Best Friends: Am I missing out, or does it just feel that way?

Times have been stressful in my life lately, and I finally put my finger on what is making it hard to shed some of that stress. I used to have a best friend, that one point person I could go to whenever I had something really good or really bad happening in my life just to talk it over. It was a mutual thing. He still lives in Kentucky, and although we are still friends, our relationship has changed drastically since I moved.

I no longer feel like I have someone in my life that I can call a best friend in that way. I have friends, but not really a go-to person I rely on. I also don't feel like I am that person for anyone else right now. I miss that, but it has to be organic. It's not like I can decide this or that person is my best friend. It has to just happen, and it just hasn't. Still, I find myself actually being a bit jealous of those that seem to find that relationship with someone else.

I feel like I have separated people in my life into compartments, and in a lot of ways, that has to be a choice I have made, even if a subconscious one. By doing that, though, it means there is no one that really knows me as I am in all of those compartments. I suppose that could be one way of protecting myself from getting hurt by keeping myself distanced from everyone to some extent. Nevertheless, I miss feeling like I can be completely at ease with another person. I guess I want my cake and to eat it, too.

What I ask myself, and you, readers, is whether a best friend is necessary? What purpose exactly is served by having a single best friend? Am I truly missing out, or is it really a double-edged sword?

The double-edged sword

I've been thinking lately about getting my feelings hurt by people that I opened myself up to and trusted. It's happened a few times in the last few years, sometimes with eventual reconciliation, sometimes not. What's odd about it is that for about 95% of my life, I never really experienced such rejection and pain that probabloy a lot of people experience. I think it's because for about 95% of my life, I never made myself vulnerable the way I have in the last few years.

For most of my life, I just never opened up to other people. I never really trusted anyone enough to do that. Instead, I kept my feelings locked up tight, and no one ever had a clue what was going on in my head. Thinking about it now, I realize it was just a way to protect myself from being hurt. If I never trusted anyone with anything, I couldn't get hurt by them. And to tell the truth, it worked for a long time.

A couple of years ago, though, something clicked, and I changed. A lot. I became a much more open person, someone that shares a lot more of myself than I ever did in the past. Some would argue I share too much, and I suppose there is a happy medium somewhere, but when I find someone I trust, I tend to open myself up and become very vulnerable. This is not always the best decision, I'm finding.

While I would not go back to the closed up version of myself in a million years, being open has its drawbacks. For one thing, it's easy for me to get my feelings hurt when I share deep things with someone and then they turn out not to be who I thought they were. I also tend to feel like I have invested a lot in someone when I share my deepest thoughts with someone, and when they don't appear to feel the same connection with me, I end up feeling foolish and naive.

I'm not saying this has happened to me a lot in the last few years, but more than it ever did while I was protecting myself from being hurt by being a closed book. Often, I don't think it's intentional or purposely hurtful on the other person's part. It's just that the connection I feel is not mutual, and that alone tends to hurt my self-esteem.

I'm not entirely sure this experience is an altogether bad thing. Sure, it hurts, but it also gives me some perspective I've never had before. In some ways, it eventually makes me develop a thicker skin. I don't want to be one of those people that "doesn't care what other people think", because that's a lot like I was before, and my life is much richer now than it was before.

I think if I can get through this with some of those people that I feel have hurt me, then I think we will understand each other better than before and can move on as better friends eventually. Or I'm being naive. I'd like to think it's the former, though.

Unhealthy attachment

I had to turn my back on Twitter yesterday, for as long as I can take it, because it was proving to be an unhealthy part of my life again.

All told, I really don't have that many friends here. I really only know a small handful of people well. The rest are what I would consider acquaintances. They are friendly to me and I like them, but they really don't care if  I live or die, or at least wouldn't notice for awhile. I tend to become too attached to people, especially if I feel some sort of kinship with them. When it becomes clear to me that it is not mutual, my self-esteem gets squashed. That has happened more than once recently, and I don't think I can handle any more of that right now.

