Over fifteen people came – my highest turn out yet! And I felt it was a great success, mostly, as I realized that we all have so many people in our lives that love us and want to spend time with us – whether we’re single, dating or married. It’s these people that come out from all facets of our lives that we’re able to see just what kind of relationships we are capable of maintaining. I phrase it in that way because it’s hard work to maintain friendships and as the group you’re friends with increases, the harder it is to maintain all aspects of what a friendship entails. The description of what a friendship entails can be grossly misleading as well; depending on whom you’re talking to.

A friend of mine decided to cease being friends with me a couple of weeks ago and I was left hurt, blind sided and (true to form) asking questions to no one in particular about what could have possibly happened. This person was a very dear friend of mine throughout our university years but as we grew older and drifted apart (ranging from what cities we lived in to our careers) our emails remained and the odd phone call was placed. Communication was there between us but we’d definitely lost the closeness we had in terms of breaking news and calling the other on speed dial.
Suffice to say, our friendship hadn’t maintained it’s strength these past few years but I suppose betrayal and loyalty had its hand in the demise of the friendship at the end of the day. I was accused of being dishonest but with no situation – I guess I’m just supposed to know what I did. But I don’t.

For a person who was not in my life on a daily basis, I’m finding it difficult to just let go. I’m constantly wondering what happened and re-thinking everything I’ve done and said over the last month of two. I’m a person who hates being hated. I’m a person who doesn’t like not being liked. Maybe that’s an issue to deal with at another time, but for right now – it feels wrong. Friendships don’t last all the time, I know this, and people grow apart, move on and up or just don’t blend anymore. But I’ve never had a friendship just blow up in my face so quickly with no explanation. We’re done. You’re done. You’re a horrible person. It leaves someone to question – am I?

Could I have done more in the friendship to make sure it didn’t end this way? Probably, I could have done (or not done) whatever it is that garnered me this position of “ex-friend” in the first place – but how are you to know if the other party won’t talk to you?

Many in my life say that dwelling on this situation or even the person shouldn’t matter and I should just move on and rid myself of the negativity. I’m all for it – but tell my mind that. I work in an office alone, being creative and it’s a bit difficult to pull creativity out of the woodwork when you have something blocking it from exposure.

With time, things will improve, I know – they already have, but I can’t help but wonder – if I could go back and do things differently, would I? Probably not. Instead, I would probably go back to the Saturday evening of the long weekend when all the friends that could make it to the cottage, had, and were all eating hamburgers, hot dogs and sausages I had supplied for the party. I stood on the grass watching them like a creep all laughing on the deck and I couldn’t help but smile.

I have amazing friends. I have amazing people in my life that would do anything for me and I’d do the same. I have friends that I haven’t seen in years, yet still make time for me if we need it. I have friends that push me to be the best I can be when I don’t think I have it in me. I have friends that understand my incessant ridiculous love of Sushi and don’t judge. I have friends that will just sit and watch television with me, because I love Cougar Town, even though they don’t. I have friends that love me and fight with me and laugh with me and smile with me. And we fight; I’ve fought with all my friends. The difference is, the friendship is worth way more than the fight and that’s why it’s a hell of a lot easier to maintain.

For instance, the night of Thursday, May 27th has sequestered itself among three events I want to attend:

1) Strut for a Cure

A night promised to make everybody speak out against Cancer while listening to Dragonette and meeting others in the industry. Plus, the swag bag you get once you leave isn’t bad either. Mostly, it’s just the type of thing I’m loving about living in Toronto. Being able to go to these fundraisers and parties and network my butt off. Problem: I may be dumb, but I scoured that website and could not for the life of me find out when the event starts that Thursday. Normally, it wouldn’t be a problem but for someone attempting to plan “a night of a million stops” it is.

