Tag Archives: #life #friends

Three More Weeks

10 Sunday Apr 2016

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There is some refreshing news on the ‘getting a house’ front which I’m glad to report.

I got a call today from the person who I’ll now just refer to as ‘my realtor’. He said that he is going to send me a whole bunch of home listings that don’t appear on the websites that I’ve been looking at. I told him that I need to talk to my best friend and that him and I will schedule a morning to go around and look at as many houses as we can.

I’m pushing for this. I need this to happen ASAP for my own good and for my best friends own good.

My best friend did eventually respond to my snap chats and text messages, but he of course was being vague and I’m unsure what he’s been up to. I get this feeling that he was at his place and not off doing some shenanigans.

I am trying so hard to help him get his life back in order – and put my life back on track it’s ridiculous. I just need to be reassured from time to time that he is still on board with all of this. I have my issues in regards to worrying about people backing out of things.

Skepticism has become a part of me.

Regardless, him and I need to get a house so that we can pursue the other dreams that we have. For instance I want to visit Europe sometime in my life and he really wants to go to Italy. I think that dream can be made real for 2017 – but first getting our own place, having a ‘starting point’ is the most important thing.

He getting hired into a permanent position at his work is also important, and I hope to help him do that tomorrow morning. There is a baby on the way too. It might be here sooner than expected.

His previous relationship only set EVERYTHING back three months – three very important months that we could have spent doing constructive things like finding the best suitable place for us, saving up some money and acquiring the things we need for the house we plan on getting.

But now everything seems to be down to the wire.

In three weeks there will be a baby.

In three weeks he’ll be kicked out of the place he is currently staying at.

There is just three weeks to get SO MUCH DONE!

I just need everything to just fall into place – I just want good fortune to be on my side for once. This is my pursuit of happiness, I need for things to work out. I’m convinced that I need my best friend by my side as well. We support each other.

That is all there is to it.

 

The Break Up

30 Wednesday Mar 2016

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They did it – for real this time, my best friend and his girlfriend broke up and I’m quite happy about it. That probably sounded cold however she basically destroyed his life and I had to do A LOT to help him get back on his feet. Right now he is back at his former place, and I REALLY wish that I were right there with him.

The break-up went down yesterday apparently, I don’t know all the specifics, but it’s one thing that I’m glad that I don’t have to worry about any more. He thinks that they may get back together, but I’m suspicious that that would happen. She is already looking elsewhere. I see her after work talking to several guys by her car and I suspect that there is one that she has her eye on.

His ex-girlfriend can only sustain a relationship for two to three months, in that period of time she manages to completely destroy the guys life then plays the damsel in distress once she decides to break up with them. I’ve watched this pattern happen over and over again over the course of a year that I knew her, so when her and my best friend got into a relationship, I KNEW the same thing was going to happen.

It’s not him, it’s her.
To quote Proust, “For he admitted the possibility that she did not love him.”

But now, my best friend really doesn’t have a place to live. I told him that he is welcome at my place, but my place is rather small. I also told him that when I get a bigger place he’s welcome to live with me there. He seems intent on getting a place for himself or possibly getting back together with her. It’s peculiar that his rationale for wanting to get a place for himself is that he is a ‘grown ass man’ yet the moment he tries to be independent, his entire life falls apart.

The thing is that in 5 weeks (as I mentioned yesterday) he is going to have a daughter coming. With that comes A LOT of extra expenses from formula, car seats, furniture to child support etc. He’s not going to have much money to really get a place of his own. And he isn’t yet hired into the place that he is working yet – he is still a temporary employee. I feel obligated to find a way to help him out, his life is important to me.

I told him that I’d be there for him – I have to be there for him, I don’t feel that there is any other option. I, however, will NOT in anyway try to help him and her get back together. I’m fairly certain that soon she’ll start seeing someone else. That is her M.O.

I wonder when she is going to block him on Facebook and on her phone, then start ghosting him like she’s done to almost every one of her ex-boyfriends. He didn’t know her too long before he decided to pursue a relationship with her, I on the other hand did. I’ve worried about this day since he first starting seeing her, and this day is here and I don’t know how to react.

I love my best friend, I don’t want him going through this – but it’s definitely for the better. She destroyed his life and now it’s time for him to get his life turned around, hopefully before his daughter comes.

Maintaining the Intimacy

27 Sunday Mar 2016

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To see that there is a disparity between male friendships and female friendships, you do not have to look far. Society has placed strong guidelines on how each of these types of friendships can be conducted. Intimacy in a friendship is OK for females but not OK for males – despite studies indicating that males desire the same level of intimacy in their friendships as their female counterparts have in theirs.

It is peculiar, I’ve noticed, that the ‘enforcers’ of many of these strict guidelines the regulate how ‘close’ men are allowed to get in their friendships largely originate with women. As they enjoy intimacy within their friendships, they look on with skepticism when the same level of intimacy occurs with male friendships.

