Well…hello there, old Friend…

During my birthday weekend a couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of ringing in the big 30 with a number of my new and old friends!  On one night in particular; a friend and I were reminiscing about our college days…Yikes!  I was not the nicest person in college; however I digress.

My friend brought up a Spring Break trip a group of us had taken during our last year in college.  The trip was your typical Girls Gone Wild type of adventure with a bunch of college girls crammed into a small hotel room.  It was not how I envisioned spending my last Spring Break in college.  All of the drinking, smoking, and club hopping…just was not my idea of a good, relaxing time.  Basically, I was having a miserable time and called one of my best friends to vent about it.  I guess I must have sounded so sad because before I knew it, my BFF offered to come and pick me up.  After she got off of work and drove about six to seven hours at night to our Spring Break destination.  By the time she arrived, I was already packed and ready to go!  I thanked her immensely as there was no way I was going to survive a week in that hellhole.

I’m retelling this story, because I realized that I have had a lot of really GREAT friends in my life!  But I felt so bad that I had totally forgotten about that trip and had lost touch with my old BFF.  She was my best friend in junior high, high school and during my college years.  Growing up, we did everything together.  Her family was like my second family and her mother, like a second mother to me.  Over the years, our lives have gone in two different directions.  She is married (now separated and heading for a divorce), mother of two and I stayed the course with school, work and now graduate school.  However, we recently began talking again on Facebook of all places and I was sad to learn she was having such a hard time.  I’m hoping to spend some time with her when I go home for the Christmas Holiday.

I was reminded this past weekend that friends, and by that I mean really good friends, are hard to come by.  And that I should be very thankful for the life that I have….sometimes it is easy to forget that.

“A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often – just to save it from drying out completely“. – Pam Brown

OMG…I’m back on Facebook…here we go…

So, this week I did something that I swore I would never do again…I joined Facebook!  Now let me preface this by saying, I have been on Facebook before and had several negative experiences and just decided it was not for me.  Now that I am back on it, and I have quickly realized why I really do not like this social network site.  Trolling the different pages makes me very nostalgic and reminiscent of relationships and friendships lost.

This time around, I have decided to keep it very simple and become friends with people who are truly my friends and hold a level of importance in my life.  The last time I was on Facebook, I succumb to the notion of friending (and accepting friend invitations) from individuals who were more like acquaintances than friends.  These actions lead to so much drama and a level of discomfort for me.  I understand that networking is a part of life and specifically a professional life, but at a certain point, something’s gotta give!

I have to be honest, I love and hate that I have the ability to visit friends of friends’ pages; that is just a horrible feature and I see how it can get people in trouble!  Being able to see pages of people from my past has been really hard on my psyche.  I have come to the realization that I am not a really easy person to get along with and thus have a number of people who I have had falling outs with or no longer speak to.  However, it is really hard for my to see these individuals pages’ months and years later and comprehend how some of my really good friends can still be associated with them on Facebook, but I digress…

One of the reason I started blogging was to really take a deep (and realistic) view into my life and my relationships (and friendship) issues.  Meeting people and becoming friends with them is easy; however I have a hard time keeping and maintaining friendships overtime.  And I really want to understand why???  Not to be naïve, I know I am a very straightforward person (and sometimes very blunt and assertive)…I don’t like BS, hypocrisy and individuals who are not real (and phony).  For some reason, a lot of the people I seem to have come in contact with in the last ten years have fallen into one of these categories.  However, from their pages, I am the only one who seems to see (or experience) their fakeness and bad behavior.

While I know I am not perfect…I know that I bend over backwards (and go above and beyond) for my friends and family.  My mother told me that I have really high expectations of people and when they do not meet them, I become upset and toss them away and that is not a realistic way to behave.  I’m just at a loss when it comes to extending my friend base…and uncertain how to change things…I’m hoping being on Facebook will help me reconnect with a few people I’ve lost contact with over the years…only time will tell!

My ode to blogging…

Blogging has really helped me mellow out.  I used to be one angry and unhappy person…don’t get me wrong…I still have my moments (hence the title of my blog)…but I’m much better now.  Having a secure and nonjudgmental place to go and share my thoughts and opinions has been a lifesaver for me.

Blogging is my new facebook…the only difference is I absolutely love blogging and I loathed facebook!

As a woman, who grew up very shy and sheltered…I often longed for the ability to be as free and as open as everyone else around me.  Before I started blogging, I was so skeptical of the people who opened up their lives, their feelings and their identities to perfect strangers for dissection and commentary…but through the last five months, I’ve come to know different.

It’s only now, that I’ve realized I have the strength and courage to be as bold and daring as the next person.  If you’ve noticed I have never talked about or discussed any sexual encounters or sex in general.  Why is that?  What is preventing me from sharing my deep, innermost fantasies…NOTHING, really!

So, I’ve decided in 2010, I’m going to strip down even more and talk about EVERYTHING that has to do with me…I hope I am up for the challenge…uh oh…there goes that self-doubt again…

I really need to learn how to trust my feelings and be secure in the decisions I make (and be more assertive and not passive-aggressive).  That’s another resolution to add-on to the list.  2010 is going to be one busy year…

Over it…

I have to be completely honest, at this moment and time, I am OVER people.  I’m over men…over fake friends…friends you bend over backwards for but then don’t hear from them in months or in your own time of need…over friends that only want to chat with you when they have a problem…over people who only communicate via email, text or via facebook…over lame co-workers, classmates and professors.

The only things I’m not over are God…my family…my real friends…life and true love.  Today, is the beginning of the rest of my life and I’m happy to leave the past in the past and look to my brighter future.

I’m tired of letting others’ opinions of me, dictate how I do things.  2010 is going to be my coming out year of some sorts…

Like Whoa…

I had the most AMAZING conversation last night with an old friend I had not spoken to in a looooooooooong time!  We were like best friends in high school, remained in contact during our undergrad years however after undergrad graduation our communication began to decrease until it was nonexistent.

We never had a falling out, LOL, life just somehow got in the way!  We recently reconnected on Facebook (score one for them, actually score two for them) and I am just so happy to have her back in my life again.  She was so supportive, real and honest!  It was refreshing to discuss my area of research with someone who could understand and relate.  She did not trivialize my going back to school or make irrelevant comments as some of my friends sometimes do.  And she actually listened to me!! I have to tell you, it is hard to find friends who are good listeners.

And I listened to her too!  Sometimes I get really distracted if I try to multi-task and talk on the phone at the same time, but I’m getting better at it.  Long story short, she was the one friend I was talking about in my Revelations post.  We were always so in sync and over the years, I had come to miss that.  She is definitely a keeper and I am so glad both of us are finally in phases of our lives where we can make time for one another.  Here’s to many more conversations and making more positive and meaningful connections with people!

Cheers!