I'm still blogging in my head, I just haven't put fingers to keyboard in a while. "Pen to paper" has better alliteration, but it just isn't the way the world works anymore.
There are many things swirling around in my world that I may have freely blogged about in the past, but I hold back these days. For one, I don't want to hurt the ones I love, and the other is that maybe my reality on day X isn't exactly clear. The mental illness that takes over my brain before "mavis" comes to visit seem petty after she moves out. My beefs are still valid, there are moments when the activities of keeping our home cleaned up are lopsided but when I'm in my right mind I can see that those moments are not the norm and the significance is minute. Mental illness is a strong term, but my perspective is certainly skewed.
Also, I've learned the hard way that no matter how hard I try to talk about an issue with a friend or family member in the abstract that they ALWAYS figure out I'm talking about them and the question is asked "why didn't you tell me that to my face?" This is a fair question and I'm not sure the answer of "I feel better when I write about it" is acceptable.
I will share that I am in sort of a mourning period over a long-term relationship that has made a drastic shift from frequent, intentional interaction to a see each other every now and again. I have many many people who are dear to me that I see infrequently and when we get together I'm genuinely thrilled to catch up with them and then we go back to our regularly scheduled lives without issue. This particular situation has been (here I go being dangerously honest) painful and I've been doing lots of thinking about my 'friendship' value. There are frequent moments when I miss my friend, but my pride and stubbornness holds me back from reaching out. I'm not in the arms crossed, foot stomping pouting place, but since she was the one to withdraw I can not beg her to be active in my life. I've been trying to accept and move my 'hurt' aside and be thankful for the years of friendship that we shared. However, there are times when that childish "nothing is my fault" ugly side steps out into the forefront of my inner thoughts and I wonder why we spent so much time together if I'm clearly so hard to be around. That kind of negative thinking is not helpful and it is squashed as soon as possible. Clearly, it doesn't go completely away because as I write I'm getting sad, and truth be told we haven't reached that point of "every now and then" seeing each other, maybe we never will.
Jason has been helpful and makes every effort to hear me out when this backs up on me. I talked it over with one of the long-distance girlfriends and she had lots of support to offer but it has been months and I'm sure this is a permanent situation. Self help gurus (or me, if I was asked) would say "reach out, mend fences" but since her last direct words on the topic were "you said your piece, I said mine, let it lay." I'm doing just that, and right now it's laying like dead roadkill. I don't mean that to be flip, I miss her but I have enough pride to accept that just because I feel warmly about someone that those feelings don't have to be reciprocated.
I just wonder, do all adult (female) relationships shift, or do I simply use people up and they grow weary of me? Will everyone whom I love tell me out of the blue that I'm making them crazy and then stop communicating?
ANYWHO... see, posts like that will get me into trouble. If I don't have the guts to call her up and initiate conversation is it fair to discuss it openly? Probably not, but I also think Jason doesn't need to hear this same thing over and over again.
The take away, besides the fact that at 43 I'm still insecure about my value to others, is that we need to nurture our friendships and be thankful for those whom we can't live without. Jason and I have talked at length about my conflict resolution skills and roadblocks. I need him to know where he has to pull me out of the quicksand if we ever get into trouble. I'm will fight to work on issues but hurt me twice, and I'll retreat. My stubbornness will work against me at that point and as painful as this friend thing has been, a rift in the Jason/TP world would be the end of me. Thankfully, our issues are (thus far) limited to a kitchen cleaning inequity and when I sneak out to TacoTime for lunch I am a horrendous gassy mess to live with. It's sad because TacoTime tastes yummy to me.
See what I did there, I talked about a deeply personal topic and then ended on farts. I AM A GREAT WRITER.
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