the loneliness of friendship
i'm in an odd place with friendship. i know i need it. i have people that consider me friends, and that i consider friends. the problem is, when i look at what i think of as friendship. both i and my friends don't measure up to this
while our communication is honest, supportive, caring ... friendly, i can't call it friendship. i look at past friendships, both in the context of offline and online. they were not good friends for me, and even if i was friends for them, i was a facade, something other than myself. so now i have friends, they are themselves, and even though i might consider myself a different person for each of them. further understanding would make me realize that i am still myself with each of them
so what is missing
the easiest way i can explain this is, the hug emoji is not a hug
the discontinuity of contact between myself and my friends, between my friends and myself. it eats at me, that this is anything but authentic friendship. are my friends happy with this? is this enough to qualify friendship to them? from my perspective, i feel that i am both not a friend nor do i have friendship. if i sat here long enough this ends up with me concluding that i am not a good friend. that i am not a good person
and that doesn't sit right either, perhaps it is an escape mechanism, to write off my discomfort with my friendships as a fault that is only mine. as something that cannot be cured or healed
and that doesn't sit right either. because i know where those feelings come from, they are not mine, they are what has been taught to me since childhood. that there is no other reason besides "my fault"
so this is all here in front of me. so what do i do now? what should become of my current friendships? is it appropriate to use some other word? what would my friends think? what would i think if i told my friends i couldn't use the word friendship. that it wasn't comfortable for me to place that title on both myself and them?
i know what the answer is. develop friendships that are to my definition of friendship. social, but not in a "hey how are you?" because i say this every day, because you say this every day
a funny thing that's been happening today is i keep getting a bunch of scam calls. you probably know the kind, they ring until the voicemail, and then there is nothing. funny huh? that i could wrap that around as attention, unwarranted, and also probably not a person doing it
i'm basically typing now because i have my answer. go find what ever you're looking for (comma) emma