I’ve come a long way in two + years.  Why… days go by that I don’t think of the people who used to be my “friends” and how I was essentially shut out of a friendship that I once cherished.  But I still do think of it, from time to time.  And I get very upset when I do.  Why, do you ask?  Why, when I was treated so carelessly?  Because I cared; very much.

Now, there is the off-chance that one or more of the parties involved may read this blog and read what I have to say here.  I would be tempted to say it’s unlikely, because that would denote some level of caring on their part.  But it could happen, mostly because they might care what I have to say about THEM.  It would give them an opportunity to feel righteously indignant, that’s for sure.  And I’m sure they would care about that.  But about ME?  Nope.  In fact, the more time that passes, the more I am convinced that they didn’t really ever care for me as a friend.  I’m hesistant to say that they even cared about me as a person, judging by how easily they cast me aside.

Now, before we go any further, I don’t want it to sound as though I was completely innocent and blameless in how our “friendship” went down.  I did some stupid, thoughtless things.  And regardless of the fact that I didn’t view what I did as mean-spirited as they thought I did, the important thing is that they did view it as mean-spirited.  And I felt awful for hurting feelings that way, when that was obviously not at all my intention.  I would never want to knowingly hurt my friends, because they are friends.   And if you do hurt them, you better damn well apologize.

And I did.  At least once, if not many, many more times.  I apologized in person, on the phone and via email and by way of text message.  The last thing I wanted was for anyone to be angry with me.  I was fully willing to own up to what I had done.

(For those of you who are new here, what I did was this:  1) I had ditched out on a day of Vacation Bible School, where I was supposed to help watch babies in the nursery.  If you know me personally, you know that watching other people’s children is NOT a strength of mine.  I was signed up for this, without being given much choice, by one of my “friends”.  What I should have done right there is tell her I could not do it.  But I am a people pleaser and didn’t want to cause a stir.  I felt I could deal with it.  I couldn’t.   2) I had come to a birthday party for one of my friend’s children, feeling kinda in a bad mood and sporting a mean headache.  I didn’t feel very up to socializing and kept to myself most of the evening because I didn’t want to dampen things for anyone else.  When asked if I wanted a turn at playing Wii Sports, I declined as politely as I could.  I really felt I would rather watch than participate.  I finally had my husband take me home where I knew I would be happier.  3) The next day, at another birthday party, we left after cake had been served and presents had been opened.  We had been there for several hours already and as a few other people were leaving, we felt it was time.  No one asked us to stay when we said our goodbyes.  3)  The next day after #2, on the walk to school, my son was called a “butthead” by one of my “friends” sons.  This upset him greatly because he’s a very sensitive child.  I was upset that he was upset.  When he asked that I pick him up from school and drive him the next morning instead of doing the walk, I agreed to it.  I told my “friend” that we would be doing this and she didn’t seem to care either way.  I basically got no reaction.   Still feeling out of sorts, as I detected a cold shoulder from my friend and feeling generally moody, I wrote a blog post about this encounter to get it off my chest, which wasn’t entirely about the incident as much it was about remembering unpopularity from my own childhood.  Afterward, I felt much better and ready to put the whole thing behind me.)

Still with me?  It’s a tangled web.