2) Carassauga: Mississauga’s Festival of Culture

Of course it has to be the first night my father’s extracurricular activity, FCAM, actually does something that will interact with the community by promoting the integration of the Molise culture in Canada and I have this prior commitment and urge to attend Strut for a Cure instead. Which leaves me feeling guilty. I did, however, design this snazzy advertisement to be included in Carassauga’s 25th Anniversary special edition commemorative magazine they’ll be handing out at the show. The AD itself was inspired by the work my friend and sometimes partner, Emily Bachor of Whylime Design does at Where Calgary magazine.

She’s made me a big fan of the opacity button:

You may think this is no big deal, not being able to attend the opening ceremonies of the Carassauga weekend, as it’s just that – a weekend event. However, this brings me to the dear old commitment number three.

3) Bridal Shower in Windsor, Ontario

My dear, dear friend is getting married. Yay (it’s a sincere yay). But instead of taking up one of my weekends that consist of me waking up at noon and reading PostSecret all day, I will be sitting at a table with other twentysomething friends becoming misty eyed at the thought of my friend getting her happy beginning and me wondering if I’ll have a date by the time her wedding comes around in August – or if I’ll even want one. Problem: It’s basically an entire weekend of visiting and busyness that I’ll have absolutely no time for …

4) Sex and the City 2 Premiere

Now, I know this may sound crazy, with all the fantastic prior engagements I’ve just listed to end off with my disappointment that I will not be able to watch the continuation of the best show ever made followed by the best movie sequel to a TV series ever made but I am. I am disappointed. Mostly, however, because of spoilers. I won’t be able to take it. In addition to reading PostSecret every Sunday, I have this odd, unnatural habit of checking out TheMovieSpoiler.com to see what happens at the end of the latest blockbusters just released. It sort of reminds me of Billy Crystal’s monologue in When Harry Met Sally about being so dark that he reads the end of novels before he starts in case he dies so he’ll always know how it ends.

Problem: even if I successfully remove myself from being tempted to log on, I know it’ll be all around me. When will the next opportunity come that I can see the movie before I read about what happens in the tabloids? In 2008, when the first movie came out, I had to block my sister from my MSN list because she had gotten home from watching the big premiere (she lives in the United Kingdom and had the pleasure of seeing it a full eight hours before I did) and wanted to gush about how amazing it was. She’s like that.

All in all, I think I may just be whining about unnecessary things. But I can’t help it – I want to do it ALL!!!!

Which, in case you don’t know me personally, is exactly what I’ll end up doing.

I don’t know what it was about, or when exactly, but I remember her making a joke about the last twenty years of her life and she made a quip of the things her husband has put her through. She laughed, the audience laughed, her daughter standing right behind her laughed – and so did Mr. William himself. And I remember turning my head while getting ready for work and looking at the screen, at these such serene, sincere faces and wondering how on earth they got passed everything.

I know it’s been like eleven years, maybe more, maybe less – but how did they do it? No one separated, no one got divorced, no one did anything. Except maybe forgive. The media followed that story more than they followed how well Mr. Clinton was running the country yet when the questions arose to Hillary – was she staying or going – no one could get an answer. She was polite, calm and poised. She was private, most of all, and made her decision. And everyone judged. Everyone. Whether they were for or against the commitment to stay; everyone had an opinion.

In her memoir, she states that “no one understands her like Bill does” and love was the reason that she stayed. That’s all she said. That’s it, and whether you liked it or not, you were just going to have to accept the decision because in the end, it was nobody else’s life but her own. I think we forget that more often than not.

I’ve definitely taken a step back and looked at this past year a bit differently. I’ve been forced to realize that you can’t always trust someone, but you should always try. And forgiveness, it’s important. And although I believe it’s important for the one who needs to be forgiven, I think the concentration on it should really be within the person who has to do the forgiving. In the end, it’s really only doing more harm than good to focus on what was done, and not what has been done since.

My mom’s a grudge holder. I’m beginning to see myself as some part of a grudge holder as well, and it scares me!! The thing is, I noticed that the grudges I keep, or the things I remember the most, are usually with the people who matter the most with me. Why is that? Because I don’t care about the people I don’t hold grudges with, what they’ve done doesn’t matter – I can always get passed it. I can only wish that it was reversed.

