imagination

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have you ever been friends with someone and then one day just sort of realised that you weren't ever friends at all? this has actually happened to me more than once. going along all happy and then whammo... ex friend.

just one day they say or do something that just fucks with your entire perception of them and you're screwed for being friends with them. [and yes, i'm extremely oversensitive but if your boss asks you to fire someone on the spot with no reason and no notice you're allowed to lose loyalty to the place that you're working right?]

i recall once i had been on the phone with a friend of mine (we used to bake and bake together) and we were discussing my current total lack of job prospects and she was all worried about me.

so then one day this job appeared out of the blue (monster.com) and so i called her up and told her thinking she would be glad to stop worrying. and what did she do but say 'oh you, you always land on your feet' without a trace of cheer in her voice.

and i still just don't know how to react to that and it was years ago.

i'm minded of the time a lady (hi sl!) i know informed me that she and a couple of other women in our circle had been discussing me. leaving aside the fact that no one wants to know they were being discussed unless a full transcript is immediately available just consider their conclusion:

that i am relentlessly cheerful.

um what?

relentlessly? so i'm relentless with my cheer? when you are in the deepest hell of your life am i going to try and make you feel like you'll live? abso-fucking-lutely. am i going to crack a joke to make you smile? yup. am i going to say 'oh this is nothing, get over it and be cheery with me?' FUCK NO!

i get it, not everyone picks their words as carefully as i do and not everyone is as self aware as i am and definetely most people don't pay nearly the attention to their actions that i do but STILL.

relentless? that takes so much power away from what i actually do. it feels diminishing. i felt like less than. i was immediately assured that this was a compliment and that people just admired my cheer and that that's really cool it really is.

but relentless?

what a shitty word.

i decide every day that i will be happy and i do that because the alternative sucked.

i look for the positive in EVERYTHING that happens because many of the seemingly worst things that ever happened in my life turned out to make me who i am and to be the most positive things after all.

i smile in the face of disdain or dismissal.

i give people the benefit of the doubt beyond all reason.

i try and try to find something to like about everyone.

i look for kind things to say to strangers that look like they need a smile (but i NEVER say shit i don't mean because that's lying and people can tell)

i remember being a miserable human and i remember that that was a choice i made. i'm not saying that people hadn't done things to and around me which helped to make the misery deeper and longer lasting but still, when i woke up in the morning feeling miserable?

i had a choice.

and one day i realised that... and after that i chose to live my life from a happy and sincere place and i've been significantly happier ever since. i would like to point out that i've had bouts of hell and depression since then but always with the knowledge that i will get better one day.

man is that shit helpful.

so yeah with the friends.

it's funny how you can turn sideways in your head in a split second and suddenly all of the things that you thought you knew about a person aren't true. it happened once with an ex-boyfriend of mine too. one second i was all stupid about him and then one second later i was over him.

i didn't know that instantly, in fact it took me about a week to figure it out but that's when it happened.

in case you're wondering, he got angry with me in a way which scared me with it's intensity. it was also quite out of proportion to the situation and that type of anger is something that scares me and makes me not want it around and it most especially scares me when it's cold and intense when all that was called for was some mild bickering.

and we were starting a vacation.

that was not one of my better vacations. not to mention it rained and we were at a ski hill.

the thing is that sometimes that kind of imaginary friend is okay. this is the kind of realisation that only tends to hit with distant friends or with people you don't know very well... (and regarding the relentlessly cheerful one that wasn't even a blip on the friendship radar... it's just a relevant anecdote i think)

but sometimes you make a friend and you spend a long time growing them into a deep and true friend or worse yet an old friend and then. and then you find out that they're a liar. and the thing with lying is that at first you think it's a small thing. you think 'so what, so i was told one tiny lie... so what'

except inevitably that tiny lie will somehow turn into another tiny lie and then you hear about yet another one. and at that point you just shake your head and you're over it.

but still those are the easy ones. the things that other people do that somehow make it clear that they weren't your friends. and often it's as easy to see as a simple stoppage in communication.

one day you stop calling them, you never hear from them and two years later they say something clever at a party like 'what you don't love me anymore?' and you think "what it hurts to send an email?"

so easy right? i mean all they have to do is call you or email you once and the dangling threads are picked right back up. funny cause i lectured my mom about this a while back but hers was more nebulous than these... these were people who used to call me too, and how did they magically decide it was time to stop?

right cause it was over.

but see if once they called or emailed or stopped by i'd be all 'heeeey how you been, good to see you' and then i would pick up my end of it and start getting in touch again. but sometimes you just have to quit.

you call, they don't call back
you call some more, they don't call back some more
you make plans, they won't get specific and promise to call
you promptly make plans for that timeslot knowing they'll never call, they don't call
you leave a weird message cause you're sad and hurt, they don't call
you send an email spelling out your sense of abandonment, they don't answer

you've been dumped. and worse than anything you've been dumped by someone who cannot be bothered to tell you they've done it or why.

not even when you ask directly. if you ever get that far. which i usually don't but i did once.

and that's bullshit.

that makes the whole miserable friendship imaginary doesn't it?

i've had enough imaginary friends, someone tell me how to tell the real ones apart from the imaginary ones.