Update time!
Things are going alright. It's been a really boring holiday period thus far. I really want to do things but I'm flying solo right now so it's really boring. My bffl and I are on a friendship break indefinitely, which is pretty lame. I mean, it's a break imposed by me, so I shouldn't complain too much but I do miss having her around to talk to, even if it's just messaging her something funny that happened each day on facebook.
It's okay, I mean, theoretically we'll just take a month, til mid August I suppose, and then I'll start talking to her again and we'll be friends. It's a super weird situation honestly. She's started dating the boy I was into about six months ago, and while I was over him, that wasn't really the point. It hurt my feelings and makes me super uncomfortable, for reasons I thought were pretty obvious, especially to her, since she's supposed to be an expert in my neuroses (and the fact that we discussed it multiple times over the last few months, that is wasn't at all okay with me), but as she is prone to do, she weighed up her feelings and mine and decided hers were more important. It's whatever. It's who she is.
When we talked about it (as in, I'd found out from another source and confronted her, making her admit it), she knew she'd done wrong by me and I thought I was okay with it, in a 'this sucks and I'm not happy but this is how it is, so may as well get on with it'. But then I said something really spiteful and (I think) out of character about her ex boyfriend and while it wasn't out of line really, I knew it would hurt her feelings and said it anyway so neither of us were winning the best friend game that day. I feel super guilty about it, but also frustrated because it took me from being in a position of moral righteousness to also being a shit friend.
The thing is, I'm really good at being there for people and not letting on that it bothers me. I'm not saying that I'm not a selfish person, but in a lot of ways, in matters of the heart at least, because I never think I'm worth it and I always assume that the other person is more worthy, I bend over backwards to help, even when it's not in my best interests. Like, I don't want to be there for Mia and listen to her excitement over however they got together, or deal with her angst over every little thing, whether good or bad. But if we're friends, I 100% would. Like as a duty of being a best friend, I would. I don't know how not to, because I don't know how to have those kinds of boundaries. Either I'm in something or I'm not. And what I fear, is that that leads to resentment and me being spiteful and saying things that are unkind.
So instead... break. My main reasoning was that I wanted to punish Mia somehow, to find some way to say, we're still friends and I still love you but you did something wrong and you hurt me, and I don't want to be passive aggressive about it, I want to say 'this is what you did, these are the consequences.' I mean, I don't know if that's what got through to her, or if I'm thinking of myself too highly to be like, the consequences are no Lucy for a month.
I didn't know what else to do. How do you punish someone that you love and still want to have a relationship with? I don't want to keep a running tally every time she does something awful and build up hurt and resentment and evidence that she's not a nice person, I want to forgive and then hopefully forget. But are you supposed to forgive people all the time, if they don't change their behaviour? Nothing I do will stop Mia from making this same choice every time. If I was to go back into the past and tell her this was the consequence, she'd still do it. If I told her it was him or me, she'd probably choose me, but obviously that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to be emotionally manipulative and say she can't do things otherwise I'm gone, but I feel like I'm justified to say that there are rules to friendship. When you break those rules, something changes.
In this case, the change does affect me equally, which is irritating but at least I have the power over it. There is something empowering about making a choice that does hurt you, but that changes something. I think it's really easy to just let someone make you feel small and sad but to accept that is has to be that way because you love that person too much to lose them completely over something hurtful, but in the long run, not a huge friendship ending issue. if Mia and I stop being friends, I want it to be because of something massive. I can't even think of what it would have to be. Not that I expect our friendship to end. She's my bffl, we aren't perfect but we love one another and get on too easily to mess it up. I don't think anything I've done this week is going to ruin that.
The other reasons I thought a break would work is that it means she and her boyfriend can have their merry little honeymoon period and I won't have to think about it or hear about it. And I can focus on other things and other friends.
Oh, the other reason that I thought it was a relatively empowering move is that I've been quite sad lately, thinking about my friendships as a triangle. Though now a very broken one. One dead, one on the other side of the world and one on a friendship break (who could have predicted that on the first of January 2015? Not me). I thought I wouldn't ever be able to react at all to Mia because she was my last remaining, close, intimate friend and I'm too much of a wuss to be alone. But not true. I'd rather be slightly more alone than be a pushover forever.
Besides, to be fair, I have a lot of close friends. Not close in that I see them all the time, but emotionally close. There are five people I could text or message right now, and say 'I need to talk' and they would stay up until 3am talking with me if I needed it. Half of them would probably come over. All of them would hang out in their next available free moment if I asked. I've never lacked intimacy with girl friends. And you-know-who probably. He'd stay up.
Another thing that's new as well recently is that I started to see a therapist about my problems. Not because I couldn't deal with them myself, but because help will get me better faster. One thing I was told today was to do this test which tells you what your strengths are. There are 24 all up, and it gives them to you in order. The advice I was given was this-- in your life, you shouldn't focus on bringing up the strengths you don't have, by doing things you hate. It's not about getting everyone to a certain minimum standard or benchmark, the way it is in school where everyone is forced to do a bit of everything. Instead, you focus on your top three strengths, the things that you do best and that bring you the most joy. This was a bit strange for me, because I always try hard to be very well rounded, but it's not saying that you shouldn't do the things that scare you, but that you shouldn't do the things you have tried and really know you don't like.
