This is my personal truth. I am at a point in my life where I no longer have such a large circle of friends to surround myself with. I no longer find myself at parties and events surrounded by people whose faces seem familiar and whose names I can barely keep track of. I am at a point in my life where I feel like my family and I are on really good terms. I am at a point in my life where I don’t really like a lot of people – and of those who I do like, I like them a whole lot.
I didn’t always used to be this anti-social. In fact, I was the anti-antisocial (if there ever was such a thing). I always tried my best to make friends with just about anyone – just for the heck of it. I wasn’t necessarily enamored by these people. I didn’t find their personalities so interesting and captivating that I needed to be their friends. It was just how I was at the time; friendly.
And I was fairly good at making friends too. I was very confident about who I was. I always knew that I could fit in whatever crowd I happened to find myself in. And I knew that if I tried hard enough, I could get anyone I met to like me.
And I always started these friendships with the mindset that these were going to be lifelong friendships that I would cherish forever. I always made friends thinking that eventually, I would be able to call on these people one day should I ever need them – and that they would be there for me right away.
I always thought that all of my relationships were investments for the future. I thought that I was collecting more and more people in my life that I would eventually find a use for down the line.
But then, as time drew on, I started to think differently. All of the people who used to hold significant and prominent places in my life started to leave. They weren’t there anymore. And each time one of them said goodbye, I was broken inside. I couldn’t bear to lose the people I had held to such a high regard. And that’s when I knew that I had made a huge mistake. That’s when I knew that I was thinking about it all wrong.
You see, it took me a while to learn this, but people leave. They do. And that might be such a dreadful and pessimistic thing to believe in; but it’s the truth. Think about it. You’re a person. You have your own life to live. And you can’t always be concerning yourself with other people either.
And when it all comes down to it, you would choose your own needs over another person’s. And even when you don’t recognize it as you’re doing it, you’re abandoning these people. And that’s just a part of life. You get abandoned – but you abandon people in the same way.
The older you get, it’s going to be so much more difficult for you to make new friends precisely because you become less trusting of people. You understand that people were never designed to be permanent – and that pisses you off. You have grown to be more cynical about friendships and relationships and general.
And that’s okay. That’s part of getting old. It just means that you’re less tolerant of terrible treatment from temporary people who are only looking to use you for their own convenience. You’re just saying that you’re tired of being abandoned by people you care deeply about – and so you just stop caring altogether.
In our youth, we have a tendency to screw up a lot. But that’s part of growing up. We do a lot of terrible things and we make a lot of bad choices – and in the end, we learn from them. We suffer the repercussions of our actions and we try to grow from these mistakes in the best way that we can.
And that’s what bad friendships and relationships are. They are learning opportunities. These are experiences that teach us to be better judges of character. These are the relationships that help shape our worldview into one that is more grounded in reality.
And that’s just part of growing up. We can’t continually keep on living this life with rose-colored glasses on. We need to have healthy perspectives on the world. We need to see the world for what it really is. If we want to be mature about it, we can’t always be expecting the best from people.
We hope for the best, but we prepare for the worst. And that’s just a sad truth that you’re eventually going to have to wrap your head around if you want to keep yourself from getting hurt.
