I often miss my college days. There are many reasons for that. Like the lack of major responsibility or the fun of taking classes I really enjoy and being surrounded by intelligent people who have a lot of free time to discuss and relax. But one of my favorite things about college, particularly the one I went to, was the people.
Even with my foreigner naivete, I had some fantastic friends in college. People I really respected and loved. People I looked up to. People who inspired me. People who made me laugh for hours. Some of them, I have been able to keep in touch with. With others, I have sadly lost connection. Every few years, something strikes me and I go searching for my old friends. Sometimes my emails are met with pleasant surprise and sometimes they think I am a freak who needs to move on.
Regardless, one of the hardest things in my life after college has been meeting interesting people and forging solid friendships. Especially now that I have a family and a busy life, it’s almost impossible to have long conversations with people. Long conversations are what I need to bond with people. I miss having that kind of time. I miss talking until the wee hours of the morning. I miss getting to the core of people and having strong friends who are honest and stimulating.
I don’t know how adults make friends like that. If you know, please tell me.
I have noticed over the years that whenever I’m in a repeating group setup (like committee meetings, mom’s groups, class, etc.) there are one or two people who immediately stick out to me. These few people give me the vibe that they dislike me. Right away, I feel uneasy around them and go home wondering why they dislike me so much.
Over the years, I’ve often felt self-conscious and sad that people don’t like me. I’ve also noticed a pattern I go through when dealing with them. I first try to be really nice (“suck up”) and see if I can change whatever it is that’s making them unhappy with me. After a few weeks of this, somewhere along the line, I decide I don’t like them either. My dislike then grows stronger and stronger until I can’t stand the person any longer.
Doesn’t that sound fucked up to you? It does to me.
On Sunday, while reading Paolo Coelho’s new novel, I realized something. My current theory is that I’m projecting. When I meet these people for the first time, there’s something about me that I dislike that I see in them. Something about them reminds me of myself and I pick up on it without knowing it.
All those weeks I spend sucking up to them, I am really looking for reasons to blame them for not living up to my expectations of liking me. And then the whole thing, as expected, falls apart and now I hate them. When all along I set the whole thing up without realizing it. I don’t know if this is true but it’s my current theory. So next time I get this feeling, I am going to work hard to pinpoint where it’s coming from.
Or it could just be that they really don’t like me and I am not projecting or being paranoid.
Friendship is such hard work. I’ve been thinking a lot about the friends I’ve made in my life. I guess more than the ones, I’m thinking about the ones I’ve lost. I try to invest a lot of time, effort, and emotion into my friendships and so when they disappear, a piece of my heart walks away with them.
I’ve notices three different trends in ways that my friendships disappear. The first is the most obvious one of busy lives. I’m busy, he’s busy. We work in big companies, we work too many hours. We mean to call. We mean to write. When we get together, it’s tons of fun. It’s just that we never do get together. We don’t write. We don’t call. One’s traveling, the other is at work late. Fact is, we’re never as busy as we think we are. There’s always time for a good friend and for good coversation. It’s good for the soul. A good friend and I had found a solution to this when I lived in NYC. We’d set up a regular date for Thursdays after work. The two of them and the two of us had a regular date at a bar in SoHo. We always showed up and spent anywhere from one hour to five hours at the bar chatting. Somehow, because it was regular, we never ditched it. There was never the worry of scheduling, it was ongoing. I wish I could do this with all my friends. Maybe a regular phone date. Or email, even. Good friends never really disappear and even ten years later we can catch up but there is that little bit that vanishes and once daily life isn’t shared, we do have a bit of distance between us that never closes.
The second is a bit more painful. It’s the case similar to the one above but one party is obviously making a bigger effort than the other. This is painful when I’m the one making the effort and it’s painful when the other party is. If I am making the effort and calling and writing with no response, I feel hurt and rejected. If the other party is doing it, I feel guilty and frustrated. There’s something obviosly out of balance here. Sometimes, it balances out randomly when the other person changes their mind but it’s rare. What generally happens is that resentment builds and the friendship whiters away to nothing.