So, I did this quiz and my top strengths are (drumroll please)....
1) Creativity, ingenuity and originality.... which tbh I knew would be my first one, didn't need the quiz to tell me that.
2) Curiosity and interest in the world.... again, I guessed that one. I take a lot of personality tests, I know where I fit. The other very similar one to this, which I thought I might have third, but actually I got 6th, was love of learning. I think it makes sense that I got curiosity higher than love of learning. I much prefer to just know things, I like to be trusted with things, I like to have a mind boggling question and finding the answer, but I'm not so interested in everything, just because it exists. Jen reads non fiction for fun but I don't. I try, I buy the books, but I can only take history most of the time in stories. If they don't bring it to life, it's not very interesting to me.
3) Capacity to love and be loved.... I wasn't sure I'd get that one. I noticed it and was like... mmm yeah... that sounds like the Harry-Potter-will-defeat-Lord-Voldemort greatest strength that would probably apply to me. And voila, I love hard and I love intensely and I would be such a good fucking girlfriend because I love everything and apparently, I have a great capacity to be loved, however a test can measure that.
4) This one was super lame, but forgiveness and mercy. I think I got that one because I kept thinking about Mia and what a pushover I generally am, with all my forgiveness and endless capacity to give everyone a million chances. Honestly, I think this one needs to be moderated. I love people, even the ones that hurt me and while I don't think I'm going to be an abuse victim, you-know-who did teach me that I definitely know how to romanticise hurt and disregard for my feelings as signs of tragic love. I like to think that this strength is a benefit in moderation, when it's sensibly dolled out.
And last but not least, 5) Citizenship, teamwork and loyalty. Basically, I'm a good person. Not the most interesting, but I'm a team player, I do my fair share and I'm loyal.
I don't really know how you combine those into something useful and fruitful long term, like a career. I personally think the way is to become J K Rowling, by finding something that I find so curious about the world and the human condition and write something so endlessly fascinating and creative, that I get millions of fans and can spend my life connecting with people and being a source of good in the world. Voila.
Or teaching. Kids are curious, I'm creative and I'd get to form meaningful relationships with 25 kids each year.
I need to work out how psychology fits.
Anyway, good talk. Until next time.
Things are going alright. It's been a really boring holiday period thus far. I really want to do things but I'm flying solo right now so it's really boring. My bffl and I are on a friendship break indefinitely, which is pretty lame. I mean, it's a break imposed by me, so I shouldn't complain too much but I do miss having her around to talk to, even if it's just messaging her something funny that happened each day on facebook.
It's okay, I mean, theoretically we'll just take a month, til mid August I suppose, and then I'll start talking to her again and we'll be friends. It's a super weird situation honestly. She's started dating the boy I was into about six months ago, and while I was over him, that wasn't really the point. It hurt my feelings and makes me super uncomfortable, for reasons I thought were pretty obvious, especially to her, since she's supposed to be an expert in my neuroses (and the fact that we discussed it multiple times over the last few months, that is wasn't at all okay with me), but as she is prone to do, she weighed up her feelings and mine and decided hers were more important. It's whatever. It's who she is.
When we talked about it (as in, I'd found out from another source and confronted her, making her admit it), she knew she'd done wrong by me and I thought I was okay with it, in a 'this sucks and I'm not happy but this is how it is, so may as well get on with it'. But then I said something really spiteful and (I think) out of character about her ex boyfriend and while it wasn't out of line really, I knew it would hurt her feelings and said it anyway so neither of us were winning the best friend game that day. I feel super guilty about it, but also frustrated because it took me from being in a position of moral righteousness to also being a shit friend.
The thing is, I'm really good at being there for people and not letting on that it bothers me. I'm not saying that I'm not a selfish person, but in a lot of ways, in matters of the heart at least, because I never think I'm worth it and I always assume that the other person is more worthy, I bend over backwards to help, even when it's not in my best interests. Like, I don't want to be there for Mia and listen to her excitement over however they got together, or deal with her angst over every little thing, whether good or bad. But if we're friends, I 100% would. Like as a duty of being a best friend, I would. I don't know how not to, because I don't know how to have those kinds of boundaries. Either I'm in something or I'm not. And what I fear, is that that leads to resentment and me being spiteful and saying things that are unkind.
So instead... break. My main reasoning was that I wanted to punish Mia somehow, to find some way to say, we're still friends and I still love you but you did something wrong and you hurt me, and I don't want to be passive aggressive about it, I want to say 'this is what you did, these are the consequences.' I mean, I don't know if that's what got through to her, or if I'm thinking of myself too highly to be like, the consequences are no Lucy for a month.
