I have a friend I’ve had since I was 4. We live about 75 miles apart and have really different lives right now, but we’ve always been friends.
Lately I’ve been a rotten friend and it has absolutely nothing to do with her. It just seems like getting through the day and finishing everything that needs to be done leaves me with absolutely no energy to consider picking up a phone and calling. It’s not that I don’t love to talk to her; it’s not that I don’t WANT to talk to her. Our friendship has always had a bit of an intense aspect to it, partly because we’re both intense people and partly because we usually end up cramming about a years’ worth of conversation into 3 hours, which leaves us both a little drained by the end. Since I’m usually drained by the time I’d pick up the phone and call, I end up putting it off another day.
So this week Denise reminds me that pixels are pixels, but flesh and blood are what really matter. Not those exact words, but that was the gist of it. She had no idea that she was cutting through a flesh wound when she said it, and she didn’t intend it to be critical of anything in particular…it was in the context of a conversation about work aggravations.
Then I managed to mangle an email to my friend responding to her in general terms about when we might be able to get the energy forward to make a date. I tagged the email to reply in the morning when I wasn’t bleary-eyed and tired thinking that setting a commitment in the morning might be a more positive thing and didn’t realize that my non-response would be interpreted as a reluctance to make a commitment.
Guilt, guilt, guilt. Guilt and a little bit of frustration, too. There are things I could set aside for sure, but those are the things that I do to keep myself sane, like take an hour out for photography, or reading blogs, or whatever. It seems as though the only way to fit any kind of social interaction into the picture is to drop these for a bit, and while that’s not a problem, I’d rather find a way to do both only there really is no way to do both.
When I end up in a place where I’m doubting my own humanity, I usually turn to T, who is remarkably kind and wise about this stuff. I think he’s feeling a bit the same way, because when I shared all of this with him, he shrugged and said, “There are times where it’s an effort to get from the beginning to the end of a day. They don’t last forever and you’ll pick up with friends when you can.”
I disagree with him. I think he’s feeling a lot of the same tiredness that I am, and his current creative focus on video creation, editing, etc. has him in a mood where he’s covetous of his creative free time too, so I think I was hearing a lot of how he was feeling about his own friendships. Men friendships are different, though. They can go for five years without talking face to face and pick up like it was a day. There isn’t the intensity that women tend to put into face to face encounters.
What concerns me is this: Why is it that I’m feeling so reluctant to toss myself into face-to-face encounters with just about anyone? Is it a recovery process after having such self-consciousness over the teeth? Is it depression? I’m not typically so flaky that I manage to piss off someone who has known me longer than my own brother. I just feel incapable of responding to any, no matter how slight, expectations.
I’ve learned over time that DOING usually overcomes inertia, but it’s the push toward DOING that I seem to be having a problem with.
Maybe it’s just this “end of the school year” rush toward concerts, competitions and summer activities. I’m not sure. I just know that whatever the reason, it has played very badly with someone I care deeply about, and there are some definite sore spots between us, I’m afraid. My gut is screaming that life is too short to waste any time; my heart is afraid that there is something terrible going on with her; and my head is just telling me I’ve behaved badly. The worst part is that I don’t seem to have the energy or wherewithal to make it right, and I’m not sure why I’m even writing this, beyond hoping someone out there reading has a magic solution they’d like to share…
