Combine that with a military kid's background where they're used to leaving friendships behind and being left behind by friendships, and you get a combination that doesn't just suck, it really really sucks.
Let me put a disclaimer in here before I go any further: This is not one of those topics that I want to write about. I think about these things a lot, I wrestle with them in the car on my hour-long drive home from Knoxville, I yell at God over them. But I don't want people to actually know I think this way.
But here's the honest truth: I like being honest.
I didn't always like being vulnerable and honest. I was a walking cliche in high school and quite a bit of college, and that meant that I didn't want to show a lot of things to people. I would rather fight to the death to have people think I'm super cool than be honest about how weird and geeky and demanding and bratty I can really be.
But I'm learning that honesty is perhaps the greatest trait one can have. Honesty leads to expressing love for someone, expressing when one is agitated and needs to hash a relationship with someone out, and it leads to real connections with people. I'm realizing that the older I get, the more I crave honesty in my interactions with people, and if I can't get you to be honest with me, I will most likely leave you alone.
So after a week of intense honesty with some people I really have come to love and a lot of showing myself to people in ways I never ever thought I would and being raw because of lack of sleep but also because it was just right, I realized that for the sake of some of my old friendships and new friendships that are beginning to become something grand, I need to be honest, to myself and to others.
I've never done friendships very well. And I'm always frustrated as to why. But that's not quite true. If I'm honest, I know why.
When you grow up a military kid, change becomes your best friend. You get so used to making new friends only to say goodbye to them a year, two years later, you come to expect that. You adapt to that.
That's what I've done.
I still have a few friends I keep in contact with that I knew from previous military moves, but for the most part, I lost contact with nearly everyone I knew growing up. Nearly all of the friends I had growing up were also military kids, so you both just knew to be besties while you were together, and move on when you moved.
Pause for humour.
I went to high school when I was a junior, which meant I was with those people for two years. That was the normal amount of time I was friends with someone, so I lost contact with nearly everyone I went to high school with because honestly I thought that was what you were supposed to do. That was what I had always done in the past.
I went to college for a year and a half before transferring to a different college, and when I transferred, I lost contact again with nearly everyone I went to college with because that is what I have always done. It just felt natural.
I went to the college I graduated from for a little over two years, and to be honest I don't keep up with many people I went to that college with. I have a few college friendships I've clung to and absolutely refused to give up, but that took so much out of me to keep those longer than two years. I am so, so thankful I did because these few people are my best friends in the world and I literally don't know what I would do without them.
So here's where the addictive personality trait comes in with my friendships.
I'm so used to meeting people, becoming friends fast with them, and loving them fiercely. For a short time.
It's like my brain is programmed to loose friends every two years, so it has to make up for all the time I WON'T be friends with them that it becomes almost addicted to the friendship.
And then after I've been friends with them for a little while, a year or so, my brain thinks, "All right, you're going to loose them soon, so whammo! You are getting tired of them. You are annoyed by them. You are no longer addicted."
Like it's trying to save me the hurt of loosing them.
Like it's thinking that if it makes it my choice to no longer be friends with them, that somehow makes it better. I'm going to lose them anyways, might as well make it my choice.
So I'm stuck in a cycle of loving fiercely quickly to try and compensate for the fact that we'll only be friends for two years tops.
I'm seeing that in some of my friendships now.
Ugh. Pause again for humour.
The funny thing is that by becoming addicted to friendships and loving that fiercely means I also push them away by trying to force myself to hold back.
I've typically always been the Friend Who Loves More, if that's a thing. It's partly to do with the fact that I sometimes have a self-deprecating relationship with myself and always consider myself the less cool person in the friendship.
To give an example of this, whenever I hang out with nearly any friend or acquaintance, I normally give myself a pep talk before that goes something like this:
"Okay, what have we talked about before? Hold back on the geekiness. Don't get weird. Let them go in for the hug first. Please don't be too annoying. Ask them questions to keep them talking about themselves, but for the love of god, don't drill them like you have a tendency to do. This isn't Jeopardy. Just, just try to be cool, okay?"
Because I am trying to remember that I am cool also, sometimes my pep talks go like this these days:
"Okay, what have we talked about before? People are just people. They shouldn't make you so nervous. If they don't like you, it's okay. Not everyone has to like you. Just, just try not to be so nervous that it makes you weird, okay?"
I met someone recently who I really enjoyed their company. I just liked them a lot. You know when you just get that feeling the first time you meet someone that you could be best friends with this person? That's how I felt.
At first I was so excited. I went for a long time after college with no friends that lived within basically a 200 mile radius of me, so it's been so refreshing having friends, or at least potentials if nothing else, nearby. So just being with other human beings who are around my age and nice is wonderful.
It wasn't that I didn't think I was cool enough or worthy enough for their friendship. I just didn't want to get addicted again. I'm terrified of overdoing it.
I want desperately to find a balance. I enjoy being the friend who suggests we hang out first, who calls a friend up to ask them to hang out. I know I feel loved when someone does that for me, so I want to show them I care.
But I don't want to call them up every day, even though I may want to. I don't want to bug them, even though I just want to be hanging out with them all the time. Maybe that will keep me from getting too addicted, only to find a way to screw it up in a year or less.
To be transparent for just a moment, I sometimes feel like I really suck at friendships.
But I don't want to.
Aaaaaaand humour pause again.
I want to be the kind of person that you WANT to be friends with. I want to bring you peace from my presence. I want to be like Moses and have God shining through my face so it's all you can see when you look at me. I don't want to be fake with you, I want to admit when I've just had a crummy day and it's put me in not the best of attitudes. I want to comfort you when you've had a crummy day. I want you to never ever think that my friendship is a burden to you.
But I struggle on an hourly basis on how to do that and not throw myself at you.
I had a very real very raw very eye-opening conversation with one of my dearest and most treasured friends several weeks back where I admitted some of this to her and told her that I was always afraid in college that I was bugging her to hang out with me too much, that now I send her too many emails, that I am being that annoying little sister friend who always wants to tag along, even when she'd rather not be hanging out with me.
Funny thing is, after I admitted this, she confessed that she was always afraid that SHE was bugging ME too much.
I felt like the wind had been knocked out of my sails a little bit with that one.
What? Other people think like me? Other people have the same insecurities as me? Other people want to hang out with me just as much as I want to hang out with them?
So that is one reason why I wanted to get all of this down. I want my friends and potential friends to read this and maybe understand me a little bit more in ways that I never could verbally express.
Because maybe other people also have addictive personality types and are used to loosing friends every year or so.
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