The last one is my least favorite one. It’s the one where something happens. Big or small. Something that makes you question the friendship. Something that leaves you with sour taste in your mouth. It might be a bickering that should have never gotten out of hand or a true betrayal that hurts deep down. Either way, there’s no going back. You can try to apologize, forgive and go back but things will never be the same again. That thing is now there. It’s like a thorn that is too deep in your flesh. This only happens with really good friends because those are the only ones you give a shit about enough to have this pain. And it hurts like hell.
There are days when I feel it’s easier to just be with my family and books. There’s much less potential for pain there. But then a friend calls and I remember why it’s important to have him or her in my life.
It’s quite funny that I wrote about letting go four years ago in reference to having children. Last night, in bed, I was thinking that having David has cured me of quite a few things. It’s a case of “when you have no time to worry, you simply don’t.”
I used to worry about everything. And I mean everything. I have a major issue with letting people down and if I feel like I let someone I care about down, I beat myself up for days and sometimes months. It’s not healthy and it doesn’t accomplish anything except to make me really sad. But I wasn’t able to stop doing it.
Before David, that is.
I’ve had some major letdowns in the last few months. I lost what I thought was a solid friendship. I realized that sometimes you can’t count on the people nearest to you. I understood the phrase “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And I’ve finally admitted that often times the only one you can count on is yourself. I’ve also had some amazing surprises and an incredibly healthy and happy baby but those are not what we’re talking about for now. Ordinarily, just one of the things that went wrong would be enough for me to beat myself up for months. It would mean I’d mourn for weeks and go over and over the events to find the exact point where it all fell apart and how I should have done it all differently.
Before David, that is.
Now, I sleep the three hours a night that I can manage, I eat, I work and I play with my amazing son. I have somehow managed to move on and let go. If the people in my life aren’t there for me and aren’t willing to work with me, I guess we’re not meant to be in each other’s lives. Friendship takes a lot of time and commitment. It takes perseverance and being humble. So does family. If those traits are non-existent in a relationship, maybe there’s no relationship worth hanging on to.
It’s funny that I thought I shouldn’t have children until I’ve learned to let go. If only I knew having children was the thing that would teach me to let go.
Thank You, David.
One of the saddest things for me is to realize when a friendship has deteriorated so much that all of our conversations are empty. It’s one thing to acknowledge that it’s over and stop calling each other, but an entirely different ballgame when we continue the appearance that all is fine but we both know it’s not.
Recently, I’ve begun to notice that some of my oldest friends have become such acquaintances. We can talk for 50 minutes about absolutely nothing. And I don’t mean that in the nice way where you are chatting about the random fun stuff you did that day. I mean in the way where you both know the conversation is dragging. You’re not saying anything of substance and the conversation will never leave the realm of “fakeness.” I know that I should let go of this friendship regardless of its history. I know we both already have. But it’s so hard to take that last step.
To admit that sometimes things just fall apart for no reason and when people don’t stop to recognize or address it, it gets to a point where there’s no turning back. Where you wonder what held it together to begin with. Where you can’t remember the beginning, only this very sad ending.
Having these conversations physically pains me. But at the same time, I am loathe to let go for some reason. I don’t want to admit it’s over. It’s as if my admittance will make it end.
So I just sit there and play along.
A friend of mine and I were discussing honesty the other day. I am firmly of the belief that sound relationships and solid friendships are based on complete honesty. She doesn’t fully agree. She thinks honesty is quite overrated in certain cases.
I believe if I am going out wearing something that makes me look bad it’s my friend’s duty to warn me. She believes that if I looked in the mirror and liked what I saw and my friend’s opinion differed, that doesn’t mean her opinion is worth more than mine. As such, my friend shouldn’t say anything. If I ask, then she can offer her opinion, but otherwise it’s not needed. She claimed that especially in cases where the problem is not resolvable (for example, I meet my friend at a restaurant and she doesn’t approve of what I am wearing) that honesty would only serve to make me upset or frustrated and it wouldn’t help one bit. Wasn’t it better to keep your words to yourself?
I am not sure where I stand. Obviously, my friend and I are allowed to disagree on opinion-oriented issues like a piece of clothing or a career move. Then again, almost every difficult decision one has to face has opinion-oriented aspects to it. I might agree that if it’s after the fact or too late to turn back, my friend maybe shouldn’t share her differing opinion. But even then, isn’t it better for me to know how she feels for next time? Just because she shares her differing thoughts doesn’t mean I will do what she says over how I feel. But isn’t it better to know the thoughts of someone I trust?