It’s not impossible, I know this – I just have to let go. Can time heal all wounds if it’s continually thought about? Can you just fast forward yourself to a time when nothing in the past (at this time) means anything anymore? It can even mean something, it just doesn’t mean everything?

Mistakes are always made, and we all make them – but can they be forgiven, really and truly? If I’m asking myself that question, maybe I’m on the right track to trying to find out.

It’s someone else’s turn, to go and hold her hand, gaze into her semi-vacant eyes and hope for great advice and wisdom to escape her lips. We think we can relax, sit for a while, while we wait. But no. Creaky doors open, uncompassionate doctors, nurses and volunteers climb through the miniature hallway that has become our living room for the time being, whispering apologies as they clasp stethoscopes and scurry through. We don’t sit long, just a small break, we have to enter the corridor of sick patients, impatient EMS workers, all bored, all sick, all waiting. Walking past into the emergency room, where beds are occupied by crying people, waiting to see the doctors, nurses – whoever has the pills – nobody’s phased anymore. Curtain number two. Bed number two. He’s been reduced to a bed number, because they can’t identify you any other way. Her bed is number nine. Ninety-two, twenty-nine. What was that movie with Jim Carrey, the Number 32? Or 29? I can’t remember, that’s what hospitals do, I think. I don’t know what day it is. I think I’m still jet lagged. I’m tired; I know that, regardless of anything else. Visitors in the hospital are probably more disoriented than the patients are.

My grandmother is in critical care. She is a DNR. That means a Do Not Resuscitate patient. When my grandmother has another heart attack, it’s a ‘when’ situation, not ‘if’, she will probably die. My grandfather is on bed number two, in the emergency room across the hall. His kidneys are dilating because his bladder cancer has progressed at an extraordinary rate. He must have emergency surgery to flush out the blockages in his kidneys so that they’ll start working again. We have to wait for that to happen. We had to have a conversation with him, a repeat one about resuscitation; he is now a DNR as well. They sit, waiting, patiently, impatiently. To die. And we sit, waiting, for something to happen. Unfortunately that something is to die. Isn’t that sad? But what else are we supposed to do? We wait. Read books, visit and listen and talk and laugh and try to joke and try to get our minds to think of something else. It isn’t possible, really. It’s all we think of nowadays. Death. And funerals. And machines. And priests. And rosaries. And everything. And I’m just tired, too.

I’m living with a future lawyer, good friends with a potential partner of a business, a bank teller, future public relations advertisers, an artist, a general slacker and giving advice to those who don’t want to continue with school at all – and then there’s me. We’re a great group of friends, and I think our differences have been what’s been kept us so close all these years, or brought us together. And now, unfortunately, we’re all leaving each other. As one of the major differences between us all are hometowns and distance. Once the end of April comes, all we’ll have is memories of times never forgotten and distant conversations on MSN and catch up emails.

That’s okay, I mean, it’s contact at least – but then what happens? I’m wondering about all these new people I’m going to meet once I go home, start at a new school, start at a new job – all that. I’m excited, really. It’s just crazy, that’s all. I felt like just yesterday I was graduating high school, working at Coles, preparing for my trip to Italy in March. Now I’m preparing for my trip to England (oh, right – I’m going to England in May to visit the sister) and graduating from university. I’m going to have a degree. It baffles my mind among scaring me.

The thing is, on Tuesday night I had a conversation with someone who told me he was taking a break from school – going to come work in Toronto for a year to save money, then travel to Europe for a year and then finish school – because he doesn’t want the normal life. When I asked him to elaborate he explained he didn’t want to go to school to find a job right after and have a family and all that because he didn’t want to live like that. I told him I felt like I was having a conversation with my sister circa two years ago. He explained how he didn’t want to get married and have relationships or kids or anything. I laughed and told him about my sister again. I also told him not to plan that out because he never knew who he’d meet in his future – who he’d want to spend his future with – because he couldn’t guarantee that wasn’t going to happen – and gave him the example of the sister and her fiancé, again. He accepted that he couldn’t predict the future but he definitely wasn’t going to sit around and wait for it to happen, or encourage it in anyway and that point, I completely agreed with. It then got me to thinking about my life and what I’m choosing to do after school.

