Friendship

The easiest thing to do after being hurt is to build really high safe walls around yourself.  To tell yourself that you don't need or want anyone around you.  This mind set makes you feel better about being let down by the ones you love.  There is no safer place than locked away in your own little world where no one can touch you.    

In reality, we are all alone.  There is no guarantee with any relationship.  The only person who you can always count on is yourself.  You are the only person who will be with you from the beginning until the end.  You better know yourself well, like yourself, get along with yourself, respect yourself and depend on yourself, because nobody else will ever walk in your shoes for you.  As soon as you start loving yourself, being alone doesn't scare you as much.  In fact, being alone can become the only thing that you do well.

To a certain degree, I have forgotten what it feels like to be in close relationships.  I feel more comfortable being by myself.  People scare me.  They are so unpredictable and inconsistent.  When I finally got my dog Jack, I began to realize what makes humans so much harder to have relationships with.  Jack is very consistent.  If I am good to him, he is good to him.  Our interactions are based on current situations.  Humans are not like this.  You can love someone with all your heart and treat them as good as you know how, and they can still turn around and bight your hand off.  They hold on to past events and allow them to control their interactions with people in their present.  Even though you are good to someone, they may be incapable of being good to you because of some unrelated event in their past. There is no magic formula to human interactions.

After deciding to step away from my relationship with my family, I stopped wanting to develop lasting relationships with anyone.  They were too much work.  Why would I ever put that much effort into something that would just end anyways?  I had wasted so much energy and love trying to change my family and develop healthy relationships with them that I had nothing left to give anyone else.  I assumed that relationship meant loss of self and I was tired of losing myself in other people.

My friendships that have developed here in Buena Vista are beginning to change my opinion of close relationships.  Friendships are the best way to begin to trust people again.  The saying, "you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family" is over played but very true.  You can choose your friends, and your choice of friends reflects on what kind of friend you are capable of being.  If you choose your friends wisely, you will be receiving and giving equal amounts of support and caring.  If you are incapable of being a good friend, then you will also be incapable of finding good friends.  I have found amazing friends here and they are helping me to take down my giant walls one brick at a time.