My best friends girlfriend and her best friend make for two prime examples of this. Those two have accused my best friend and I of multiple different things – they even went as far as saying that my best friend was cheating on his girlfriend with me.

Regardless, developing a closeness within a male friendship requires the ability to defy and resist the strict standards placed on males from society. A close friendship doesn’t come easy in our world and therefore sometimes requires a conscious effort to maintain. My best friend and I will reassert our devotion to each other from time to time when various circumstances seem to get in the way of our friendship.

But – how do males get to that ‘closeness’ in the first place? It certainly doesn’t just happen. As Courtney E. Martin illustrates in her column Men and Friendship: Letting the Guard Down First generally speaking one of the people within  the friendship needs to ‘break the ice’ and shatter the emotional barrier that men have been taught to erect.

Thirty-three-year-old poet, actor, and memoirist Carlos Andrés Gómez described how a mentor of his told him that people will only be vulnerable with you if you model it first, and that men so often get stuck in shallow relationship because they are perpetually waiting for the other guy to let his guard down. “So I created an ‘I love you because list,’ with 25 reasons that I loved my best friend and gave it to him,”

The closeness between my best friend and I didn’t begin with a list such as described. The ‘vulnerability’ took place on the morning of January 12, 2016 while sitting at McDonalds and it was done by him. This was when him and I were having a relatively heated discussion in regards to the disastrous relationship he had just entered into (and would lose his job because of in two days). He was being rather adamant that everyone in the social circle (that since has fallen apart) needs to get along. “Everyone needs to love everyone… everyone love everyone … I love you.” This was the first time anyone outside of family had spoken those three words to me.

In that moment our friendship transformed … again. There had already been a deep appreciation for one another due primarily to the stay in the hospital I had nearly a month earlier. A barrier had been torn down – one that needed to be taken apart. We’ve certainly been having a rough ride but in that moment we created a devotion to one another.

Taking a prompt from Carlos Andres Gomez, yesterday I decided to write out a list of 25 things that I love about my best friend. I’m currently deliberating as to how I’m going to post that list on this blog – but I found that creating the list was a great way to find a new appreciation of my best friend. It’s an exercise that I’ll have to repeat from time to time in the future.

We will fight to maintain what we have in this friendship – and we’re not going to let other things – like societies preconceptions of what a male friendship should look like – get in the way.

 

Being Rather Desperate

26 Saturday Mar 2016

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Twelve dollars is all that I have left – and payday was yesterday. Now that overtime is essentially over, by hospital bills are absolutely bleeding my dry. Today I had to get an oil change in my car because the car was so past-due for one the “check-engine” light came on. The money I had to use for the oil change was supposed to be my gas and food money for this week.

So I find myself in a rather desperate situation that I’m not ready to face quite yet.

My best friend is essentially in the same boat as me.

No money; no gas.

Stuck in our own separate voids.

I am still feeling horribly restless though and now that I’m essentially trapped in my small apartment in this tiny town with not much means of escape has me a bit bothered.

I’ve been in this situation before – I’ll figure something out.

Inventing Words

25 Friday Mar 2016

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“There is no term to describe the breakup of a passionate friendship, no ritual or legal proceeding to mark  its end the way divorce does for marriage, even though it often leaves just as large a hole in the psyche. Lost friends are as haunting as lost lovers, and just as hard to replace. The more abrupt and inexplicable their behavior, the more troubling and insidious the toll. The fallout from betrayal by friends can resonate for decades.”

– Jeanne Safer, The Golden Condom

No, my best friend and I haven’t ‘broke up’ but I fear that the connection between us that once existed has gotten strained; it’s weakened and I told him so much. I also told him that I’m going to be stubborn and weather, with him, whatever storms come his way, my way or even ‘our way’.

I’ve had several friendship break-ups in the past and I’m not sure I can endure another one. I mean, even with my current friendship with Thunder I clearly hold my reservations and that is due to the issues I’ve faced in previous friendships.

I know that I’ve talked about this plenty of times here before…

…but it’s a topic that my mind can’t seem to move away from.

Some of the problems I had with previous friendships is that they were very superficial – yeah, I guess that’s the right word. They had some depth but lacked substance. – and that is what I am trying to ensure that my current friendship has. There needs to be some form of bedrock that our friendship is founded on. The problem is that I’m not sure if my best friend shares the same view that I do.

Him and I discussed getting matching tattoo’s again yesterday. I don’t have any tattoo’s but I am agreeing to this largely because it is his idea and something as permanent as a tattoo signifies something… right? Considering that it is his idea and not mine says that he wants this friendship to last.