Am I planning for this normal life?

I’ve often said how I hate the idea of me moving around so much because I’ve been doing it for the last four years and I’m sick and tired of it – completely happy to be going back to live with my parents, get a graduate degree and save money. Is this the normal life? I’m not looking for a relationship, but I’m open for one. I always said I wanted to travel but somehow I haven’t made any plans for it, saved any money or made any time. Is this the time that I’m supposed to do this stuff? Travel, live life, be irresponsible, right? The whole conversation got me to thinking about plans and even though we don’t have definite, written out to-do lists – are the plans still somewhat there?

I decided earlier on this week that with the impending graduation, move, changes in life – I was going to live this last month of school based on action instead of planning. Live with fun instead of caution. Be prepared instead of procrastinate with school work. The most important one mantra I decided to follow: follow my heart instead of my head – even if for only thirty days.

So I did. I have been. And so far I’ve been given more surprises than I’d ever expected but I’ve been smiling for most of it too – which has also been the best part – and maybe, it’s the way we’re supposed to be living our lives all the time – not with a thirty day time limit.

I’ve been noticing lately that there are a lot of people I can recognize on campus by their faces and wonder where I’ve seen them before. It’s not long before I realize I’ve seen them tagged in someone’s photograph listed on Facebook detailing the events of another Saturday night out with friends. I’ve been told, myself, that people know me based on my Facebook profile – which prompted me to change my privacy settings on the site to limited to those not on my “friends” list – but what was the difference, I noticed. Even with this limited profile setting, I still have 166 friends in my Windsor network, over 120 in my Toronto network and sporadic friends listed in networks at colleges and universities all over North America. I don’t talk to these people. I know them, or more accurately, I did know them – at one time. Maybe we spoke in high school, or even elementary school or had class with them in second year, second semester – regardless of the meeting, if they’re recognized somehow while surfing the site, you can bet the “add this person as a friend” link is pushed by many. I’m not saying that the entire website’s subscribers are addicted or have this obsession with searching for people they once knew – anyone they’ve ever come in contact with – but the random posting, searching, viewing, poking does occur by many – admit it. Even if it’s not yourself, chances are, one of your friends is on that site writing
on your wall, asking why you’re not on more often.

The thing is – the people I mostly “wall post” on Facebook are my friends, my actual physical “everyday” friends. I have these people on MSN, I have their phone numbers and most of them actually live less than a five minute walk away. Yet I’ll post on their wall before using any of the aforementioned actions to contact them.

When MSN became a phenomenon, and everyone began to have it and exchanging emails became the new exchanging phone numbers, a lot of people were concerned with the lack of physical communication people we were going to have with one another. Others argue that the internet actually expands our social networking within the community in which we live; saying that without this easy, comfortable, non-intrusive way to communicate with others, people would hide behind shy personalities and never exert their potential to become comfortable with communicating with others in the first place.

With these pros and cons going back and forth in regards to the communication via online or in person, comes Facebook – another alternate way to communicate. Facebook is “the new MSN”. It’s a statement that I’ve said, my friends have said and I’ve overheard. Why? Because of that fabulous feature on Facebook – the “comment wall”. A place where anyone listed in this extensive friends list can write you messages. It differs from MSN because you don’t have to reply right away without seeming rude – for your online “status” doesn’t tell anyone you’re online unless you change it to some catchy third person sentence – which doesn’t even apply to you actually being there (even though, chances are, we probably are). I’ll even admit – I spend most of my time in “busy” on MSN – because, I start my day off with a lot of things needing to be completed – and I don’t have time for conversations on MSN. Somehow, I find time for Facebook though. Why is that? I think it has something to do with the way we word our comments on people’s walls. Everyone can see what we write on people’s walls and what they write on ours. They are written for the receiver, but worded for those who read them – because anyone can. Let’s not forget that no one can see who actually messages us on MSN either.

