To whom it may concern
I’m searching for a voice I seem to have lost:
If I made a list of maybe the 10~20 people I felt I was closest with and if those people made a similar list, I feel as though my name would come up maybe 6~10 times. No, I haven’t tried to make a hypothetical list and think of whether or not I would appear on each particular person’s list. Nor am I saying that I have bad friends or friends who aren’t caring. It’s more of a personal assessment of myself, and how poorly I’ve been with communication with many friends and how little I’ve done on my end as a friend. I don’t deserve to be on the lists that I don’t appear on — it’s as simple as that. I’ve been making excuses for myself, blaming my friends for my own shortcomings. Communication is, has been, and always will be a two way street, so if I’m not making a concerted effort then I shouldn’t expect others to do so. This isn’t a one time occurrence, it’s a recurring issue I have. I generally hold that I have good intentions and am a generally nice and sociable person, but I’ve repeatedly been self-righteous in relationships I have with people. This is something I have to fix, but as time passes, it becomes something harder and harder to fix. Some friendships have become so broken as a result of this. Honestly, there really is no way for me to restore relationships that I’ve once shared with many others. It’d be awkward and difficult to suddenly start talking to some people more and at this point in time, it’s likely that feelings wouldn’t be mutual and conversing just wouldn’t be realistic. My own foibles have become the bane of my friendships. I need help in fixing these problems; I can’t do this on my own. But the trouble is, I’ve lost much of the resources I need to do so: trust and friendship. Not quite a paradox, but to some extent I guess it is. In closing, I just want to say that this isn’t a plea for pity, it’s an internal cry for help in hopes that articulating this would help make it more real to me. Hopefully it’s easier to fix something real.
