cyclical friendships The hodgepodge pieces of my renewable life. Every few months or years or any given period of time when it happens to be "right", my entire social circle shifts. I get caught up in what my friend so aptly dubbed "friend families" - you know, those groups of people you're involved with where everybody knows everybody else and you all hang out together and know each other's business. I can't even count the amount of groups I've been in that functioned like this. In the end they always fade out, and I usually end up staying in contact with just one or two people I knew from the group. In this way I've created a network of people I trust, but have also created a lot of tensions where there didn't really need to be any. The problem with everybody knowing everybody else is that people talk, so even the slightest whisper of unrest gets blown up until it is the size of a continent and EVERYONE is talking about it. I inevitably get tired of not being able to trust anyone to keep what I talk to them about to themselves, tired of knowing that we are ALL talking about each other behind each other's backs. So the friend families fade out and I move on. That is what is happening here; this is the first time I've been able to recognize it for what it is. The fade out of a circle of friendship that can no longer sustain me, that has crossed into the lines of negatively affecting my ability to function as a healthy human being. This time I want to let it go peacefully, to go quietly and without a big bang of a fight. I don't want to be more bitter about everything that happened than I already am. |