Does Facebook make us cool? Does the amount of friends we have really matter, especially when we don’t even talk to more than half of them? All these questions, and so many more, I asked myself and realized now that I’d still now focused on my addiction to Facebook, whether for or against it, instead of doing my homework – it was still preventing me from living my life and doing what I needed to do.

So I made the decision to delete it – like a BandAid – because that was the only way I’d be able to rid myself of this addiction – quick and easy. Although, apparently, it’s not so easy. I know my way around the Facebook site so I clicked on “My Account” and amongst all the questions regarding my contact information; I see a heading and link to “deactivate my account”. Deactivate? – I think – that’s not deleting. Then I try and find an alternate link for actual deletion to no avail. I continue on with “deactivating my account” and I’m given choices by the site – they want to survey why I’m deactivating. Out of the eight options they ask, I find four of them to be based on behaviour patterns of a how the site is used.
I found it interesting because obviously even the creators of the site know that it’s being used by people with addictive personalities (option six: I spend too much time on the Facebook site) and perhaps not in the safest way (option seven: I don’t feel safe on the site) and there’s no point (option two: I don’t find Facebook useful) or even my personal favourite –option four: Facebook is resulting in social drama for me.

How are we supposed to get rid of this addiction, should we choose the quick and easy BandAid version? Facebook obviously doesn’t want us to – as underneath these survey options was the question to opt out of receiving emails from Facebook because even though you deactivate your account – your friends can still tag you in photos, invite you
to events or ask you to join groups. I was confused. None of that seemed like deleting my account – so now I was going to deactivate my access to my profile – but others could still see it? What is that?

Should you choose this approach to ridding yourself of this Facebook phenomenon, don’t worry if it’s a mistake in judgement one late evening – as Facebook makes sure to let you know that you can easily reactivate your account by simply entering your email and password in the login page.

Funny, isn’t that what we every day to sign in anyway?

It ended abruptly because I already saw myself losing concentration and didn’t want to be condescendingly spoken to anymore, while I’d just spent eight hours (with another four to go) at the library studying for my program’s midterms this week. I couldn’t sleep last night, because it was bothering me, not what happened but the belief that this is the stereotype I probably get from a lot, and I’m not alone. I go to a school that’s rated poorly on the Maclean’s annual university ranking system – however, there’s been so much backlash on that rating system lately that it isn’t even deemed appropriate anymore by many. Yet there is still this stigma with my university – and furthermore, with my Communications program. I get so many people asking me what I’m going to do “with a degree like that” and where I’m going to be – I don’t know, exactly. The thing is, it’s not because I feel there isn’t anything to do with it – the reason I don’t know is because there are so many options and I don’t know what is best for me, what suits me. I get so upset, so passionate about what I study because it’s a part of who I am. When someone says something that undermines me, my intelligence or the education processes from the establishment that teaches me – I’m going to be upset.

I wasn’t apologized to once it was over. I didn’t expect to be, but there was no remorse – well, there was – but for saying them the way they were said – not that they were said at all. I don’t see a difference. I view it as classicism – an “I’m better than you” mentality, so I couldn’t possibly understand.

So I couldn’t sleep. I woke up at 5:00 AM and tossed and turned until I gave up and just got up and studied for my midterm at ten. And amidst studying, I got to thinking.
My program is highly recommended. I go to a university that’s been around since the sixties and has educated and graduated students that practice law all over North America, Engineers in all fields, hundreds of thousands of Nurses and countless other departments have provided useful education for everyone who attends.

I wish I were in this easier university, with standards that were less strict than others. I wish I were in this program that really doesn’t require much work. Okay, fine, most people aren’t even aware about the Communications program or what it is, or what it does or why we have it. But I do. And that’s part of the reason I’m in it – to educate others about it.

