Contacts

Well, I said that I would try and explain what happened recently with my friend. I don’t know what to say about it though really. Basically, my friend got in touch but I’m not sure why really - maybe it was just in the Christmas spirit? Anyway, it was nice of her to get in touch, but it was not to broach some kind of reconciliation, so again I say that I’m not really sure why.

Anyway, the result of some brief correspondence was that she had a massive go at me and basically accused me of various things and, as rubbish as I was already feeling about the situation, I ended up feeling much worse. The thing is that I don’t think my friend had intended to be horrible. I think she just thought she was being honest and straightforward, but there was no positive spin to put on what she said and it seemed that she could not find one good thing to say about me. Not for the first time, I was stunned and couldn’t quite believe that after her telling me that we were not going to be in contact any more that she then got in touch with me and was then totally horrible to me.

The thing is that I can see my faults very clearly. I look back on that friendship and know that I did not behave well and was already feeling bad enough about it all, but I would never have got in touch with my friend because I didn’t want to be kicked in the teeth again or to have all my failings described to me in detail.

In my friend’s defence (and I’m not actually trying to be horrible about her here anyway) she did subsequently apologise for what she had said and said that she hadn’t meant to upset me, but the thing is that it doesn’t mean that she didn’t *mean* what she said. She still thinks that I am a pretty bad lot - and I’m not really trying to argue the point. But it doesn’t do a lot for your confidence to have someone say the things that she did and the whole situation has made me wary of friendship, not because I don’t think people are worth getting to know but because I just feel as though right now I am not sure that I feel like I quite trust myself in terms of how I deal with people. What if it turns out as miserable as this situation has? I know my confidence will come back but I just need a bit of time.

Over the last few weeks I didn’t talk to anyone about how I was feeling about it all but on New Year’s Eve a friend came over and I talked to her about it and that really helped. She didn’t say the usual platitudes of “I’m sure none of those things are true” and what a wonderful person I am etc (which obviously I am really...). Instead she just said that even if every single one of those things levelled at me were true, we all probably have people who come into our lives at one time or another who bring out things in us that are not great or admirable, but sometimes that’s just life and as long as it isn’t what we are generally like then you learn a bit from it and you move on, which indeed I will. I just suspect that at times there are easier learning processes.