Friendships are Tricky

Or rather, good friendships are tricky.

I've learned the hard way that if you push a friendship too hard, it snaps like a twig. I used to be good friends with a girl, so naturally I wanted to talk to her as much as possible. Talked to her too much. Now we're not friends.

So since then I've been very cautious not to push and to make sure everything is always OK. Ironically, this is just as bad as pushing too hard. Overly cautious causes problem, and I fear I have damaged a friendship because of this. See, I have two very good friends. One friend lives pretty close to me, and I worried I hurt our friendship because I accidentally revealed a secret. So I did some damage control and apologized a lot to show that I really was sorry and I really cared. She was fine, so now we're definitely good, more or less.

But I brought up the story with my other really good friend, cordially referred to as New York friend, and she was the one that said that I shouldn't overreact because then I might actually hurt the friendship when there was nothing wrong to begin with. Then she said that I had probably done that to her a few times, but she couldn't really remember. Great, my life is a giant Catch 22. If I try too hard, if I really show how much I appreciate this friend, how much I care, snap. Like a twig. Too little and of course we dwindle away into non-friendship. So I guess I need to tone it down a bit, if the damage hasn't already been done.

So that's been on my mind lately. Whether we're cool or not, whether our lack of talking is because I had done something wrong earlier that she never talked to me about, or whether yet again I'm just over thinking things. Either way I've come to a couple conclusions.

One, I am way too attached to my friends. Clingy. I didn't have a whole lot of friends growing up so I tend to latch on to the few I do have. That's bad news. So I'm going to go through a period of time where I talk to them a lot less on AIM. Right now for most of my friends, I am always the one to start the conversation, which I can only assume means that they have better thing to do than talk to me and that they don't really care either way. Or not, I have no idea. But I can't ask any of them, especially New York friend, because asking... that would be pushing. So now I wait in silence for something to happen. Of course again, this may just be overthinking.

Secondly, I do have to learn to live my life alone. Most of the reason I'm so very attached to my friends is because they have helped me get through a lot of things, and for that I am eternally grateful. But now I am at a much higher emotional stability than I used to be, so I need to stop bothering them whenever I have some issue, I need to handle it myself. Not every conversation can be about some deep emotional thing I'm thinking about, just on rare occasion. Well, this blog will be there if anyone is ever curious.

This is a large part of my life and it aint over yet. Hopefully soon though.