Welcome back to the story of my life. I’m in need of a brain dump.
At this point, there are so many thoughts swirling around in my head that I almost don’t even know where to start.
But I’ll start here. Right here. At friendship road.
Traditionally, I’m the friend that celebrates birthday’s and buy special gifts. I try to be available and present when possible and I do my best to go above and beyond to make sure that my friends feel like they are special and loved. I thought that was important. At a young age, I was fortunate enough to have people in my life that thought I was important. I can’t think of a time that I didn’t feel loved by someone. I had a lot of friends that weren’t as fortunate as I was in the parent or the relationship department and I thought it would be best to pay it forward. As years go by I watch friendship road get murkier and murkier and at some point, I started cutting people off.
People come and go in your life right. No big deal. But one thing that was happening that I actively chose not to acknowledge, is that I was holding onto friendships because of how the friendships functioned in the past, not the present. When I took a look at the friendships at present-day it made me question why I even bothered to maintain them. And don’t get me wrong this wasn’t just one person, this was a few people that I still had sitting in the close friend’s category that continued to show me time and time again that they weren’t good friends.
Most of my friends know my three-strike rule. Three strikes your out. Whether it be lying, or any other foolishness that I find unacceptable you have three strikes.
Two huge flaws in this system is that not only did I remove the option to talk things out after an issue but I also wasn’t applying to rule to all friends. I had to get called out a few times for me to even notice that. One thing that I decided to do was ask a series of questions about each friend. Some of the questions included:
Do you consider this person a part of your support system? Physical, emotional, both?
Can you be your true self around this person, or do you have to filter yourself for their comfort?
Has this person lied to you?
Does this person check in on you, or do you always reach out first?
Have you been invited to life events?
If an issue has arisen, have you resolved it with them or was it swept under the rug?
Has this person canceled plans at any point? If so when, why and how often? Was an explanation provided, was it truthful?
Does this person require emotional support? Are you drained after speaking with them?
Does this person have your best interest?
Is this person honest with you if you are making foolish decisions?
Does this person respect your time?
Does this person respect your relationship?
The list goes on and quite frankly I was embarrassed after reviewing it. I was letting a lot of people slip by doing things that were unacceptable, and I was making excuse after excuse for them.
Unfortunately not only do I live in the past I also don’t like confrontation. I’m more likely to stop talking to someone completely than to give them an explanation. Something I’m working on.
But moving right along to relationship road.
Living in the past part two. Not my proudest moments.
I have the worst habit of comparing present relationships to past ones. Although I’ve gotten a lot better in a way that it only tends to happen if an action or phrase is duplicated it still was happening pretty frequently at one point. An I honestly think it’s because I like what I like, and I’ve tried to be what I thought other people like for so long that I’m starting to get tired.
I’m the girl who read romance novels in high school and romanticizes everything choosing not to acknowledge the bad parts. I wanted to be the wife who ironed my husband’s work shirts and made my kids lunch and read them bedtime stories before bed. I wanted to go on trips around the world and volunteer on the weekends and roast people at family functions.
The older I get the more I feel like I’m meant to be the family member that lives alone, has no kids and no animals and works 70 hours a week. It feels like that has to be me because every time I take on a task to better myself another aspect of my life fails, and it’s usually my relationship. Not to mention my give up/ worth through ratio when it comes to resolving issues is pretty murky.
I took on grad school because I was inspired to further my education. I wanted to give myself a better chance of making more money for many reasons. One of them is just in case there was a point that I had a raise a child on my own. I chose to go back to counseling to learn how to navigate my anxiety so I could be the best parent for my child and a better partner for my partner. Then the choice of getting back on birth control in an attempt to solve internal issues not taking into consideration the potential outcome of feeding my body extra hormones ( mood swings, depression, etc).
Looking at the future, but not navigating the present well. I hadn’t taken into consideration the amount of time that school would take up, how tired I would be, how stressed and how absent I would be.
I wanted to be a partner that brought more to the table but then wasn’t even present at the table. I wanted to be an employee that had more to offer, but then couldn’t successfully navigate both spaces.
It’s frustrating, seeing that I’ve spread myself too thin, trying to be the partner, the employee and the friend. Then I attempted to build a new support system that I can’t even withhold because my social anxiety is getting worse and I’m too busy doing homework.
Reality can be ugly sometimes, and I know one thing. I sure don’t want to navigate it on my own.
CallMeCam 