Loss and Amends

I really don't want to write tonight. In a lot of ways, I don't think I even can write... but I'm going to. So much has happened to me over the past year. I graduated from college, and I moved away from the people I've known and gotten close to over the past two, three, four, five years. And for the majority, I disappeared. Only maybe half a dozen people from my college years - some that I would never have expected - have initiated any sort of contact with me. In the last few years of school, I made some amazing friends, and lost some less-than-amazing ones. Over the past year, I lost another one. I tried for a long time to save this friendship somehow, do something to revitalize it. I failed. I don't think there was a way for me to succeed. I was replaced.

There are some things about me that makes me different than anyone else I've ever known. One of the most significant is that I commit - fully - at the simplest gesture of trust. I trust completely... which is incredibly foolish of me to do. I give everything I can give to those who ask, or even those who just need someone. Re-reading it, that sounds "noble" in some ways... but it doesn't feel noble. It feels sacrificial. It feels codependent. It feels like torture. And it sounds insane.

One of the things I think I fail to communicate is that I want just as much commitment and care. I want somebody to ask me how my day was, to want to make me happy. But since I give that to all the people I care about, that stupid part of me gets very depressed when those friends make no effort to return that care. I feel taken advantage of. I feel used. I feel betrayed. There is so much anger that I'm feeling toward those many, many people.... as well as a deep conviction that they're right, I'm not really worth their time unless they want something from me.

Balancing that out - or, at least, tipping the scales the other direction in a few ways - is a new, surprising, very strange experience for me: a girl likes me, and I like her back. She makes me feel almost good enough. When I'm with her, I don't think about the people I've hurt, or the ones who have hurt me. I want to be better. I want to make her proud of me. I'm also incredibly scared at this new-found wrinkle in my life. What if I fail again? What if the things I feel aren't real? What if......

I'm trying to put the what-ifs aside, and focus on that I-want-to-be-better feeling. I spent the late hours of last night writing messages to those I've hurt in the past or the present, apologizing for my choices. I don't expect replies, or reconciliation. I'm just trying to take small steps toward some sort of limited atonement. With my luck, it'll probably make things worse. But, I guess sometimes the thought has to count for something. We'll see. But in any case, swallowing my pride and choosing forgiveness and spending time on failed relationships is hard. I really, really hope it's worth it somehow. It won't be in the ways I want it to, but maybe it will be in the ways I need.