Friends & Friendship

Friends

A lot of us think we have them, even more think that we are good friends to our friends and even associates. But how often is that the case? I recently had to check myself, and my own notions of friendship. For those of you who don’t know some people have come up with the moniker that describes me pretty well dialtone. At first it started off as a joke because I have a habit of hanging up right after I saw bye w/o letting the other person say goodbye. But then I started to see how that applied to other facets of my life including dealing with people, especially friends and potential suitors, for lack of a better term.

For me to describe what type of friend am I or how I think I am is as follows: I’m that roll dawg that is down for the get down, whether that means going to the movies, club, when that dude or female you’ve been dating has cheated on you, and you now want to dress in all black and do some property damage, I’m down. Or if you need someone to talk to, I’m that person who you can cry on, help talk things through, or if you need a pep talk. That’s how I am. But I do have a tendency to keep people at arms length no matter who they are, and I really don’t intermix my friends. For instance, when I had a housewarming I had to have two, one of the reasons I rationalized this was necessary b/c all of my friends and associates cannot be in the same area w/o fighting. But the real reason was b/c I was not comfortable with opening up different sides of my life and facets of my personality to people who were not already privy to seeing that part of me.

After the parties were done I sat down and wondered how good of a friend am I, that I don’t allow my friends but only so close. Do they sense this and does that explain why certain things have happened. I wondered for a while about it because I needed to figure out. Granted, I’m not the type that lends itself to opening up on certain things, but I am open to any questions. But here is a question that I pose to everyone. Would you still be friends with the same people you are if you were totally open to them, not your associates, but true friends?

I thought about this and figured no, I really wouldn’t. I would probably be friends with about one person and the rest they would just be associates. How did I come to this, and it all relates back to my dialtone personality, basically…I’m off the hook and most people can not take it. Most of the folks who know me get me only at about 60%. Those who have seen me reach 75% have not been able to take me because I am too much for them. Too smart, too intense, too funny, just too extreme I guess. Except for one, partly because we both have similar personalities. Then I realized that the two housewarmings, the first were for people who’ve seen me only at 50% and the other one was for those who have seen me at 60-70%.

Then when I thought about it even deeper, I realized that this was just an excuse, an excuse that I fooled myself into believing as a mechanism for rejecting people and keeping them at bay as a pre-emptive strike in order from not getting too hurt by people. I don’t know about you, but for me, the people who have caused the most hurt in my life haven’t been strangers but those people who I cared about, and who were supposed to care about me. Figuring that this was an excuse that I was using opened a lot of doors, like what am I really hiding from? Is it fear of not being good enough, exposing myself, being judged? I wish I could answer that question, but that part I’m still working on….

Just my thoughts….