5 posts tagged “friends”

This week I received an e-mail from someone I hadn't spoken to in a few years. This was someone I knew about 18 years ago and we have been friends off and on until we got to a very firm off point.

During my time in school, I realized very often that I do not know what a person has been through. As I realized this, I found myself wanting to be the kind of person that would be a positive experience to someone, regardless of whether I knew their whole story or not.

I have been going over and over my interactions with this back-and-forth friend and returned to the "if I had known ____ about them, I would have been nicer" way of thinking that I wanted to avoid by making such a resolve while in school. Yes, our interactions were long before I knew what I know now, but it has helped me remember my initial decision on how to treat people.

In a training recently we were talking about damaging thought patterns following a trauma. A mother who might tell herself "I don't know if any man is safe to be around my kids" is completely correct. She doesn't know. That is accurate. The second question that we should ask ourselves is "is it helpful?"

I think we should ask ourselves these two questions (Is it accurate? Is it helpful?) when interacting with someone. Yes, someone may have done something to hurt you and a statement further chastising them may be accurate, but is it helpful to say it? I can think of many instances where I have heard accurate statements, but that were more harmful to the recipient than helpful.

I try to choose my words in such a way that is helpful to others, but I falter, just as all of you. But when thinking of your children, spouse, siblings, co-workers, friends remember that if you want to keep them as close as they are (or make them closer) seek to be accurate AND helpful in your comments. See what difference it makes.

A couple weeks ago some of my classmates were asking me what makes me angry. Generally I don't get angry about stuff. They didn't believe me. They probably thought it was some of that old "avoidance pattern" stuff where I just block out "all" my anger. I finally found something that makes me angry. And then I found at least one thing that frustrates me.

First we'll address angry. Parents. Not my parents, but parents of my kids at the hospital. Specifically, the ones who make excuses not to see their kids and treat them like they're unimportant wastes of time. I'm about to drop-kick one of the moms. Or at least give her a sound tongue-lashing. I suppose then what really makes me angry is people who don't take into consideration the feelings of people they should love. If that's whittled down into one word it would be...selfishness. In reality, all selfishness doesn't get me as fired up as this one situation, but still.

I suppose the frustrating thing could be construed as something along the vein of selfishness, but I don't think so at all. It more comes down to...people giving up. People who don't fight any more. It seems like a pretty wide spectrum of people, but ... okay maybe it is. I don't know how my parents did it, but all of my siblings (and myself) are hard workers. We don't put our names on shabby jobs of things and enjoy it.

This is probably most frustrating to me because I've been known to do it in the past. Not in regard to tangible things, but more in regard to relationships/friendships. I'll move and unless I know that the friendship goes both ways then I'm not really going to make an effort to maintain a long-distance anything. It becomes even more difficult each time I move because I have a large family and I keep adding good friends and eventually all my time would be spent calling, e-mailing, or writing snail mail to my friends if I really kept touch with them all. I know this about myself.

I have managed to convince myself that this is okay because I make an effort not to be fake about stuff. If I don't like you...I don't hide it. I'll be civil, but I won't be outgoing and bubbly to your face and stab you when you turn around. I'm not that person. Because I'm not that person, I don't accept people as friends who I feel are "that person". Sometimes it takes me longer to realize the facade than others, but there hasn't been a time where I've been tricked when it came to it.

For me, there are no one-sided friendships. I'm not going to pour my heart out to anyone who doesn't feel they can do the same to me. There are times when I see room for improvement on my part and on the other person's part. I know they are holding themselves back and I want to be around when they let themselves go (in a good way). I want to see them reach their potential. The frustrating part is when you see them moving toward that and then...they stop. They refuse to try, to fight, to work for the end goal, to put themselves out there with a risk.

This is the point for me where I lose my steam for watching paint dry. I am reminded of a scene in the movie Gattaca where the two brothers race swimming in a lake and the seemingly "weaker" one always wins. Toward the end of the movie, the brother that loses all the time finally asks how the other wins. He tells him that he doesn't save any energy for the trip back. I feel like these people that are holding back are expecting some sort of safety in putting away some energy for later when in reality it only means that they'll rarely win. Then I find myself mourning for the person they have the potential to be. They will always be frustrated with themselves. Trying to find ways to prove themselves that don't take true risk or effort. The person they could be is frustrated because they are unwilling to take one step on true faith. Instead they take steps other people have set before them, with no thought for ... anything.