But why doesn’t he ever feel the need to talk to me? Spending time together is a key to even a casual friendship and I worry that slowly I’m being replaced by his girlfriend.

Maybe.

I think when she told him last weekend that she felt the connection between them was gone – some cracks in their relationship began to appear. Her role in destroying his life back in January, causing him to lose his job – the place where he and I developed our friendship – then said that I was interfering with their relationship when I tried to maintain the friendship; that role of hers I CANNOT over look.

Their risky behavior like the pregnancy scare they had, the fact that they went in the ditch during a run for weed (resulting in him getting a $500 hospital bill) and other small things I don’t have the patience to list makes me want to see that relationship come to an end.

That might be terrible to say – but after much consideration that is the conclusion that I’ve reached. I need to draw a line somewhere. Their relationship is such a huge disaster and if anything threatens a potential friendship break up between my best friend and I, it’ll be her.

At any rate, today I sit here in a new coffee shop contemplating terms that could be used to define a friendship break up – and once I come up with one, I hope that I’ll never have to use it to define the friendship between my best friend and I.

Broken to pieces

23 Wednesday Mar 2016

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I experienced a full-blown anxiety attack last night. I wasn’t sure what was going on with my body, with my emotions, with anything really. I went to the bathroom and started a mixture of shaking, crying, puking and light-headedness. I had an inability to focus.

And it was all taking place at work.

The most awful part was that I could not fathom exactly what was happening. I would break out into periods of sweat then intense shivers. I was disoriented for a large portion of the time. It was extremely tough for me to try and pull myself together.

But I did – as much as I could feasibly manage and I made my way from the rest room back to the press and continued my shift.

The entire experience was the second time in my life where I felt I’d lost complete control of my body and had no idea how to ‘right’ myself. The first time was just before I collapsed at work back in December 2015. The feeling of being disoriented was frightening.

I almost had another one of these panic attacks when I got home from work this morning. I don’t know what I did differently to prevent it’s full onslaught this time, but whatever it was subsided.

Where has my happiness gone?

Unbury Me

22 Tuesday Mar 2016

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He got his lip pierced on Sunday – it looks so strange. I sort of wish he hadn’t only because I don’t think he’s doing it for him, but rather to please his girlfriend. Speaking of which, I learned what the ‘near break-up’ was all about from Saturday.

On Saturday after he got home from work, when his girlfriend got home from being with her mom for the morning, she told him that she no longer feels the connection they once had, that she no longer felt anything when they kissed or had sex. She said that maybe he should move out – and this suggestion he took as her trying to break up with him.

The reality is that he would not have a place to go if she were to break up with him and kick him out. He is dependent on that disastrous relationship that he got himself into to work. She’s been dealing with a lot of issues related to her heart and he seems to think that her heart related issues are what is causing these changes with her. I think reality is beginning to sink in on her part and she is seeking a guy who she can depend on.

I went with him to the place he used to live and when we were there, he got to see the REAL cost of his little trip to Urgent Care not so long ago. It cost $80 for just the visit, however the Laboratory Tests cost almost $500 – and since he currently has no insurance (that I’m aware of) he will have to figure that all out by setting up a payment plan.

The second half of this storm he has found himself in is coming ashore in ways that I hadn’t even considered. I wasn’t figuring on the large hospital bill or his girlfriends recent issues with her heart (which is causing her to take time off work) or the reasons why she wanted to break up. The baby that is soon to arrive and all the stress associated with that was what I was looking at as being ‘part two’ of the storm.

I told him all the things that are tearing me apart – mostly anyway. I can’t exactly articulate my restlessness yet – and can’t figure out if I want to destroy myself or if I’m being destroyed. Either way, words aren’t doing me any justice.

I feel buried.

Today

20 Sunday Mar 2016

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Heidi Julavitis begins each entry in her memoir The Folded Clock with the word “Today” placing each entry directly into the present despite reflecting on the past from time to time. I have contemplated doing that with this blog IF I had the ability to update this in some sort of real-time.

Today I find myself sitting alone again at a coffee shop, this time in Lansing MI, rather than Grand Rapids (as I was yesterday). I am tired, I have to work tonight so I’m intending to make the most of my day today before going home and going to bed.

I used to spend all of my free time reading – I never allowed my self time for coffee shops and writing blogs, then December 2015 happened. I collapsed at work due to anemia and spent 3 days in the hospital receiving 4 blood transfusions and 1 iron transfusion. When I got home, my interest in reading just wasn’t there. I thought it was due to falling into a reading slump, but maybe it’s just the restlessness of having a broken heart.

There was a realization I had when I was in the hospital those few days – that I had absolutely no one in my life outside of my family that cared about me. That changed however when a new friend of mine – one that soon would become my best friend – stopped in at the hospital to see how I was doing and was there on the most critical day of my stay at the hospital, the day when I’d have to go through dozens of tests.

