they both want her to love them more than the other, they want her to choose out of some twisted sense of revenge that follows a marriage that didn't work out. She's lived her life like a tv show, where nothing is real. She doesn't understand compassion the way I do. She understands compassion as hugging someone who is crying, as giving and recieving gifts at Christmastime. The thing is, she's never told me, but I think she does give alot of herself....or she wants to, but then stops short, and I think it has to do with the fact that she loved her parents...but they didn't love one another. They use her to get back at one another, measuring themselves against her love. They use things to buy her love, words, however hollow or true to express their love...and I think it is wrong...because I don't think they really do love her at all. Neither of them. And I don't think she knows what love is...the friend love, the family love...and although it is none of my business and I would never ask, the romantic love. She uses the word love so flippantly...it frightens me. What frightens me more is that I could be becoming her...not the intense person that I am...becoming flippant, fake...hiding my love behind showing it falsely. That is what I fear.
I don't know about this one. She is stubborn, self-centered, egotistical, and can be very nasty about other people...and I feel that she can be about me as well. I think that she feels that I am too lazy, that I should aspire to more, that I shouldn't be so driven toward my education and more toward work because the bounty of work is money, and you can spend money...you can't spend intellect. She judges me as being to prudish, not cool with the guys (because I'm not), not quite as pretty (though she will never say it), someone who eats too much, aspires too much, and isn't the way she is. She assumes that if someone isn't the way she is, they are at fault. She finds herself faultless because her parents have always found her faultless...because they never could lose that battle with her in the middle of it...they couldn't lose it to the child that could hate them.

The truly sad thing about it is...I can't tell her this. I don't want her to cry and hate me either. Does this make me an accomplice? I don't think she would change for me, I don't think if I am anything other than a doormat sometimes that it would be appropriate. I don't know about her. I just, simply don't know. I think that the only way I can truly give her a gift is if I hurt her feelings a great deal. And it wouldn't matter because I don't matter to her that much. Nothing matters except the things she surrounds herself with. To the world, she shows amazing potential, a strong work ethic, an ability to focus and please, about the tough stuff, she ignores it, and feels flippant and happy...but inside, I think she's screaming...

Foul is fair.