I guess it all depends on how strong and well-balanced the friendship is. If I consider this person a true friend and know that she would never say things out of jealousy or competition, and if I can trust myself and my own choices, I would like to know the truth about her thoughts. If she’s capable of being catty or if I am so weak that I would blindly take her choices over mine, it’s best for her to keep her thoughts to herself.
But, then again, at that point, she’s not really my friend, is she?
Jake and I spent yesterday in Los Angeles. I am planning to work all weekend, next weekend, so we thought it might be nice to get away at least for a day since I’ll be working for twelve days straight once this weekend is over. We’d visited LA three weeks ago to take photographs and the ride home was so painful that we didn’t want to drive up there again for a while.
This time, we set up brunch and coffee meetings with two of Jake’s friends. One from his high-school years whom he hadn’t seen in nine years and another from college, whom we hadn’t seen or talked to in over four years. We figured between the two get togethers, I’d spend a few hours practicing with my new camera. Since our last experience had taught us that we could spend forever in LA traffic, we decided to pick one spot and spend the few hours there. I read about several different places and settled on Olvera Street which sounded interesting, fun, and full of potential for photography.
We got on the road at 9:00am and made it to Santa Monica in exactly one hour and forty minutes. It was my second time down the boulevard, but Jake’s first so we strolled a bit while I tried to take some pictures. We then met his friend and his friend’s girlfriend for brunch, had great conversation. Charged up and excited, we then strolled down to the beach for some more pictures. I’m not really a lie-on-the-beach type of person but there’s something about the Pacific Coast beaches that I find magical. Maybe it’s how expansive and never-ending they feel. On Friday Jake and I had gone to La Jolla for me to pickup some paperwork from work and spent lunch by the beach and I told him that we should visit a beach at least three times a week. The Santa Monica beach was louder but it still gave me the sense of serenity I enjoy.
We left the beach for the loud and joyful crowd of Olvera street where we spent an hour walking and taking pictures, eating Mexican food, and enjoying the 70-degree weather. Just as we got in the car to drive towards Hollywood, Jake’s friend called to let us know she was finished with her commitment so we met her at the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard where, of course, I took pictures. We spent the next two hours catching up, laughing, and talking about our careers, lives, marriage, and mutual friends. The way back was as painless as the way up and we made it home in less than two hours. All in all, a truly enjoyable day.
There’s something special about catching up with old friends. No matter how long it’s been since you last saw them, there’s a sense of familiarity that never goes away and allows you to fill years of gaps in a matter of minutes. It leaves you so fulfilled and full of hope and you remember all the things you liked about that person all along and rebuild your faith that this time you won’t fall out of touch.
It was one of those inspiring days.
I’ve been noticing a pattern among people I know. It occurs most commonly between couples who’ve been together for a long time. But it also happens to longtime friends. Sisters. Brothers. Anyone who claims to be close.
People lie.
Okay, two qualifiers. One, I do understand that people lie all the time and that whomever says otherwise is lying. Two, when I say lie, I mean more that they don’t tell the truth. Somewhere along the line in a relationship, we learn what the other person wants to hear and spend a large amount of energy providing those answers instead of the truth.
We make up many excuses not to say what we really mean. We don’t want to hurt her feelings. We don’t want to annoy him. We don’t want to frustrate her. The list goes on and on. In our minds, we are doing a service to the other person. We are preventing an argument. We are preventing a possible altercation. We are sacrificing a future or even an imminent problem by evading the truth. We are sacrificing ourselves on behalf of the other person and they don’t even get to find out. Aren’t we such angels?
The fact is: we are not. The whole time while we’re sacrificing ourselves on behalf of the other person, on behalf of the relationship, we’re secretly building up resentment. We’re angry at the other person for not letting us be ourselves. For not letting us tell them how we really feel. We may not even notice it at the time because it’s only a tiny trickle of it. It’s as small as a seed. But it grows. Each time we say something we don’t want to, each time we agree when we don’t mean it, each time we don’t say what we mean, the seed grows.
