friendship follies

i'm tired. no, scratch that. i'm weary. weary of the trials and tribulations of the fundamental part of human interaction we call friendship. before i start here's a small disclaimer. here goes. this is not a personal attack on any one person but rather yours truly speaking his mind about my feelings and opinions about friendship. in short, don't take it personally.

now, back to why i am weary. i've said before that as we get older, the more important our friends become, metamorphosing into our surrogate family. every family has its' arguments about this or, that but in the end they are still a family. i like to think that people who i am close to are my family and come what may we'll still be friends after a row. i know to expect disappointments. i expect bumps in the road. i expect to be hurt by those i care about. right now, i just seem unable to deal with it...insofar as finding myself wishing i didn't have to deal with it, ergo not having any friends. if only it was as simple as making a wish.

since living abroad, i've learnt a thing or two about friendships. when you are faced with the daunting task of saying goodbye to those who know you best and making a new circle of friends you tend to examine the how's and why's. no matter where you live you will invariably meet people who will fulfill a required place in your social circle. some how, some way we make them fit....or fail horribly in the attempt. the problem lies therein that the friend who held a various position in the social "cabinet" from before will subsequently be forever on a pedestal. those who come after will always be compared to the model. naturally, we have expectations of these people to do their job as a friend in the prescribed role. it's when they don't do as we'd like that we're disappointed.

i take the business of friendship very seriously. i don't make friends very quickly but when i do i generally tend to make more meaningful relationships. i feel as tho i put myself out there...ready to have a laugh, a shoulder to cry on or, lend a helping hand. i don't think i ask for too much when i expect the same to be reciprocated. friendships are about give and take, like any other relationship and are based on trust. when the take is more than the give there's a problem. sometimes i feel like i give more than i take and lately i feel this more strongly.

i feel spent. drained. whatever.

i really have no one to blame but me for putting myself out there in the first place. but this is where trust comes into play. i trust my friends implicitly. enough so that i know they will return what i send out to them. i'm not trying to come off as tho i'm in line for sainthood, but i think you can guess what i mean. p'raps i should stop trusting 'cos then i won't be let down. the problem is i don't know how to have a friendship without trust. i don't think such a thing can or, should exist. i know it does tho and i think that it's not real friendship...just people who know each other. what i am trying to say is i want to take for a little while. i want to be selfish. i don't want to care about how someone else might feel about it.

there i said it out loud.

feels good.

without going into specifics this rant sums up a lot of what's been going thru my head these last few weeks....it's just taken me a while to put pen to paper or, in this instance, fingers to keyboard. normally writing about a problem grants me the clarity of mind needed to see the solution.

X. not this time. still feeling weary.

i need a holiday. not a sandy beaches, pina coloda type holiday but a holiday from people i know. maybe people altogether. it's nothing personal, just a little time to recharge myself. a week would be great. yeah. a week would about do it. just 7 days of me time and nothing else. that'd be swell. enough time to ponder this latest, existential dilemma.