Friendship

I long for healthy female relationships. My current best friend doesn't know that I've started a blog and don't know if I want to tell her. What does this mean?

I know what it means. It means that what I feel and think inside would most likely hurt her feelings and that is something that I hate doing....hurting someones feelings.

So now, I feel I need to evaluate that connection and look at what it really is. I've been friends with this person for about 12 years....that's a long time at my age. I call her my best friend because out of my 2 friends that have, that I've kept in touch with through the years, I keep in contact with her the most. When I got pregnant with The Baby, I went through a phase where I cut out a LOT of people that were in my life at that point. I evaluated each person, what they brought to the table, their behaviour and whether or not I wanted my child exposed to them. That left me with my 2 friends (excluding family friends, who are in essence family).

Here's some background. The Man and I used to party...A LOT. Therefore so did the company we kept. When I say party, I mean PARTY. It was every weekend and sometimes during the week and not just drinking, EVERYTHING. 3 1/2 years ago we quit all of the hard stuff (drugs). Along with that transition, we lost a few "friends". Some tried to stick around and would every so ofter temp us with naughtiness, but we prevailed and have been clean regardless. The less we partied, the less people came around. We were at that point drinking occasionally, so those people would still come around to partake. I soon realized that I no longer enjoyed the company of my friends and most of the time they got on my nerves and I didn't want their behaviour around me. Then I got pregnant. All drinking ceased and any type of annoying behaviours was not allowed to even come close to me. For the first time in my life I had zero patience and zero tolerance for stupidity. I realized that my friendships were really not friendships, they were, well don't know what to call them, but they were not friendships. One person would go talk to another person and say that I said this and I said that and create all kinds of drama between my family, their friends and me. That person is no longer in my life because I just don't want that type of energy in my space. I was 30 at that point and something had clicked. All the drama and bs was not longer tolerable and I wanted nothing to do with it. After that connection was let go, it was much easier to let go more and more of them from there. It was time to think about my unborn child and the life I wanted for her.

So here I am, 1 year later. I want friendships...real friendships. I want to share my goals and dreams with the people that are close to me and not have to worry about them laughing at me or thinking I'm weird or offending them in any way. I know I shouldn't worry about what other people think and I'm working on that. For now I just want support and I don't feel like I get that from my close friends that I've kept in touch with. I have been reaching out to old friends that I lost touch with through the years and testing the waters to see if they are in a similar space as me. It seems like there are a few out there, but after all I've been through, I find it hard to really let myself go and trust. Maybe because I've been too lose with my trust over the years and trusted everyone, including people I shouldn't have. So now I'm at the other extreme where I'm afraid to trust and afraid to get hurt.

I long for acceptance, but hate that I do. I want to be confident in myself, my beliefs, my interests and not care if other people feel the same way. Well maybe not care is the wrong way to word that. I want to not worry about what other people think. I would really like to be able to say this is me, take it or leave it and be okay if they decide to leave it.

For so long, I've tried to act like other people to fit in with them. Now I want to act like me and feel like I fit into myself and my surroundings.

For example: I went to my best friend's kid's birthday party with The Baby. It was okay, I knew people there, but just didn't feel comfortable if I wasn't next to my friends side the whole time.
I need to stop worrying about how it's going to effect everyone else and start worrying about how it's going to effect me. Once I can find confidence in myself, then maybe I can start being concerned with the way it effects everyone else. Right now I think I need to focus on making myself healthy in every possible way. Then maybe when that time comes, the healthy people and relationships will fall into place naturally. Or so I hope....