Eventually, it gets so big that we don’t even give much thought to the truth. We automatically say the answer. We convince ourselves that the other person wouldn’t respond to the actual truth. Wouldn’t even want to hear it. So we never share it. We don’t even give the other person the benefit of the doubt. We just resent them. For who they are. For who they were years ago. For the choices we made.
I don’t know why it took me so long to notice this pattern but it’s all around me. I see it everywhere. All the time. Each time I’ve faced the other person and asked them why they won’t just say it? Why not face their loved one and tell him to truth? In the name of getting rid of years of resentment. Years of not giving the other person a chance to know the full truth. Every time I asked, I consistently got an enthusiastic no. I couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t understand. She wouldn’t listen. He doesn’t want to know. She doesn’t care. It would start a fight.
How do we grow to give so little benefit of the doubt to the people we love the most?
My question of the day is: Do you help a friend who’s walking down the wrong path?
A few years ago, I would have said, “Absolutely.” Assuming this was a friend whom I feel close to and can be honest with, I would do anything necessary to ‘save’ my friend.
I’m not so sure anymore.
First of all, who makes me the judge of whether a path is right or wrong? How do I know what path is better for my friend? I feel like it’s conceded of me to assume I know what’s best for someone else. I can’t even be entirely sure what’s best for my own self.
‘Fixing’ my friend, besides implying that she’s broken also implies that I am qualified to fix her. Am I willing to take the responsibility that my way may not work out for her? Am I sure my solution will actually work?
While I am now willing to admit that telling my friend he is fucking up his life is a very cocky assumption, I still don’t know the best course of action. What if my friend has a habit that might cause her to permanently harm herself physically? What if my friend is putting her life at risk? What if he’s putting other people’s lives at risk? Where is the line? When should I move from ‘supporting-mode’ to ‘meddling-mode’? Is it ever really okay to meddle?
I understand the how presumptuous it sounds to say that I can ‘fix’ someone’s life. I understand that people have different past. Different personalities. Different priorities. Different paths. I understand that something that looks one way from the outside may be completely different from the inside. I get all that.
At the same time, I wonder if there’s a point where, as a friend, it is my place to take action. To give more than support. To stop waiting.
Is there such a point? Or is it always best to wholeheartedly and non-judgmentally support your friends regardless of the paths they take or the decisions they make?
And do these rules change if it’s a family member as opposed to a friend? What about a sibling?
I simply don’t know the answers anymore.
I’ve been noticing how important it is for people to be right.
It doesn’t matter if the issue itself is unimportant or even a complete misunderstanding. I’ve talked to several people in the last few weeks who’d rather keep a fight going with their loved ones than to admit they may be wrong. Some won’t even give up until the other person explicitly says they’re right.
Any relationship between two people requires a lot of work. A strong friendship demands commitment to keep in touch, sharing the rough times and honest joy for the good times. A family needs attention and communication. A work relationship requires professionalism. A marriage craves all of the above and so much more. Relationships are built around kindness, honesty, patience, and a lot of respect. It’s hard to share your space and heart with other people.
In my opinion, the few people whom you’ve chosen to be your true friends and companions deserve better than your making a big deal over being right. Being right is important when it’s about standing up for your rights. When people are trying to be malicious.
Besides my family and, at times, my work structure, I have handpicked everyone in my life. I choose the people I get close to and I certainly chose my husband. There are specific reasons why the people I love are in my life. And malice definitely isn’t one of them.
In my experience, most fights start innocent. One person is frustrated for one reason or another and utters something remotely mean and the other jumps on the bandwagon. Next thing we know, here comes ten years of history. “But you did this and you said that and you never did this.” People say things they regret and both parties are too pissed off to remember how much they care for each other. They stop talking altogether.
If it didn’t start with a fight, it starts with quiet, internal observations. “Jim hasn’t called me in a month, he must hate me. Maybe he’s pissed at me for not calling him on his birthday.” The story starts small and snowballs before the other person is even remotely aware that there’s something fishy. Soon, the idea that Jim might be extremely busy or going through some tough times isn’t even considered an option. This is my favorite kind of fighting, because it literally comes out of nowhere.