I suppose it's so frustrating because I know the difference. I'm not saying that I don't do it anymore, I just don't do it as much. I know how much happier I am on the days that I choose to walk by faith and trust in who I could be and the paths set before me or I have to blaze myself. Doing it is the hard part. 

I've learned that I'm a weird fighter. Okay, generally I don't fight. It used to be that I'd get frustrated and just avoid, ignore, until it passed or until they got the clue that I wanted nothing to do with them. None of which was an appropriate solution to the problem

Since I've started this program that has slowly transformed in many ways and I feel as though I'm full circle. I was to the point where I'd sit and deal with it right then. We'd talk about what was hurtful, etc. and all things would be resolved. The problem arose when it wasn't really resolved. The thing is, I take a little while to process things. Something can't happen to me and then five seconds realize that it wasn't really about the fact that you shushed me, but it was more about the fact that nobody wanted to listen to me when I was little and that still kinda hurts because then I start believing it again.

So, then I finally realize what the problem really was, but the other person thinks it's resolved and I feel silly for bringing it up, so I don't and then they never really get why I was upset. They only get my this-is-the-only-reason-that-comes-to-mind-now response. It's so frustrating to have incomplete conversations!!

I've since taken up the habit of not engaging in those conversations until I know what it was really about. It appears to be the same pattern as before from the outside, but it really isn't. When it comes down to it, much of the frustration, whatever, had nothing at all to do with that person and only their resemblance to an emotionally similar situation. Once I have successfully identified this situation and processed through it, I feel no need to engage in a conversation to resolve the issue, I'm over it. Unless of course that person is available at two in the morning when I finally get to the root of it all.

The down side is the random awkwardness as a result of my time trying to figure it out. I'm not going to act like everything is okay, but I'm also not going to act like it isn't, so I just don't act (which strangely resembles the acting like something is wrong and avoiding thing). Good times.

I have something better next, honest.

My first friend that I remember having outside of my siblings was a girl named Angie. She lived across the street from me when I started Kindergarten. She had long brown hair and coke-bottle glasses. We were probably friends because she lived across the street. She was a terrible friend. I'm not kidding. I tended to be rather clumsy and every time I fell down and hurt myself, she would laugh at me. She had a birthday party after we moved to a house a couple blocks down the street. I went as a good friend and she did something mean and I walked out and never talked to her again. At least not that I remember.

My next friend was named Jessica (the first half of 4th grade). We had moved towns and new friends were necessary. I have no idea how we became friends, but I spent some time out at her family's farm with the horses and her cat with no tail. Due to conditions outside of my control, I moved and never saw her again.

My next friend was named Michelle (2nd half of 4th). By this point, I don't think I was really in search of a friend. Maybe I wanted one, but everything else was so dominant in my mind that I wasn't really in pursuit of one. She handed me a note within the first week of my move asking me if she could be my friend. I had no objection. I followed her around all the time. The kids made fun of me for always following her, I was her "shadow" and apparently, that was a bad thing. I soon wondered if Michelle was bothered by that. Soon after that, I stopped counting friends. Michelle and I were still "friends" but I didn't feel like I was "allowed" to be around her the way I wanted to, so I just backed off and waited for her to ask me to do something.

This last one has set a pretty standard pattern of my life. When I moved again and felt like I really had friends that wanted me around it would crush me to learn "all" my friends had gotten together and not even invited me thus reinforcing the belief that I shouldn't pursue friends but wait for them to pursue me.

In high school and middle school I managed to maintain a group of "friends" but my attachment to the majority of them was minimal, at best. When I look back with my "relationship onion" eyes I know exactly how little of friends we were.

Like I said, I've managed to keep a pretty consistent pattern in regard to most of my friends over the years. People that were considered my friends varied by the people in the immediate vicinity of me, physically. People would move and I'd make no effort to keep touch. There would be a few that I would try and keep up with, but became discouraged by their lack of reciprocated effort.

I had a conversation with a transient friend a couple weeks ago. Transient in the sense that we usually only talk every month or so when she needs a little therapy or advice regarding life. I had made a pretty good habit of not calling her because then all she seemed to do was talk about herself which became exhausting. Previous to my conversation with her I had discontinued my efforts to maintain most of my seemingly one-sided friendships.

She talked of a friend she had in another city that she was always the one to call. He never called her. She was getting frustrated (just as I had) and then he commented to her about how nice it was that she still kept in touch with him while he was so busy with work and school and things.

