"Friend"

I stopped blogging when life got busy. I had another baby, I went back to work, I got behind on everything it seemed like, I moved, I got even further behind, I had another baby, I went back to school and on and on and on. I turned to Facebook to keep in touch with people and I will be totally honest, it was so much easier than writing. But I've found that easy isn't always best. When I would write before I was an open book. It wasn't the one sentence, you have X amount of characters, Reader's Digest version, window to a person's mind, motivation and soul. Those who read my blog I felt knew the true me and that was extremely gratifying in some weird way. I formed friendships with people who I had never even met in person or hadn't seen in years and yet we related. We understood one another.

I can't describe how I have felt lately...It's a mixture of a lot of things, but to be honest, I have felt lonely. The things in life that matter most are in tact and I am so grateful for that. I just feel like I am here and, with a few exceptions, people will occasionally smile but no one really cares to take the time to know who I am. It's been really hard to come to grips with because I came from a place where I felt so loved and so accepted. I asked Justin the other night "Am I approachable? Am I putting off this weird vibe that I am not recognizing?" I try to be friendly but after a year and a half of being here I still so often find myself so often on the outside looking in.

I think I have been thinking on that quite a bit because lately I have had this internal struggle with Facebook. I don't think it is bad or anything, but it felt to me just what it's name "Facebook" suggests. Something external. Something surface. Something face-deep. I am not trying to over think this but as I looked through my "Friends" list tonight, I thought about what it meant to be a friend. I thought about the people in my life who have been true friends to me. So many of the people on that "Friends" list didn't share memorable life experiences with me. They didn't contribute to who I am now. Some I felt like a weirdo commenting on their posts because they would never respond. I thought "Oh geez, am I that person they politely tolerate?" Some probably didn't think about me past a fleeting memory.... I had no feelings of meanness or malice towards them but I thought to myself "I feel so detached from the world right now...and I really just need to surround myself with those that I feel really care." So I clicked and clicked and clicked and before I knew it I had deleted almost 50 of those "Friends." My yearning is for my interactions with people to be genuine. For the people I share my life with to be more than intermittent voyeurs.