Naked

My friend Lisa called today to say she was thinking about me. She said she wanted to start making more of an effort to let her friends know she was thinking of them. (Thank God I'm one of those people!)It's been a while since we've talked every day. Years. It's hard for me to answer the phone when I'm in one of my moods. A mood that ruled my life in college and that I'm pretty much sick of. I worry that I don't represent myself well. In fact, it is hard not to want to crawl into a hole when you feel as if you are not where you want to be in your life. Some are able to stroll through each day with ease. When I'm working--even in a creative-killing corporate environment, I allow myself to roll with it. I'm doing other things...thinking constantly about what's in front of me. In times of unemployment, I am given too much time to think--much like in college. (Should've been studying, I realize, but too late now.) I have thoughts I think every day--which bore me, but seem to haunt me. They are surface worries about if there are dishes in the sink, if I see dust that needs disappear, if the floor needs vacuuming, if the apt. looks enough like me. Every day I think that stuff. It's boring. It's the death of my poetic self. When dealing with me, I've always found myself fun to be around...adventurous, ready to do always do something spontaneous and illogical...funny and experimental--but there also lies the dark side. We all have it and for some reason, I always get afraid of showing it off. In college, I relished it and became captive. I can't imagine having wanted to be around it. And in the cases of friendships that I still have from that time, Lisa being one, it is hard when they call and I wonder if it puts them off to hear that certain tone in my voice. My "life is fine, but I'm not fully feeling what I want to feel today or doing all I want to do...I'm living a day that won't have any special meaning to it. It'll be a day that isn't worth journaling about and where I didn't feel as if I stretched my mind at all" tone.

I feel that I must have been born to do something creative and completely self indulgent!! No one is thinking those things...and I'm obsessed over it. And before you think I'm depressed, I'm not. I know when I am chemically off and I'm not. Honestly haven't been for a long time.

I feel comfortable when a friend calls with that certain lost tone in their voice. AH! Someone I can help by listening. When they call and they are happy and all is well, I feel naked and embarrassed as if I have nothing to offer them. I can be happy for them...but what else can I give? When they are ill, or confused, or really questioning something--I feel as if I am good at being that friend. Maybe I should think about that more--career wise. I feel good about myself when I've helped someone go through something that they thought they may have to do alone. Feeling as alone and foolishly dark as I did in college really made me extremely empathetic to those who go through anything. During the time when Carrie was ill, I felt as if I had a gift to be able to comfort her parents and those who were there. I remember Sarah's mom telling me that I should work for hospice. It was one of the kindest things anyone had told me. My mother told me in jr. high that I'd be the type to throw someone in the water, just so I could rescue them out again. Interesting. Maybe back then...but not now.

I meant for this blog to be about friendship...and again, it's become ramblings of someone who has more time to think about herself than anyone else. I'm definitely searching. Blogging helps at least put it out there. I keep looking at my girl friends for answers. How do they live? How are they coping? Do they think these things? Do they struggle too? Am I the only one bad at this?!