365 Days to Change

A year ago I wrote these two posts: Owning Myself Pt 1 and Owning Myself Pt 2. Shortly after posting both of these, a friend of mine and I had a couple of conversations about the post. The general gist was that she wanted me to know she wanted to be the type of friend who I could lean on if I needed support and that I should seek out friendships that offered the sort of emotional support I discuss not having in those two posts.

After our conversation I had a separate one with another friend where I expressed that I while I felt like she intended to be genuine, I didn't trust what she was saying. From a general stand point, people often offer themselves up to be that rock for you but when push comes to shove, they don't know how to handle it. From a more specific standpoint, this friend has always been good for knowing the right things to say and then not following through. I've always been an actions person, so this has always made me wary of the feel good things she says.

365 days later I'm done with our friendship. I had a major event happen in my life that I told her was upcoming but she didn't acknowledge it because she neither read my email or responded to my phone call. It shouldn't have mattered, she knew the day was coming at some point and she never bothered to inquire.

That in and of itself is just a story of a person making some bad decisions. We've all done that and negatively effected people we say we love and care about. But I've got multiple stories just like that one and I'm determining that what I need to do is accept that I can be the best friend I know how to be all I want but if it's not reciprocated it only hurts me in the long run.

It wasn't that I didn't know these things 365 days ago, but today I'm ready to accept them because it means I'm on a path to better friendships that work hard to be supportive because they know it will be easily and readily reciprocated.