Roughly 10 years ago, I caught a disease. A disease of the mind. Something that wiggled it's ways into the folds of my thought and slowly and persistently injected increasingly invalid thoughts into my brain. Thoughts that cause me to believe that I should be abused. That I should be the guy that always did things for people. That I should be the person who always went out of his way to maintain friendships that were one-sided, failing, distant, or unavailable. That I should be the guy to bear the guilt when relationships didn't work out or when people didn't get what they wanted from me in the way that they wanted it.
And slowly but surely it's led me to have the self-destructive, guilt-ridden thought processes that I have today.
No more.
While there are certainly some abusive, using relationships that I've maintained, that is not the bulk of the problem. Thankfully, I hadn't gotten that bad yet. The majority of my problem centers around my continued support and attempts at development of relationships that are either one-sided, or unavailable.
It's important to note that I don't blame these "friends". They aren't bad people. In some cases, yes, they were willing to take what I was giving even though they knew they were offering nothing in return. But, it doesn't make them bad people. In most cases, it's simply a matter of their time and energy resources being stretched too thin to support me being as close a friend as I had being trying to be. My mind, being broken, refused to let these friendships drift away as they should have. Instead, I pulled harder and made myself even more available. An invitation of any kind from them was seen as a spark and all efforts would be made to accept that invitation. If I accepted it, it often led to the guilt of having to put other things on the back burner. And in the event that I couldn't accept, I was faced with the guilt of saying "no".
So it's time for a change.
this one last mistake
At this point, this change is very active and prominent in my mind. Unfortunately, having active thoughts about relationships that should be left to drift away is a bit counter productive. The easiest way to fight this is to focus my mind on other things. Here's how:
- I'm starting myself on a new schedule that involves less down time and yet more time to reflect on good things. I've left lots of room for seeing people I care about, so don't think you need to avoid me or leave me alone or let me straighten myself out. Quite the contrary, in fact. I'd love to see you, especially in a smaller group or one-on-one.
- I'm starting or renewing a few projects — some photography, some programming, some physical. I'll have more details on this in the future. If you're interested in being in a new photo project and actually have some time available for this in the next 2 – 4 months, please let me know. If you don't have the time, please don't waste mine.
- I'm going to focus on seeing MORE of my friends LESS often. In other words, I intend to spend more quality time with varied people in smaller groups or one-on-one. In the past I've sought larger groups as often as possible thinking that such events would allow me to foster MORE friendships. Those friends that weren't willing to be involved with the larger group or then events planned were seen less often and, because of the group size, intimate, quality time was not spent with those in the group. I hope to get more out of the friendships that I have and require less of each of those relationships by spreading myself more evenly. Additionally, I hope that the true, real, available friendships will be seen more clearly this way.
Don't think that I'm going away — it's not like that at all. You may see less of me than you're used to. If you want more of me in your life, all you have to do is say something. In fact, in many ways for a lot of you, I've been pretty distant for the past month or so anyway, so you may not even notice a change.
I feel good about this and I can really use your support. I don't want you to fix me. I just want you to be there.
