Don’t Belong

So I am back to feeling this way about the world.

I used to feel it a lot in elementary school. That I wasn’t from this planet. Couldn’t be. The things people did to each other and found acceptable were BEYOND me. I didn’t think I was being idealistic or seeing the world through rose colored glasses. There were some seriously fundamentally backwards things that were passing for normal behavior that I couldn’t bring myself to be down with the group-think on.  But underneath all of that was the longing to find a friend.   Admittedly, I was looking for a particular kind of friend.  The inseparable type.  The ones that you’re always on the phone with or always texting.  The one you automatically think of when you have an opportunity to experience something with a +1.  The one who you’d never miss any big event of theirs to be with them.  The ones who know your family well enough that your parents asked how they were doing because they knew you were joined at the hip.  The one that you didn’t have to catch up on anything because they were 100% “up” on everything going on with you and vice versa.  When given the opportunity, I (think – I have to qualify that all this may be in my mind) that I always try to be that friend in the hopes of some reciprocal action.  But throughout life, I’ve found that the ability to remain consistent really eludes a lot of people that I’ve crossed paths with.  And I can submit that I may have made mountains out of molehills – dubbing “friendships” where there weren’t really any, just to satisfy my need to feel like I did find something along the lines of what I was seeking.  Alas at 37, I still don’t have THAT kind of friend I was looking for.  I have great friends though.  People who really care and I really love and I know they love me.   But weeks can go by in between communique.  Sometimes months.  There’s always catching up to do.  I’m positive I don’t know their favorite artists so when they come by the station or we have access to tickets I know to call on them first as I’m sure they don’t know my favorite color or the name of the town I grew up in.

So of course, in analyzing all of this I realized that the issue HAS to be me.  I have to be the piece that doesn’t fit if I’ve not fit for so long with so many.  Tonight on the drive home after being hurt… again… by more people I let believe were friends (and actually, I blur the line between co-worker and friend way too often and it has ALWAYS gotten me in to trouble like this) I realized that it is because I hurt too deeply.   I invest so much emotion into people who come in to my life in the hopes that maybe they’re “the one” that I leave myself completely wide open to whatever hurt they may purposefully or inadvertently inflict.  And from past experience… I don’t LIKE hurt.  I don’t really appreciate it when it happens… and I close myself off to it.  So if you’ve hurt me… your opportunities to hurt me again will become very few and extremely far between.  But maybe everything hurts me that isn’t what I expect.  Maybe that’s unfair.  There are some things that I can’t look past.   You ALWAYS help your friend… no matter what.  That’s what  friend is.  You NEVER betray your friends and tell their business to people who are strangers to them.  You don’t impose that your friend does more for you than you’d do for them unless you’re willing to step up and meet them at their actions.  If you go so far as to accept an apology from a friend – then you HAVE to actually forgive – don’t keep treating them like a felon in your life boxed off in a corner for you to choose when to and when not to deal with them.  That isn’t real forgiveness.  You DO extend common courtesies to friends the same way you would appreciate them in similar situations.  It just takes a second to think “hmm… I wonder if ______ would want ________ to happen” or “I think I’ll give ______ a call and let them know about ________.  They may want to know.”  Your friends who have passed on from this world should NOT hold more importance than the ones that are right here with you still.  It sends the message that they need to be dead to be appreciated.  But more and more, I see folks kind of caught up in their own thing.  Not really thinking about anyone but themselves and the things that directly affect them.  This society is allowing for that more and more.  And I’m still of the mindset that the person on the train with me may have had an excruciating day so maybe I don’t need to play my video games with sfx blaring or shouting at my friend in the next seat.  I’ll let this person cut in front of me because they have to drive somewhere just like I do.  I will move out of the path of the escalator when I get off because I’m cognizant that there are people behind me that need the path to be clear.

Maybe I just need to be more selfish.  But I would have to train up to that point.  I am truly NOT there…  But it seems to be required for emotional survival here.  The more I think about turning inward… the more I see images of my mom… alone.  Letting the TV watch her.  Never going anywhere, while dad went everywhere.  No friends.  No confidants (besides my godmother … well… maybe that was her inseparable friend).  And again the path I chose in order to avoid a destiny is the one leading me to it…

I should probably just accept it and stop crying already.

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