People are funny creatures aren't they? One minute they're all buddy-buddy with you then the next they refuse to even acknowledge your existence.
I'm sure this is something we all have had problems with, on either a small or large scale, at one point in our lives. How do we define a true friend?
Of course there are those in our lives that we adore, that we know are there for us no matter what, and we know that belong in our lives, for better or worse. These people ARE true friends. But what happens when it's not so simple? When you're given a different set of specifications, and from those, it's a tad more difficult to determine whether or not someone is actually in your life because they want to be, because they like spending time with you, because they are your friend, or if it's something more along the lines of a convenience to them, when none of their other friends are listening.
My best friend. I love her to death. It's our 10 year friendiversary this year, which it's pretty exciting to both of us. In many ways, her and I are quite similar, but we're also very different. For those of you that know me, you'll know that I really hate know-it-all's. They drive me completely batshit crazy. Yet my best friend, well, she's the biggest know-it-all I know. She fully admits to it, and I call her out on it pretty much every time we see each other. Her know-it-all-ness does drive me a bit crazy sometimes, but all of the other good things I love about her, and love about our friendship, overrides the bad feelings I have toward her crazy brain.
And then there's me, and I have my issues. I'm terribly unreliable when it comes to contact, and I'm a super piker, given the opportunity. This isn't at all or has it ever been, about the people or the person, but rather about my sheer laziness and homebody nature. I'll quite happily invite you to my house, but I lack the desire to venture outside unless absolutely necessary. I think I get this from my mother lol.
We work because of history, because of personality, because we genuinely like each other. We're fairly relaxed and can go without speaking to each other months on end then one day just pick up again where we left off, without any weirdness or issues. We're not so much like that these days, since we're old (so old! lol) and probably need each other more, but when we were younger, this was definitely the case. Our friendship is very easy, neither of us is demanding of time (except for the incessant calling at all hours! grr! lol), and when we're at the others house, there's no need to entertain, as you would someone else. You know, the uneasy feeling you have when you're not sure the other person is having fun? We don't get that. That just doesn't happen.
In many respects, we're like sisters. We still fight and disagree about things, but our fighting consists of "What? You dumbass. You're wrong" ... "No! You're wrong!" ... "Okay whatever" lol. It's never anything serious, in fact I don't think we've ever actually had a serious argument.
But anyway, I'm going off on a ranting tangent. My point in this post is how difficult it can be to find good friends like this. And how the road to true friends can be paved with tiresome, could-be true friends like some of those that have come in and out of my life over the years.
An example that comes to mind is of an old high school buddy of mine who has recently come back into my life. When we came back from overseas, I'd caught up with her a few times for lunch, which was great. She was doing much better than she had previously been doing, tho she still had a long way to go, and while I knew that she had issues she needed to talk to someone about, the friendship felt very one sided.
I think when one party of a friendship has a serious problem, then of course it's completely acceptable for that person to be the center of the conversations had within that troubled time. But it can be pretty tiresome when they ask you how you are, only to not listen and then turn the conversation back around onto how terrible their life is. Why bother asking in the first place? But that's not really the issue. If it had been my best friend that was doing this, then I wouldn't have thought anything of it, because she's helped me through some of my tough times, and been the bearer of my bad behaviour. Instead this was all coming from someone I hadn't seen in years, and had always scampered in the past whenever I had had issues I wished to talk about. She hadn't done her time yet, so I wasn't as forgiving with her eating up all the conversation with her talk.
This didn't really bode well for her, and while I kept in contact, I didn't plan anymore lunch dates. She would call upon me when she needed to talk or vent, which I was cool with. I liked talking to her, and I wanted to help her, I just didn't want it to feel so one-sided, the way I felt when I met with her for lunches.
This went on for a while, back and forth, but then she stopped responding, which worried me because due to her past behaviour, and to the problems she was having, I thought that perhaps she'd had a relapse. After a while of me harassing her, asking if she was okay, texting her everyday and making sure she knew that if she needed to talk I was there, she finally responded with a chirpy text about how she was now doing something with her time, and had made new friends.
Ooookaaay, so that's great. I'm glad that you're now doing something productive with your time (and keeping your mind off all the bad crap) and have made some new friends, BUT SERIOUSLY WOULD IT HAVE KILLED YOU TO RESPOND TO MY MESSAGES?!?
In my mind, that's pretty selfish. I was concerned for her, and went out of my way to ensure she was okay. Oh and she was okay alright, she had moved onto a new bunch of people. I don't have a problem with being replaced, but it would have been nice to have been told about it. Jeez.
After all that business, we still spoke on and off. I felt a bit put out, but I had no hard feelings towards her. I understood that it wasn't personal, and she probably didn't even know she had done anything wrong, she is after all a total sweetheart, and wouldn't hurt a fly (seriously).
The start of the year we started hanging out again because she started taking classes at my place of employment. We had regular once-a-week lunch dates, where we would gossip and giggle about anything and everything. It was great, and it was totally not one-sided like it had previously been. It was nice to be able to just vent and chat to her, or just be silly.
Until recently. End of semester, exam time. Understandably, she's been pretty damn busy, and had to cancel a lunch date a few weeks back so she could finish off some outstanding work. Totally cool. I get it, I know that work should come before play, I had cancelled on her about a month before because I had some work related stuff to do, so I knew where she was coming from. So we instead agreed to meet each other the following week, same day, same place.
The next week rolled around, the day of the lunch date. I text her and get the response that she can't meet, she had other stuff she needs to attend to. Okay so she's probably still busy. That's sweet. We arrange for the following week.
And she cancels again because she's got something else she needs to do. Okay, so maybe she's still busy with school work. I feel bad because I can't see her for lunch, and I was looking forward to it, but whatever. We can just have lunch the next week. So we make plans for Friday the next week. I text her that Monday, yep she's still on, looking forward to it.
Then the Friday comes and it comes with no text, nothing. I text her around 11.30am (we're set to meet at 12pm) and she tells me she can't meet me because she's made plans with someone else for lunch.
And now I'm just pissed. So you make other plans knowing that you already have plans with me, and then don't bother to tell me? Instead you just sit on it, and wait for me to text you? Who the fuck does that? Through the entirety of our friendship since my return to NZ, I've been the one doing the planning. I've been the one asking if she wanted to do lunch. She can't even send me a damn text to tell me she can't make it? WTF!
So now I've decided that I'm just not going to bother with her. She hasn't text me, and I doubt she will. She may want to have lunch with me, but she'll never be the one to invite, and quite frankly I'm done running around after someone who has a half-assed attitude toward our friendship.
I feel like she just been using me in the times when nobody else was around, which makes me feel like I'm not good enough to be her friend. I know this probably isn't true, and quite frankly, I'm a DAMN good friend if you do right by me, so fuck her if she doesn't want to partake in the awesomeness that is me lol. But I do still feel a bit sad about it.
Blah. Anybody else have problems like this with friends? What would you do in this situation?
