I Once Knew A Girl Named Irene - Creative Writing

I once knew a girl named Irene.
I thought she was my friend despite her stormy personality.
In fact, we were friends up until today.
But today was the last straw.
Now I see that I was her friend but to her I was just another port of calm.

You see, 
Irene seemed to surround herself with people of a calm nature.
Everyone around her was so down-to-earth.
I was one of those people.
But the moment Irene would spiral into a party
or a conversation,
all hell would break loose, litterally.
Once Irene had forced herself into a given social interaction,
there would, inevitably, be fists or beer glasses or worse,
furniture flying in her wake.
She was that kind of girl.
Always at the centre of any drama.
Irene LOVED drama.
And she loved to be the centre of attention.
Mostly negative attention.
She was like an attention-starved child,
always striving for negative feedback,
needing to be noticed.
And Irene got noticed everywhere she went.

She was a very slim girl.
A wisp of a girl.
But she took up so much psychological space
that her presence was like an orb.
She'd plough into the centre of a conversation
and people would scatter.
Words like a flood.
Windows shattering.
Chairs flying through the air with centrifugal force.
Amazing.

Sometimes I would ask myself 
how one person could do so much damage.
I always tried to see the good in Irene.
I would justify her tempestuous nature.
She doesn't mean to reek such havok.
She is just a small girl with a big personality.
All of her friends are very calm people.
At her centre she is a calm person too.

I fooled myself for a long time.
I thought she would change.
I thought she would let go of her disastrous ways.

But not Irene.
Irene without chaos
is like a boat without water.
Totally irrelevant
Without chaos, Irene would cease to exist.
Like a hurricane, she would downgrade to a tropical storm.
And then eventually peter out to a summer shower. 
She would just disappear.

Knowing this,
I actually felt sorry for her.
Can you imagine?
And so I took a lot of crap from Irene
and her temperamental ways. 
I was always ready for things to fall in around her.
But today was the last straw. 

Today Irene and I had made plans to get together.
I was thinking we'd celebrate 
the last sunny days of August together.
But it was not to be.
Today even I was left broken in the wake of Irene.

She called me early,
howling into the phone like a gale force wind.
I knew she was upset
but I could not understand a word she was saying.
And she left no space for me to reply.
Then she proceeded to cry:
a torrent of emotions about what, I do not know.
Believe it or not,
I stayed on the phone with her ALL day.
She was so twisted up in her emotional drama
that I dared not interrupt her.
On and on she cried,
never stopping to let me speak.
To offer a few words.
To breathe.

She went on for HOURS.
I have NEVER stayed on the phone for that long with anyone.
No-one.
Except Irene.
She just wouldn't let up.

Until finally she did.
Just like that.
Her tears transformed into snuffles
and like that, she hung up.

I never did find out what her torrential tears were about.
But by that time I was so emotionally exhausted,
that I did not care.
I was drained of all energy
like someone had turned off the power source to my body.
And in that moment of emptiness
came total clarity.
A voice inside my head said, "Be done with her!
She is a hurricane disrupting your peaceful existence".
Suddenly I was freed.

No longer shall I weather the storm,
that is Irene.