Friendship
I love, Love, LOVE my friends.
I am rediscovering old friends on Facebook and it’s cool, but kinda weird too. I am finding myself thinking a lot about the past, wondering about people, contemplating how much I’ve changed. Wondering how much they’ve changed. Is it possible to reconnect with someone you loved dearly once upon a time and find that you’re still totally compatible? Or is it more likely that you’ll find you have very little in common now? How much weight can you reasonably put on experiences and connections that happened when we were mere babies—14 years old? 18? And yet, they were formative experiences. Certainly I wish them all good fortune, good health, and love.
I’m also wondering about the various levels of connection. What do I want out of this thing? I am spoiled in most of my current relationships: they are very deep, very forgiving, very committed, very real. I think I often have unreasonable expectations about new friendships. They always feel a little funny because they start out slow and skate on the surface of life and love for a while, sometimes a long while. If you’re lucky and patient, these new relationships can get deeper over time. Sometimes I’m not very patient and I dive down deep too early. I think I scare some people away, and this makes me feel sad and awkward, and even unlovable. But then I think, I am who I am. I don’t have a lot of spare time. I do not want to waste it with people who don’t wish to know the real me, who can’t handle me. And so I ponder. I am trying to let it unfold. Patience is not a virtue that I have in great stores.
January 26, 2009 at 2:40 pm
You are who you are today, and you should never apologize for that. It’s nice to remember the past, but I enjoy hearing about your life now.
January 26, 2009 at 4:01 pm
You know, your second paragraph could be translated directly into how I felt about dating, and how I worried that I either scared people away or was unlovable. The patience thing is very, very tricky.
It’s true, you are who you are (and I love who you are). I think in the end, the ones who really do see *you* are the ones that stay.