Tiny threads.

It's safe to say I feel like junk again.

It had been pretty good for a while - I had a nice week and a half or so break from my sadness which I used to really revitalize my social life in a way I had no longer thought possible. I think having a true friend has really helped  - a wonderful woman of God who has deigned to be an excellent, loyal friend.

I'm really hoping this will just go away on its own - after all, I've spent so much time saying that if I only had one really loyal friend, I would be able to bounce back from anything. But boy, does this hurt. I can't face this kind of rejection without feeling at least a little sad. It would help if I didn't dwell on it so much.

It's times like this where I wonder if I really can keep taking this sort of thing. I think, "Is my sanity hanging by tiny threads like I feel, or am I just being dramatic?" I tend to conclude the latter. Still, just when things start to look like they're changing, they become the same again. A little dig here, a stab there...I go lower and lower, and just when I think things can't get worse they do.

Before I write a blog on self-pity instead of my dreams (as this blog started out, long ago, if you can believe, and to be honest I really don't want to be the kind of person who wallows in self-pity, that's disgusting to me) I want to say that I really think that having this loyal friend around I mentioned has really helped. Whenever I'm really starting to get upset about things that have happened (or not happened that I feel should have happened) it's been nice dwelling on the fact that I have someone who really wants to make time to talk to me - about anything. It doesn't even really matter to me that it's not a romantic relationship...this is someone I really trust who considers me a close friend and includes me in the things that she does. Wants me around, and notices when I'm not. That sort of thing.

That makes it better.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for a long rope of sanity tied to a true friend.

"You go on."

"Death, but not for you, gunslinger. Never for you. You darkle. You tinct. May I be brutally frank? You go on."

The frank, bitter, but thankfully (and finally) truthful comments of a friend(?) have led me to question my writing of this blog. What real purpose does it serve? I am quite sure I don't know, and don't really want to know. Yes, I do write of my feelings and share them on the Internet, of all places. The real question is, is it the right thing to do to write these posts? I am not positive I have any way of knowing that right now, and quite frankly I suspect it doesn't really matter whether I do or do not. The content matters.

So the content of this post is about going on. Really, I have settled into a sort of complacency with my place in life right now. Ultimately, it is a healthy, spiritual complacency. Deep down, though, I feel I miss some of the romanticism I used to espouse, however unhealthily I managed it. Life was more exciting when I let myself have expectations. Now that I have none, it seems that I just go on.

I'm not saying this is such a bad thing, considering that how things turned out when I let myself get excited about things that were ultimately not guaranteed and even improbable. There's nothing wrong with getting a little romantic about the future, so long as it doesn't get in the way of you doing the right thing in the present moment. I think that was my problem, all along. I've solved the problem by destroying the romanticism, not by just centering myself on the present.

As I write this, I suspect maybe I'm going too far. I feel as though I do have a reasonable amount of hope for happy endings in my future, but it's not quite the same flavor as the experiences I used to have in less sane times of my life. For now though, I'll leave my musing at that.

What is really pressing on my mind at the moment is friendship. I have spent so great a deal of time on this topic in the past four years or so that I am not sure what else I can say about it, but this: that I am now quite sure that friendships are not chosen, but born. They live and die, they can become sick or strong. I really wish I had come to this conclusion in another way, but recent experiences prove this fact to me, and I suppose I should be grateful.

Some friendships...well, they just go on too. So many of my own are going on in a way that makes me wonder whether I really have any at all. Why would I say such a thing, you might ask. Well, I feel as though there is really only one person in this world who knows who I really am. And I recently found out someone I trusted has secretly harbored an animosity of sorts to knowing who I really am. A repulsion, perhaps, is a more accurate term. No matter how I describe it, of course, this person would deny it. But I hear through double-speak, and it doesn't fool me.

I must say I know he was right on one account: I was a hypocrite...on one occasion. I complained that it sometimes bothers me that no one seems to really want to ask me about myself, and most of the time now when I spend time with people they dominate the conversation. I clarified that most of the time I don't mind - because I truly want to know people better. Well, I screwed up by doing that exact thing to him. However, that doesn't erase the fact I really would have liked to gotten to know him better...and really, that one time...that one time...I really needed someone to listen to me.

I don't want my friendships to stagnate. Now I have made both mistakes - I have been all the way the dominant person, and now I have been the submissive listener too. I want friendships where both people get to know each other better...not a friendship that stagnates. I want friendships that are honest - not like the friend mentioned who would have made me guess to the uttermost end that all along he was unhappy with me, instead of telling me.

I am certainly more grateful now for the friendships I have that I have clearly not chosen...because those are becoming my best friendships...to those friends reading, you know who you are.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for full, exciting friendships.