No matter what the reason, most of the time, I think it’s a bad idea to stay mad at a loved one. The only exception I can think of is if the other person is malicious in nature and actually meant to hurt you, not out of momentary anger but planned, thought-out meanness. In that case, it’s fine to not talk to them ever again.
But in every other case, I feel like it’s a waste of precious time to wait until the other person admits his or her wrongdoing. Who cares who’s wrong? Aren’t you friends? Wouldn’t you rather spend time together than apart? In good relationships, as soon as one person has the guts to stop being right, the other person admits his or her wrongdoing too. So what if you’re the one who has to apologize first?
Who’s keeping tabs?
He used to be my teacher.
When I was seventeen, I asked a friend of a friend of my best friend to give me lessons in Italian. I’d always wanted to learn and when I met the guy and found out that he taught Italian professionally, I figured it must be fate.
I convinced him to come to my house every Sunday and promised to pay in return. We started out as barely acquaintances but ended up friends. He actually became one of my favorite people to spend time with. As it happens with people who leave the country and live elsewhere, we lost touch completely. I thought about him over the years and even asked around but I couldn’t get a straight answer and life interfered.
Until last week.
As I’m going through my emails, I hit d to delete a series of twenty spam messages. Something makes me go back and open this one email with an Italian subject. In the last three years that karenika has been around, a few people have sent me emails in Italian so I figure maybe the email isn’t spam. And, indeed, it isn’t.
It’s my teacher from eleven years ago. It’s my friend. It turns out he went to the same school as my mother and they run into each other at a reunion and my mom recognizes him and walks up to him to ask him if he knew someone named Karen.
Small world, eh?
So he writes me an email and I am ecstatic. Since I am lazy and have a hundred unanswered emails, I take two days to write back and then anxiously wait for his reply. It doesn’t come for about two days and the whole time I’m thinking that maybe I was too overbearing. Maybe I expressed too much excitement over finding my old friend. Maybe he read something in my site and thinks I’m insane. Maybe I said something that he interpreted as rude. Maybe he changed his mind about reacquainting.
Today, I finally get an email from him and his first sentence is, “And you replied. I was worried you’d say, where the fuck did this guy come from?”
I smile. I giggle. I laugh.
Paranoia must live in all of us.
I’ll give you careless amountsof out right acceptance if you want it.
I will give you encouragmentto choose the path you want if you need it.
You can speak of anger and doubts,
your fears and freak-outs and I’ll hold it.
You can share your so-called “shamefilled” accounts
of times in your life and I won’t judge it.
And there are no strings attached [to it].
You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give you.
You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have.
I give you thanks for receiving, it’s my privilege,
and you owe me nothing in return.
You can ask for space for yourself
and only yourself and I’ll grant it.
You can ask for freedom as well
or time to travel and you’ll have it.
You can ask to live by yourself
or love someone else and I’ll support it.
You can ask for anything you want,
anything at all and I’ll understand it.
And there are no strings attached (to it).
You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give.
You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have.
I give you thanks for receiving, it’s my privilege,
and you owe me nothing in return.
I bet you’re wondering when
the next payback shoe will eventually drop.
I bet you’re wondering when my
conditional police will force you to cough up.
I bet you’re wondering how far you
have now dancid your way back into debt.
This is the only kind of love
as I understand it that there really is.
You can express your deepest of thruths
even if it means I’ll lose you and I’ll hear it.
You can fall into the abyss on your way to your bliss,
I’ll empathize with.
You can say that you’ll have to skip town
to chase your passion and I’ll hear it.
You can leave and hit rock bottom
have a mid-life crisis and I’ll hold it.
And there are no strings attached (to it).
You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give.
You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have.
I give you thanks for receiving, it’s my privilege,
and you owe me nothing in return.
You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give.
You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have.
I give you thanks for receiving, it’s my privilege,
and you owe me nothing in return.
Alanis Morissette – You Owe Me Nothing In Return – Under Rug Swept
I can’t stop listening to it. My favorite line? “This is the only kind of love as I understand it that there really is.”
Is it possible to have a friendship with no strings attached?
Previously? Falling Off.
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projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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