I didn't know what else to do. How do you punish someone that you love and still want to have a relationship with? I don't want to keep a running tally every time she does something awful and build up hurt and resentment and evidence that she's not a nice person, I want to forgive and then hopefully forget. But are you supposed to forgive people all the time, if they don't change their behaviour? Nothing I do will stop Mia from making this same choice every time. If I was to go back into the past and tell her this was the consequence, she'd still do it. If I told her it was him or me, she'd probably choose me, but obviously that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to be emotionally manipulative and say she can't do things otherwise I'm gone, but I feel like I'm justified to say that there are rules to friendship. When you break those rules, something changes.
In this case, the change does affect me equally, which is irritating but at least I have the power over it. There is something empowering about making a choice that does hurt you, but that changes something. I think it's really easy to just let someone make you feel small and sad but to accept that is has to be that way because you love that person too much to lose them completely over something hurtful, but in the long run, not a huge friendship ending issue. if Mia and I stop being friends, I want it to be because of something massive. I can't even think of what it would have to be. Not that I expect our friendship to end. She's my bffl, we aren't perfect but we love one another and get on too easily to mess it up. I don't think anything I've done this week is going to ruin that.
The other reasons I thought a break would work is that it means she and her boyfriend can have their merry little honeymoon period and I won't have to think about it or hear about it. And I can focus on other things and other friends.
Oh, the other reason that I thought it was a relatively empowering move is that I've been quite sad lately, thinking about my friendships as a triangle. Though now a very broken one. One dead, one on the other side of the world and one on a friendship break (who could have predicted that on the first of January 2015? Not me). I thought I wouldn't ever be able to react at all to Mia because she was my last remaining, close, intimate friend and I'm too much of a wuss to be alone. But not true. I'd rather be slightly more alone than be a pushover forever.
Besides, to be fair, I have a lot of close friends. Not close in that I see them all the time, but emotionally close. There are five people I could text or message right now, and say 'I need to talk' and they would stay up until 3am talking with me if I needed it. Half of them would probably come over. All of them would hang out in their next available free moment if I asked. I've never lacked intimacy with girl friends. And you-know-who probably. He'd stay up.
Another thing that's new as well recently is that I started to see a therapist about my problems. Not because I couldn't deal with them myself, but because help will get me better faster. One thing I was told today was to do this test which tells you what your strengths are. There are 24 all up, and it gives them to you in order. The advice I was given was this-- in your life, you shouldn't focus on bringing up the strengths you don't have, by doing things you hate. It's not about getting everyone to a certain minimum standard or benchmark, the way it is in school where everyone is forced to do a bit of everything. Instead, you focus on your top three strengths, the things that you do best and that bring you the most joy. This was a bit strange for me, because I always try hard to be very well rounded, but it's not saying that you shouldn't do the things that scare you, but that you shouldn't do the things you have tried and really know you don't like.
So, I did this quiz and my top strengths are (drumroll please)....
1) Creativity, ingenuity and originality.... which tbh I knew would be my first one, didn't need the quiz to tell me that.
2) Curiosity and interest in the world.... again, I guessed that one. I take a lot of personality tests, I know where I fit. The other very similar one to this, which I thought I might have third, but actually I got 6th, was love of learning. I think it makes sense that I got curiosity higher than love of learning. I much prefer to just know things, I like to be trusted with things, I like to have a mind boggling question and finding the answer, but I'm not so interested in everything, just because it exists. Jen reads non fiction for fun but I don't. I try, I buy the books, but I can only take history most of the time in stories. If they don't bring it to life, it's not very interesting to me.
3) Capacity to love and be loved.... I wasn't sure I'd get that one. I noticed it and was like... mmm yeah... that sounds like the Harry-Potter-will-defeat-Lord-Voldemort greatest strength that would probably apply to me. And voila, I love hard and I love intensely and I would be such a good fucking girlfriend because I love everything and apparently, I have a great capacity to be loved, however a test can measure that.
4) This one was super lame, but forgiveness and mercy. I think I got that one because I kept thinking about Mia and what a pushover I generally am, with all my forgiveness and endless capacity to give everyone a million chances. Honestly, I think this one needs to be moderated. I love people, even the ones that hurt me and while I don't think I'm going to be an abuse victim, you-know-who did teach me that I definitely know how to romanticise hurt and disregard for my feelings as signs of tragic love. I like to think that this strength is a benefit in moderation, when it's sensibly dolled out.
And last but not least, 5) Citizenship, teamwork and loyalty. Basically, I'm a good person. Not the most interesting, but I'm a team player, I do my fair share and I'm loyal.
I don't really know how you combine those into something useful and fruitful long term, like a career. I personally think the way is to become J K Rowling, by finding something that I find so curious about the world and the human condition and write something so endlessly fascinating and creative, that I get millions of fans and can spend my life connecting with people and being a source of good in the world. Voila.
Or teaching. Kids are curious, I'm creative and I'd get to form meaningful relationships with 25 kids each year.
I need to work out how psychology fits.
Anyway, good talk. Until next time.
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