I wish I were in a program that has answers – yes and no – right and wrong. I wish I were in a program that provided a set rule book, one that I just had to memorize from page to page in order to receive my ‘A’. But I can’t be. I’m part of a program that gives out degrees based on constant knowledge – knowledge that changes every single day – to be successful. This knowledge has to be sought out – it isn’t found in everyday sources or fifty year old books. There is no right or wrong answer – it’s opinion and arguments in a world full of closed minded people – it’s no easy task.

We study media (that’s – television, radio, printing press – history of, journalism, broadcasting, etc), yes, as well as business, politics, marketing, philosophy, public relations, human behaviour and psychology. We track how the human mind is manipulated by those in charge and why it’s so seemingly simple for those in power to remain in power. Knowledge in my program is not right or wrong. It cannot be memorized – it cannot be graded on who knows how to string along the best sentence. It’s about passion and the knowledge that comes with that passion. The passion to want to learn more, do more, change more and educate others.

We live in a society that’s humanitarianly horrible to our community, environment and each other. I go to school and learn in a program that deals with ignorance every day. I learn each and every day how there are people in this world that want to continue this ignorance that occurs because this continued ignorance allows power to continue for those who should never have had it in the first place. I go to school and learn about this program – this “Communications bird program that isn’t as difficult as more traditional programs” – this way of life in which we live – and somehow make it through each day without wanting to kill myself because I learn about how this world really operates and it scares the shit out of me.

No, my program is easy, easy without the rose coloured glasses so many of us wear in terms of the communities in which we live. We’re so safe, secure and comfortable with our $200 university textbooks that publish edition upon edition to say the same thing, we hide behind these degrees thinking by just a paper on a wall, we’ve accomplished enough and that’s it. This degree I’m in – it doesn’t end with a piece of paper mounted on my wall, framed nicely in black painted wood. I can never get enough credentials to achieve greatness – I will keep going. I have to keep going. I have to keep going to try and change what we already know about the way the world operates – so that our future will have guidance and ability to wake up and not die once we open the front door.

Yes, I am in this easy, not as important university as others. We’re just here, for fun.

Our past has this ability to hold us back. Our minds are constantly working in this force to make sure we’re protected, but in the end, they may be hurting us all in the long run. Do we really know what’s good for us? Somehow, I can’t help but wonder why we make the same mistakes over and over again with some things but with others, we’re so afraid to try something new for fear that it’ll bring on this change – even one that may be needed. We don’t like change. We don’t like the unknown. Yet we’ll continue to live lives that hurt us and lives that provide unhappiness due to fear.

A friend of mine told me this week that her cousin and her were having a heart to heart, and upon scanning her pictures, lingered on ones that I was in. He asked about me, she told him, and then she told me about it. I was flattered, and agreed to meet him, but at the same time, this flattery was quickly overshadowed by a feeling of being afraid to meet him. Afraid of not liking him, afraid of liking him and being hurt – and that’s when I realized that I think like that whenever I meet someone new. I’ll admit it; I’ve never been in a proper, real, give and take relationship. I’ve dated, yes. I’ve had a lot of experiences, yes – but they were never real to me. The guys I’ve seen or had somewhat relationships with, the short ones, the on and off ones, the confusing ones, down the line, I knew they were all guys it wouldn’t last long with. If I started in the beginning, knowing it wouldn’t work, I was protected from being truly hurt when it ended.

Regardless of my complexities with being scared, lately, I’ve been noticing that it’s been a running theme with people I know. A majority of the people I’m friends with are single – and from what I realized – all have a different fear when it comes to relationships. It’s what got me to thinking about this fear and why we have them and how we’re supposed to rid ourselves of them.

It doesn’t seem to go away, either. When I was there for a friend earlier this week – someone who is questioning a relationship she’s in, I didn’t know what advice to give her – because her fear was something I’ve never experienced. Her fear was abandonment by a prominent male figure in her life that she’s transferred onto whomever she meets in her present life, even though she was left so many years ago. This fear has kept her from establishing close relationships, even friendships, because of the lack of trust in people. She even told me that we’d probably not be as close as we are if it had not been for my persistence with our friendship (I’d sensed she’d had a lack of trust in people and wanted to prove her wrong in the initial stages of our friendship – because I knew how it felt not to trust people). As I am grateful that she’s opened herself up to me, I don’t want some guy to ruin it for her in the long run – to instil more fear when it comes to relationships.

