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August 15, 2000
I don't know.
Maybe it's the weather. It's dark and gray outside, and the wind is making sad moaning sounds around the windows. Even the cats looked depressed this morning. I just wanted to stay in bed with the covers over my head, and sleep for a long, long time. Nothing much appealed to me when the alarm went off this morning -- the routine of go to work, go to the gym, play with email, go to sleep just looked so drab.
Maybe it's just me. Something's been nagging at me for a while now. It's something that's happened a few times over the course of the past few months, and it makes me worry, and makes me sad. People I care about, people I really like, and desperately want to like me back, getting angry at me for things I was unaware of, things I never intended, and would take back in a heartbeat. I've said before, I think, that I seem to have trouble maintaining long-term friendships. I have three of them right now -- three people I've known since college, who have never decided they don't like me anymore, who have never gotten angry and washed their hands of me -- and I appreciate them more than they'll ever know. They feel like family to me. I've only recently, after knowing these three for almost ten years, felt comfortable in the knowledge that they aren't going to walk away. I still feel twinges of worry that I'll do something stupid and lose them, but the twinges are small, and I can usually talk myself through them.
I worry more about the friends I've had for a shorter period of time. Ever since I can remember, the same thing happens when I become friends with someone. Maybe it happens to everyone, I don't know. Does it? It goes this way: I meet someone I like a whole lot. We become friends. I develop a deep respect for them, and I grow to care about them. Then something happens -- a spat, an argument, maybe minor, maybe not. Then we aren't friends anymore. Okay, so it hasn't happened dozens of times. Three times, that I can think of -- and that doesn't count Barry, who is a whole seperate can of worms unto himself. But those three times involved people I loved, people I wanted to be friends with for years to come. And something happened. A misunderstanding, in the most traumatic of the three cases. A misunderstanding that could have been fixed easily, quicly, and with a minimum of pain, had the person involved just talked to me, rather than getting angry but keeping silent until the anger festered beyond repair. This instance happened, let's see... six years ago. It still hurts. I still miss that person. I remember the silly inside jokes we had, I remember details about ourselves that we shared with each other, because they were too painful to share with anyone else. And it hurts to know that the friendship, which could have been saved so easily, fell apart so painfully. The other two weren't so dramatic, they just happened. Friendships don't always last forever, I know.
The result of it all is a deep fear that the people I'm friends with now will walk away. I don't have very many -- I've never been much of a social butterfly, no matter how much I've wanted to be. I tend to have just a few friends, and a whole lot of aquaintences. I don't know why that is. I don't know if I'm aloof, or obnoxious, or offensive to all but the thickest-skinned of people. Maybe I am, and I'm just too thick-skulled to see it. I worry about that almost all the time. I worry that the people I care about are really thinking ill of me -- thinking I'm annoying, or offensive, or stupid. I worry that they're only spending time with me because they feel obligated to, or feel sorry for me, and they're waiting for the chance to cut me loose. I hate feeling like that. It's just happened so many times, I don't know how else to feel. The same thought circles around in my head -- much louder, of course, since the whole Barry fiasco: "If you were unhappy with me, why didn't you just tell me? I could have fixed it -- or at least tried to. If you were angry at me, why didn't you say so? I would have made amends."
I don't know where this is going. Maybe it's just the weather. Maybe I'm just scared of losing more people I care about -- and I hope that those people know how important they are to me.
Posted by Mary Ellen at August 15, 2000 04:43 PM