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j4Answering questions about the strength or otherwise of friendships is always hard, but even more so at the moment when I feel like everybody is at odds with each other in one way or another. And, before anybody reaches for shift-8, all the well-intentioned "*hugs*" in the world aren't a substitute for what's missing.
I feel like the strong friendships that I thought would last for years have all fallen away, and I don't know if I was just being naive in thinking that any friendship would last that long. I worry that it's all my fault that my friendships have drifted away, for reasons that I'm not allowed to talk about.
But I feel like I don't have any spare emotional energy to try to rebuild friendships that have faded; and most of all I don't feel I have anything to bring to a friendship at the moment. I don't do anything, I don't think anything, I can't help anybody, I'm neither useful nor beautiful. I don't see what the point would be of trying to force this parcel of misery on people who have enough problems of their own.
The worst of it is that this doesn't make me despair; it just makes me feel flat and empty. I feel like the colour is leaching out of everything, like everything is tending towards zero. And all I can do is sit and watch the world run down like a wind-up toy that has fallen over, no longer running, just kicking slower and slower until finally, imperceptibly, motion becomes motionlessness.
I feel like the strong friendships that I thought would last for years have all fallen away, and I don't know if I was just being naive in thinking that any friendship would last that long. I worry that it's all my fault that my friendships have drifted away, for reasons that I'm not allowed to talk about.
But I feel like I don't have any spare emotional energy to try to rebuild friendships that have faded; and most of all I don't feel I have anything to bring to a friendship at the moment. I don't do anything, I don't think anything, I can't help anybody, I'm neither useful nor beautiful. I don't see what the point would be of trying to force this parcel of misery on people who have enough problems of their own.
The worst of it is that this doesn't make me despair; it just makes me feel flat and empty. I feel like the colour is leaching out of everything, like everything is tending towards zero. And all I can do is sit and watch the world run down like a wind-up toy that has fallen over, no longer running, just kicking slower and slower until finally, imperceptibly, motion becomes motionlessness.
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Re: friends & responsibility
Date: 2003-12-05 04:35 am (UTC)To which I say that (a) do you want people who behave so badly to be *your* friends, rather than backing off and just reckoning them to be acquaintances? (b) You can't make people be friends with each other, but if they can't be civilised or mature enough to avoid judging you for having friends they don't like, they have the problem, not you.
There is no reason why you should put up with people behaving so selfishly and unpleasantly in your presence: if they want to ignore each other pointedly across you then get out from the middle and put a pox on both their houses. Your own company in front of the television with a box of popcorn, or a good book and nice cup of something, would be 1,000 times better than hanging out with folk who seem to have the emotional sensitivity of a pack of fifteen-year-olds.
Unless of course everyone in this instance is fifteen, in which case you should all be at home doing your homework and not making each other miserable with hate-parties... (VBG).
No, honestly, why put up with it?
Re: friends & responsibility
Date: 2003-12-05 08:24 am (UTC)Generally I find that when people are acting like that it's because they're hurting, for one reason or another. The problem usually seems to be that somebody feels betrayed by somebody else, and that does upset people, and does sometimes make them act irrationally.
Perhaps it would make things easier if I disowned my friends when they were struggling with their own relationships and friendships, when they were acting irrationally and foolishly as a result of their own problems. But I don't think I'd be able to face myself in the mirror. And to be honest I don't think I'd have very many friends to worry about anyway after a short time of behaving like that.
Re: friends & responsibility
Date: 2003-12-06 01:54 am (UTC)My responsibility is to do one of several things: (a) don't take it to heart and let them know I don't or (b) take myself out of the firing line, out of an entirely proper self-respect.
Spending an evening, or three, with yourself in preference to spending it with warring friends is not the same as rejecting them forever. It is sending them a message that their behaviour is hurtful to you and that you don't care to have that pain continued.
People who in some way expect you to choose between your friends (if you hang out with A then I'm gonna make you suffer for it the next time I see you) are playing head games with your insecurities about respecting your own choices, whether they recognise that or not. *Their* hurt is *their* responsibility, not yours, and saying that if you don't hurt with their hurt, if you don't internalise their pain, then you aren't their friend, is simply childish.
Re: friends & responsibility
Date: 2003-12-05 02:10 pm (UTC)What Jan said. And it would get awfully awfully lonely after a while.