Similarly, with another friend, while bored in class and doing quasi research for this post, I asked her about her fears and tried to see if there were any connections.

ME:
Are your parents still together?

HER:
No.

ME:
Do you talk to your dad?

HER:
Yea.

ME:
Do you have a complex about relationships because of it?

HER:
Yea.

ME:
Are you afraid of them?

HER:
Relationships?

ME:
Yea.

HER:
It just makes me avoid them.

And when she turned around back to her paper, I knew the conversation was over, I still didn’t have a full answer – but I’d made a connection.

Is it actually our past that controls our future or just our perceptions of what our future is going to hold, based on our past? We can’t change the past, but can we change our futures based on what we’ve learned in our past?

I have a love/hate relationship with relationships. My mother’s told me she just thinks it’s because I haven’t met the right guy yet, whereas I counteract with the possibility that maybe I’ve just not let the right guy in. Maybe we all concentrate on the wrong guys so much because we know, deep down, that the situation is wrong and therefore it’ll be less hurt once it’s over – once again, our minds “protecting us”.

I don’t know exactly what my fear is when it comes to relationships. I’m scared of losing myself when I’m in one. I’m scared of doing all the things to my friends that I hate being done to me when it comes to friends who are in relationships. I’m afraid of making the wrong choice – again. And I don’t know how to pinpoint exactly what the wrong choice is if I’m going to constantly be afraid of making a new one.

The question is –how? How do we get rid of these fears? What do we have to do? Keep getting our hearts broken? Keep taking those chances? Keep believing and if so – in what? What are we supposed to believe in if the same shit keeps on happening? What kind of advice should we be taking? Does it even matter? How much do our pasts really control our future?

The thing is, we’re so afraid, I get it. We’re afraid to do something drastic, ANYTHING drastic, because we’re afraid something that’s already happened to us, will happen again. But why are we so afraid? If it’s going to happen again, we’ve already gotten a preview – we already know what’s going to happen. And guess what?

We survived.

We got through it and can look back and see how those experiences have shaped our lives and helped mould who we are as people today. Whether it’s a father leaving, a boyfriend breaking your heart, the fear of being alone, someone making us feel ugly, the fear of abandonment, the fear of anything – it’s made us who we are.

Does that mean we’re afraid of ourselves? Some people might be – but as we got older, we realized that the only monsters in our closets were displaced sweaters and there really wasn’t anything in front of us in the dark – but the illusion was real. The illusion of something there was real and thus made the fear very much apparent.

But if it’s just an illusion, and we got through the monsters in the closet and the nothing in the dark, why do I have a night light in the hallway and a door on my closet? Because I’m preparing for the “just in case” and “what if”’s that seem to cloud my life. Maybe we all try to be so prepared that we don’t realize that sometimes we’re being a little ridiculous and need to step back from the fear and try to figure out if it may just be a

It’s just, when I look back now at all the times we hung out, they were fun, yes, but they occurred because we were both doing nothing else. I had no life. That’s untrue; I had a life – just a boring one. I did nothing. I went to class two days a week, watched television and occasionally did homework. When I really think of it, once I started doing something with my free time; getting a job, acquiring a radio show, going to the gym and library, that’s when the friendship started to falter. We saw each other less and less and blamed it on busyness, which was true to an extent. The thing is I don’t think that was the cause of everything. Sure, I get blamed for having a job being the cause of many of my failed relationships or deteriorating ones but for once I believe that’s unfair. So I actually want to spend my days doing more than just watching Oprah and making sure my assignments are in on time. I’ve found that whenever that is all that’s on my agenda, I get bored, and mostly importantly, sad.