I'm an inherently social person. I need that personal interaction, and before all this social media, I actually had more of that than I do now. It's easy to feel like you know someone based on their tweets, particularly if you interact with them a lot. However, realistically, this is a delusion. You can't know someone based on an online personality. Still, I get caught in that trap of thinking that someone cares about me as much as I do them. I invest a lot of time and effort in what I believe is a genuine friendship, and then they disappear or stop talking to me. I'm sure for many people, this seems trivial, and I would argue that those people have a much larger support network, and social media is just a small component of that network. Still feeling like a newbie to town, mine is pretty limited, and, I'm realizing, woefully inadequate.

Life after the first year

I'm thinking over my first year in Salem, Oregon, which is my first year in the Pacific Northwest and my first year in the West, period.  A lot has changed over the last 12 months, and I am just finally starting to feel at home again.

We arrived in Salem on October 21, 2009.  I was really sad about leaving everything and everyone I knew behind. It all felt so final. To make matters worse, I spent the first 3 months in Salem working from home at my job in Cincinnati. This just perpetuated the feelings of loss for me. I didn't really meet many people, stuck at home all day. I joined the roller derby league so I could meet people, and I did, but I didn't form many real, lasting friendships. I actually believe that part of that was my fault because I wasn't ready to accept my new home yet.

I really stagnated for a long time, and what finally changed things for me was Twitter. I know to some that sounds ridiculous, but Salem has a relatively small community on Twitter, and as they started getting together more frequently, I met some really great people, many of whom I am happy to call friends now.  Most of my social activities now tend to be with these people, and that social interaction has completely changed my life and my outlook.  Through those people and certain others I met through roller derby, I am meeting other people, and I finally feel like I am a part of this small city. I am slowly building connections to people in Portland as well, though it's harder to socialize with people 50 miles away. I keep trying, because I feel some kinship with these folks as well, even if they are a very different crowd than those in Salem.

If you had asked me a year ago if I could ever feel so at home here, I would have said there was no hope. It seemed impossible at the time, but I have come full circle. I am so thankful for all the people now in my life, those in person and those that I currently only know online. They have made all the difference in the world for me in my transition to this new chapter in my life.

I still miss and love my friends in Cincinnati, but I am finally in a place where I can really appreciate both old and new people in my life and be truly happy about it.

Lesson #5 from my dog

I realized this morning that it has taken me awhile to pick up on the lesson our dog taught us as soon as we adopted her from the family that raised her from a puppy for 3 years.  You'd think that it would have been traumatic for her to suddenly move from a loving home to a new home at that age, but she took it all in stride and surprised all of us.  I think what it boils down to is that, no matter how much the other family loved her, it wasn't enough to keep her as part of their family.  I always assumed it was just because Grace's loyalty is to anyone that feeds her. While this may be true in part, I still give her credit for embracing us as her new family so quickly and completely. 

For me, this translates to learning to completely embrace that community of people that care about me and understand me.  At the same time, I am learning to let go of the people that were in my life that do not care enough about me to keep me around in their lives.  It's a lesson in moving on.  That doesn't mean forgetting or letting go of the friends I have in other places. It just means that when I find myself among people that don't seem to understand me anymore, that we part ways. 

As my dog has shown me, it does not have to lead to sadness.  She is a very happy dog that embraces what she does have at all times.  We are always a work in progress, and that means that we should expect that sometimes, we will move beyond the people that we used to call friends.

What have I done?

Today I lost the second friend in a week, and I am totally to blame.  I have fucked up in a big way, and ruined two friendships, one of which I cared very deeply about.  I am devastated.  I don't think he will ever forgive me for my behavior, and I owe him so much I don't know what to do.  I became to difficult to deal with, and I can't really be angry at him, even though it would be much easier to hate him.  I have gotten through the first failure with bitterness and anger, and that clearly made things worse for me.

I wish I could go back in time and change things, but it's far too late for that.  I can't imagine moving forward at this point.  I think I just need to cry for awhile, and that's what I plan to do. 

Here I thought I'd made so much progress, but I see that I hadn't at all.