Somewhere along him and I declared our friendship would be ‘forever’ and somewhere along I began to question if I was capable of holding onto someone for that amount of time. The fates have their own prerogative and I am unsure if I’m capable of defying such a force.

Signs from above

There is a song playing, “just take my hand, hold on forever,” [Rob Thomas; Hold On Forever] – could that be one of those ‘signs’ presented to me by the cosmos? I mean, if I were to believe in signs like that, that is.

My love of reading has been supplanted by a desire to write, my contentedness for being alone – for loneliness has been supplanted by an idea that I need someone. Both of these supplantions (is that a word? It is now) I do not have the strength to fight, I know – I’ve tried and I’ve failed miserably.

What changed? I originally developed a strange theory about all of this. I thought that my interests had changed due to  the blood transfusions – that somehow the interests (and disinterests) of the donors had changed me. An idea that probably comes straight out of the 1800’s – if not earlier. The other idea was that perhaps the very real ‘near death experience’ I had is what influenced the abrupt change

Where ever my old passions went – I’d be happy to regain them, because it would be great to be happy again. I can’t find hope, I see reading as a waste of important time – time I could be using to find that special someone. Do they exist?

More later … probably.

Missing Words

19 Saturday Mar 2016

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I don’t know if there is a word that could accurately describe the way that I feel. A large part of me has – perhaps reluctantly – started to let go of this friendship. The closeness I believe has been lost, demolished… perhaps even sabotaged by his girlfriend. The fact that my feelings towards this is melancholy should be an indicator of the state of this friendship.

Why did I get myself so involved in someones life when such a large part of me knew that the moment things were good for him once again, he’d go right back to treating me like an inconvenience.

Our culture places an emphasis on female friendships – offering volumes worth of advice on how to maintain a female friendship – but male friendships are largely ignored. They aren’t taken as seriously in our culture homo-social male friendships are typically the object of ridicule. Expectations are placed on men that they should not get ‘too close’ because, of course, it could be taken as there being something sexual taking place.

Regardless what our culture says about male friendships, there are still emotions involved. There is still a love that exists, and when the friendship begins to fall apart, there is a lot of hurt involved. The hurt is no different than one might feel during a break-up. And that is the hurt that exists in me.

I’m incredibly lost and I am trying to just figure things out. I may have set my expectations too high, or maybe my best friend isn’t exactly the person that I wished he were – the person he made himself out to be. In a way – that is a reality that I know to be true but, even as I type this, refuse to face.

Maybe it’s the current state of my life, the fact that I haven’t seen my best friend in two weeks and have had limited communication with him in general that is causing all of these strange feelings in me. Maybe I’ve forgotten how to breath and that is what I need to do.

I’m sitting here at a very noisy Starbucks on 28th street in Grand Rapids MI simply trying to absorb the reality that if things had gone according to plan, I’d be with my best friend – but his girlfriend put a stop to that, whether that was intentional I don’t know. Whatever the reason I keep recalling the time she tried to accuse me of interfering with their relationship when a large portion of the time, she’s done as much as she can to destroy the friendship that exists between my best friend and I.

Am I bitter about it? Yes. I’d lie if I said anything different. I’ve done so much for him… for them… and all they seem to want is to push me away. I’m not sure if what I did for him was worth it sometimes. My mind is overwhelmed about this all…

…there will clearly be more on this later.

The Near Break-Up

19 Saturday Mar 2016

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My best friend cancelled our plans for this morning because him and his girlfriend got into an argument in which they almost broke up apparently so he wants to spend the entire day with her. He told me that he was going to tell me all about it when we do (eventually) hang out again – which I’m told could be as early as Monday.

So there will not be any sort of ‘talk’ today and when we do talk it’s going to primarily consist of him telling me about their near break up that just transpired. The reality is, I think she might be beginning to see the flimsiness of the ‘foundations’ of their relationship. Maybe she is beginning to see that the reason he ‘likes’ her was simply because she had a house, and he just had to figure out a way to weasel himself into it – and that involved getting into her pants.

He wanted to reschedule for tomorrow but I’m not really in the mood to waste another morning waiting on him. I can only wonder what the argument they had was all about. I am curious if it was about the quote he “liked” on my Facebook that I pulled for Thought Catalog:

“Maybe anyone worth knowing is worth knowing for only a short while. Maybe anyone worth loving is worth loving inconclusively.
And when you look at it that way, it doesn’t seem quite so unbearable at all: to allow yourself to love someone with everything you’ve got – and then to fully and completely let them go.”
(h/t Thought Catalog)

I guess their fight involved both of them crying a lot – at any rate, I purposely am trying to stay out of their “relationship” as much as possible because I don’t want to give the illusion that I support it in any way.

I get to learn all the juicy details about this current drama on Monday.

I can’t wait…