Campfyre Stories

Of all the things on my list, the only thing that didn’t get done was laundry.  In part because I was tired and feeling lazy, in part because someone (I don’t know who, but I have an unconfirmed guess) sent me a new game from Amazon Marketplace.  It’s trippy and bizarre and I freakin’ love it!

So…  party.

It was good, lots of people, lots of music, lots of really good food.  I saw people I hadn’t seen in at least a year, reconnected with people who had changed or grown up or whatever, met new people and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

That said, I’m rather disappointed in some of the people I consider my friends.  This is something that happens pretty regularly and, no matter how many times I go through it, it still takes me off guard.  I often feel like I am an exceedingly low- (or even non-) priority to people who claim to be my friend.  Not all of them, by any means, but most of them, and specifically, most of the ones who live in this area.

My friends who live out of state tend to be the most supportive and available, even if it’s only by phone.  Out of the people who live near me and I consider my friends, the ones who tend to be the busiest, the ones who I rarely actually get to see are the ones I know I can count on.  The rest of them just blow me off and do it without a word most times. 

It’s a problem I’ve run into over and over again most of my life.  It’s the reason I don’t throw parties - because few, if any people, actually come.  It appears to me that with some of these folks, they are my friend only under certain circumstances.  If those circumstances change, they may still consider me their friend, but, at the same time, they stop being mine.

Once again, I’m feeling like I need to do an emotional housecleaning and figure out what to do with these so-called friendships that don’t really seem to exist for me.  I’m well past the point of being the only one to make any effort, and I’m starting to feel like some of these are going to need that level of attention.  It will break my heart to lose some of these people, but I’d rather suffer a little heartbreak than wind up feeling like a doormat, or expending copious amounts of energy on something that is going to fall apart anyway.

I hate this part.  It seems like it comes around every year, generally close enough to my birthday to become a project with the birthday deadline.

It’s not even that I’m all that needy.  I can handle people canceling on me or not being available, but what really kills me, every single time is the repeated "yes, let’s get together" and then the complete and utter lack of communication and follow-through that happens.  It’s one of my own hypocrisies that I’ve battled quite a bit over the past few years, and I do not do it anymore.  If I don’t have time or energy, I don’t make those empty promises to "someday get together" and I ALWAYS at least make the point to let someone know if I’m not going to be able to make the plans that I either accepted or tentatively accepted.

Bah!

I’m really just tired of this happening so often.  And tired of having to weed through the people I want to consider my friends.

So tonight I’ll do my laundry and spend time with my boy.  Tomorrow I’ll have my regular movie night with the friend who I only see if we schedule the time with each other (which is why we do movie night).  Wednesday I’ll do another open mic and try to not care if anyone comes with (except for Slockin, who claims to have no good reason to bag).  And all the while I’ll start the sorting process and stop making quite so much effort.