Then I remembered something. One of my seemingly one-sided friends commented to me at one time that I was one of three people they talked to on a regular basis. I'm making efforts to do better, at least to catch up with the people that I was really friends with instead of being dissatisfied with the lack of friendship in other areas.

Oftentimes I take actions (or lack thereof) very personally. When friends don't call, my mind leads me to believe they don't really want to keep touch with me, etc. I hadn't spoken to some friends in about six months. I called sometime last week during a break in classes and sessions and ended up having to leave a message. I had forgotten that I had called them when I received a voice mail this evening. I called them back to learn they had written my number down and root beer got spilled on it so it was lost. Nothing at all to do with whether or not they wanted to keep touch with me.

Had I just maintained the "if they don't want to talk to me I don't want to talk to them" attitude we wouldn't have gotten to catch up with each other and remain friends.

I knew a couple of the second years pretty well when I was a first year. Now that the first years are here I find myself a little disappointed that I haven't met half of them (the other half I know from working with them or them being in my classes before). Only one have I met officially. There is this point where I don't want to meet them. I don't expect to know them  half as well as I know my group and if I did, it would only make things more difficult come graduation.

The trick is keeping up with them. I'm great while we see each other every day. Put a couple hundred miles and completely different lives between us and let's hope I've changed a little. At least in that area.

I finished my paper close to 5:00 am. I realized about halfway through that I left three sources at home. In most cases, I could just run home and come back, but because the building is locked, if I had gone home, I wouldn't have gotten to finish my paper. Catch 22s are rotten. In any case, it's done and I feel like it's terrible, but I feel that way about every paper and I've been getting As, so I'm not going to complain, too much.

I wasn't going to go to sleep when I got home, but a little before 6 I decided a nap wouldn't hurt. I never heard my alarm and woke up nine minutes into class. They were just done with the annoucements, etc. when I got there so I didn't miss much.

Yesterday when I was out, the UPS man came by to deliver some books on Murray Bowen for my paper due Tuesday. I thought they would be here sooner and I was frustrated that the one time I left the apartment, the guy came. This morning I took the time (even though I was running late) to sign the UPS slip and put it on my door. When I got back the original slip was gone and a 2nd notice slip was there. I was going to read all day tomorrow, well, at least the part when I wasn't sleeping or delivering cheesecakes. With my luck, the guy will come when I'm delivering cheesecakes. I'm going to sign the second slip and see if this guy gets it.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it, but there is a women's conference this weekend and I've been "hired" to make three cheesecakes for it. I made the first one in the break between class and work. The other two I'll make tonight. It's going to be a long night.

Lately I tend to go off on a tangent in my thoughts while in class. Especially this morning when I was so tired. I'm not sure what triggered it, but I had this memory come across my mind. I was in sixth grade, approaching Christmas break. I was by myself at my grandmother's and had been talking with my classmates about everything that was going on in my life. I somehow managed to convince them that I wouldn't have much of a Christmas and the last day before break they came and had gifts for me and everything. It wasn't really what my goal was, or if I even had a goal. Looking at that event now, I realize that at some point in my life I learned that people only care when there is something big going on, good or bad. I can think of a series of events following, and previous, to that Christmas where I may have acted more concerned about things just to manipulate someone else into acting like they cared. The rotten thing about manipulating people into caring is that after you succeed in the manipulation you wonder if all future affections are a result of the initial manipulation and question the sincerity of others.

I used to go through phases in my other online journal. I'd keep it public, willing to let anyone read some of the depth of my thoughts. Then I'd realize that some of the things I was sharing was basically being thrown around to anyone who would pay attention and that isn't the best thing. Then I'd go friends only, delete most of my "friends" and start over. I probably went through my entire journal five or six times each switching every entry back and forth from public to friends only. If you knew how much I wrote, you would know how ridiculous that is.

I still do it though. I'll not show up places just to see if anyone notices I'm not there. I'll turn off my phone when I'm writing a paper only to realize I don't get any phone calls, or my sister will freak out and call the clinic. :) I'm trying to do it less, but I forget some days that I think that way and it seems so automatic after so many years.

I think that's one reason I pay so much attention to the little details of other people. I remember names, faces, birthdays (even if I don't do anything about it), co-workers, kids names, spouses names, favorites of my friends to reinforce their own visibility and an effort to counteract my own invisibility.

This weekend is one where I have to go invisible. Paper due Tuesday, lots to read. Well, invisible all but Sunday.