She's Come Undone

I feel a little confused and introspective. I don't know much about friendship. I don't really know how to have a friend or how to be a friend. I don't know what is expected or wanted between friends. I don't know what healthy boundaries look like.

For 20 years, I had one friend. She was very possessive of me, and I was okay with it for the most part. And whenever I tried to have other friends, not only would my one friend get really upset, but the other friendships always blew up as well.

I understand that these people all came into my life for a reason. I learned huge lessons from every relationship, no matter how long or short, how blissful the time nor how painful the end. And I never quite understood what happened at the ends... One time, a friend fell and broke both arms. I offered to help her however I could and she accused me of trying to take over her life while she was down. That was definitely a projection of her style of life, not mine! It was so off-base and out of the blue. I was reeling for months over that one.

It has always been that way- just off the wall turns of events, and I know that these people came into my life to teach me something and that the endings had to happen so we could all move on to our next dharma, but it was always so painful.

So I gave up. I stopped trying to make friends, and when I did find myself in a relationship, I was very wary and held back emotionally and ran at the first sign of conflict.

Not a lot has changed, I am realizing. On first glance, it seems very different, but there is still a root there that needs to be pulled.

So this evening, I take my daughter to a birthday party, and I run into a friend who has been mad at me over and over for the past year. She hugs me and talks to me for an hour about this and that, as if the last things she said to me were not words of hurt and anger.

When she walked up and hugged me, it was a long, sincere embrace (which is unusual). I felt so at home in her arms. I nearly melted, I love her so much. Why do I have to have these heart connections with the most trying relationships? Can friendships ever come easily? Can they be joyful more than trying?

What about letting the last thing that happened go without working it through? Is that healthy to just let it be water under the bridge? When do you decide a relationship is no longer serving you? When is it okay to love a person but quit being with them?

I also saw several other friends there who all said they missed me and where had I been?

On the way home, I was thinking about them all, and thinking about how I am wanting to move to Denver, and wondering if I am running away again.

The thing is this: Whenever I've moved, I haven't kept in touch. I lived in California for almost 32 years, and I don't keep in touch with a single person I knew while I lived there. So it's not like I will keep all these friends and go make some more. I will walk away and not look back, if history is any indication. Heck, I can live right in the same city with people and not keep in touch. I do it all the time. I tend to be withdrawn because I don't want to make small talk. I want to talk about important things and grow and change and figure out how to thrive rather than meerly exist.

I don't know how to do that with most people. I don't know how to relate to them. I don't know how to get to know them. In all seriousness, I think I might be socially retarded. I was the kid with the proverbial 'kick me' sign in grade school. I was always teacher's pet (except in 5th grade- that teacher hated me!), and all the kids were split between thinking I was a witch because I always knew things I shouldn't have known, and hating me because I was a Mormon (LDS), which might as well have been a devil worshiper for all they and their parents were concerned. I was always a loner until I got older, then I was everyone's buddy. Everyone liked me in high school, but I hated myself by then and trusted no one.

I've always been a good friend to others regardless of cliques and social status and and whatnot, but I've only ever allowed one friend to get very close to me- and that took 15 years before I let her into my head.

Now I will pretty much tell anyone anything about me if they want to know. I don't hold people at arm's length like I used to, thinking that no one would like me or understand me. But I am realizing more and more that I still hold people away just by virtue of not knowing how to have a relationship.

If someone says they want to get together, I say that would be nice and never persue it. I still make the assumption that people don't actually like me, and that they will toss me aside as soon as any other option comes along.

So am I abandoning them before they can abandon me? Am I hurting others by not following up? Am I making them feel like I don't want to be their friends?

Why are the friends that I tend to love the most the ones that hurt me over and over? What is that about? Why do I feel so much for people like that? Why is it so hard to walk away? Am I still playing out childhood patterns, still looking for my mother's love, my father's love? Still trying to prove I am loveable to people to whom no one is loveable because they don't love themselves at all? Am I still trying to save everyone? Am I respecting and honoring me?

Or is this all the way it is supposed to be for me? Maybe the Universe has always been preparing me for a life's work where I will have very few people close to me and many people who are at arm's length.

Yeah, sounds like bullshit to me too. Nice try though, huh?!