I can’t make excuses for something I just don’t understand. I don’t think I ever will. Everyone is saying that we’ll be talking in no time and that we’re such good friends, we’ll get over it. But I don’t think we will. Just for the fact that our relationship has been on thin ice since way before last week and nothing was done by either of us to change it. What do you do when you don’t have any idea how to continue a non-friendship? It pains me to see him because I’m disgusted with the way our friendship has turned out, when it started with such promise. We were the two peas in a pod, whom everyone envied and wondered about “why weren’t we dating?” because people of the opposite sex can’t be friends without emotions, apparently. Maybe the prophecy has been right all along, guys and girls just can’t be friends. Look at the way we ended up? And I really thought we’d make it. But I don’t think our lack of continuing friendship had anything to do with us being the opposite sex, I’ve grown apart and stopped talking to a lot of people in my life, not just guys.

B, for example, she’s a girl and I have never written about that fallout. I just wouldn’t have known what to say. It was too complicated then and it’s too complicated now. And that’s fine, I guess, now that she’s moved back home and gone off to do ??? I don’t even know.

The thing about friendships is that you can never really guess where they’ll end up, who you’ll be friends with forever, a couple of years or even a month. You don’t look at them in forms of time, because that’s not how you’re supposed to. They’re not boyfriend/girlfriend type relationships to do that, which is true, but there’s always that ability to be able to tell roughly how long a friendship is going to last. It’s all based on trust and that gut instinct. You can tell. You can tell if a person is worth trusting, worth keeping in touch with, worth remembering.

It’s those times when your gut instinct seems to have failed you and you’re left wondering how the hell that happened, which gets you in the end.

It’s just, when I look back now at all the times we hung out, they were fun, yes, but they occurred because we were both doing nothing else. I had no life. That’s untrue; I had a life – just a boring one. I did nothing. I went to class two days a week, watched television and occasionally did homework. When I really think of it, once I started doing something with my free time; getting a job, acquiring a radio show, going to the gym and library, that’s when the friendship started to falter. We saw each other less and less and blamed it on busyness, which was true to an extent. The thing is I don’t think that was the cause of everything. Sure, I get blamed for having a job being the cause of many of my failed relationships or deteriorating ones but for once I believe that’s unfair. So I actually want to spend my days doing more than just watching Oprah and making sure my assignments are in on time. I’ve found that whenever that is all that’s on my agenda, I get bored, and mostly importantly, sad.

I can’t make excuses for something I just don’t understand. I don’t think I ever will. Everyone is saying that we’ll be talking in no time and that we’re such good friends, we’ll get over it. But I don’t think we will. Just for the fact that our relationship has been on thin ice since way before last week and nothing was done by either of us to change it. What do you do when you don’t have any idea how to continue a non-friendship? It pains me to see him because I’m disgusted with the way our friendship has turned out, when it started with such promise. We were the two peas in a pod, whom everyone envied and wondered about “why weren’t we dating?” because people of the opposite sex can’t be friends without emotions, apparently. Maybe the prophecy has been right all along, guys and girls just can’t be friends. Look at the way we ended up? And I really thought we’d make it. But I don’t think our lack of continuing friendship had anything to do with us being the opposite sex, I’ve grown apart and stopped talking to a lot of people in my life, not just guys.

B, for example, she’s a girl and I have never written about that fallout. I just wouldn’t have known what to say. It was too complicated then and it’s too complicated now. And that’s fine, I guess, now that she’s moved back home and gone off to do ??? I don’t even know.

The thing about friendships is that you can never really guess where they’ll end up, who you’ll be friends with forever, a couple of years or even a month. You don’t look at them in forms of time, because that’s not how you’re supposed to. They’re not boyfriend/girlfriend type relationships to do that, which is true, but there’s always that ability to be able to tell roughly how long a friendship is going to last. It’s all based on trust and that gut instinct. You can tell. You can tell if a person is worth trusting, worth keeping in touch with, worth remembering.

It’s those times when your gut instinct seems to have failed you and you’re left wondering how the hell that happened, which gets you in the end.