My birthday has recently passed. I had a wonderful party from fantastic friends, and they got me a nice camera that is more expensive than I'm worth! So I am eternally grateful and need to give them all a large, rib-crushing hug. I am in a good mood, and life is going well.
A year ago, this was not the case.
On my last birthday, my friends got me a drawing tablet last year. Also a very nice gift. But I was very insecure as to whether my friends wanted to actually go to my birthday dinner, or whether they just felt obligated to. I got a vibe that they didn't want to go, that I was dragging them. And a few friends couldn't make it, so that killed my morale. So what did I do? I pretended to be sick, to let them off the hook. A few still ended up going just for dinner, but not for my sake. I felt I had relieved them.
This was slightly mirrored in this years birthday dinner. I had been excited for this dinner for a while now, because I thoroughly enjoy hanging out with my friends, and I like when we're all hanging out together. So naturally I was talking about it a lot, referring it to "my birthday dinner." Apparently this came off as selfish, because my roommate had been acting a bit angry a day before the dinner. I wondered why. Being friends with his girlfriend, I asked her what was up.
Well, I had been talking about the dinner so much that to my roommate, it seemed like going was now a chore. I was being self-centered, self-absorbed, putting so much worth on myself that my friend, who I consider to be a good friend, no longer wanted to go hang out with us that night. His girlfriend was telling me this over AIM, at work. I had to hold back tears because my boss and coworker were there.
Feelings of last year flushed back to me. Insecurity. Sadness. I wanted to call the whole thing off, and I certainly didn't want my roommate to go. But, his girlfriend assured me that it was probably just him being a bit off this week. Nonetheless, I went and bought a mop and some cleaner, and I went back to the apartment to thoroughly clean the place because I knew he'd like that. Maybe he wouldn't hate going out if I proved myself to be a good friend.
There's so much to write that it is difficult to organize this post, so I think I'm going to have to split this up into parts.
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