After #1, I apologized profusely when it became apparent to me that my ditching out had caused some anger.  I was basically shunned at a VBS event that evening.  But women are masters of passive aggressiveness and my “friend” assured me that she wasn’t angry at me.  That she just didn’t see me there or she would have said hello.  SURE.   But I let it go.  She said we were cool so I figured we were cool.  I do tend to be a little naive.  After #2, I felt better after getting home and settling down.  I didn’t know why I felt so out of sorts.  It was though my emotions were bubbling beneath the surface and I couldn’t filter them.  My “friend” called to see if I was okay.  I told her I had a little headache, that I felt a little out of sorts and that I was already feeling better.  It wasn’t anything personal, I assured her.   Little did I know, her husband felt I had been extremely rude when turning down playing Wii Sports with everyone else.  I wish I had known, because I would have insisted that I meant nothing by it.  I just simply wasn’t in the mood to play it and preferred to watch.   The next day, at the second party, I received a cold shoulder from the friend whose party I had attended the day before.  But we made the best of it and had a good time, I thought.  Harry, we hardly saw during the whole party as he was off with the kids playing video games and the like.  As we left, he told us some of the kids had left him out and hurt his feeling a little.  But he was (and is!) a sensitive child and what would be no big deal to some, is always a big deal to him.  I generally filter these things through that knowledge, but it still is never nice to see your child upset.  That said, he did say he had a good time and that is what matters most, yes? The next day, with the “butthead” incident, I had received another cold shoulder from my “friend” and when, mid-walk, when Harry got very upset over the name calling and I hung back to see what had happened, she neither waited for us to catch up or asked me what had happened.  I took this to mean she didn’t care about it, which sort of upset me a little.  I would have expected at least a “what happened?” when we finally caught up.  Harry had asked me to drive him to and from school so I told her that I wouldn’t be walking down the next couple of days.  There was no expression on her face as she accepted this information.  Again, I took it to mean she didn’t care.  She didn’t ask at that point why or what had happened again.  So I thought maybe the distance would help her cool off a little.  And myself too, as I was progressively getting more and more upset by the whole thing.  I couldn’t fathom why she wouldn’t care.  I was her friend, right?  Wouldn’t there at least be SOME concern?  Or interest?

I stewed about this the rest of the morning until I wrote the blog post in question.  Now, I shouldn’t have done that.  I needed somewhere to vent and I wrongfully thought that my blog was neutral territory.  I was vague enough, I thought, if it did get read.  But I was pretty sure it wouldn’t.  And I never in a million years thought it would hurt any feelings.  That was my bad.  Lesson to be learned: never blog about friendships.  EVER.  I woke up from a nap that afternoon, feeling infinitely better, to see a comment by “Other Friend” (the hostess of the second birthday party, for those of you who are keeping track).  And I was STUNNED.  Honestly, I couldn’t fathom it for a few minutes. I had to read and re-read and re-re-read it to make sure I was seeing what was truly there.  I never imagined I would get a response like that from one of them.  I realized that the blog post, besides being a poor idea in the first place, was entirely and 100% misjudged.  I felt awful.  I emailed her back to apologize profusely and try to explain myself.  A few other comments were left by dear, dear readers.  And I saw that, though they were “sticking up” for me, they too misread the post and assumed I was calling these children bullies.  Oh dear.  What a pickle.  My husband tried to diffuse the situation with a comment and I both commenters emailed me privately to apologize for fanning the flames and again offer their support.  I had several more positive emails from people.  But then I received a comment from the husband of my “friend” (the one who threw the FIRST party and shunned me the next two days).  And… wow.   If the first comment stunned me, this one was a sucker punch.  I was meant to feel shamed by it and shamed I did feel.  Is this how they were seeing me?  It was like hearing about yourself in the third person.

Again, I will say: I had my fault in this.  I was feeling VERY moody.  But I thought, perhaps incorrectly, that I was shielding people around me from the brunt of my raging emotions.  I guess I wasn’t.  My intention, of course, was never to hurt.  And I was torn up at the thought of hurting my friends, especially because it was inadvertently.  And because I knew that my behavior had not been what it should have been.  I sent many emails to all the parties involved.  I received an email from my friend’s husband and again, he made it apparent that I was attacking them, that they were devastated and hurt and that I was in the wrong.

I tried so hard to explain myself.  But I think my explanations fell on deaf ears.  We found out a day or so later that I was unexpectedly pregnant.  And my swinging moods were finally explained.  That alone made me feel so much better.  It always feels good to have an explanation for something you have been in the dark about.  And just KNOWING helped me be able to manage it better.  At least I knew it wasn’t some of weird psychological thing.  This was explained to our “friends”, in the hopes that they would be happy for us and be willing to let it all go.

That didn’t happen.  We were issued cold “congratulations” and once again told that I was deliberately hurtful.  This persisted for a few days before I finally arranged to meet Kelly after the school drop off and work out our issues.  I apologized.  I tried again to explain myself.  I apologized some more.  I explained my desire to preserve the friendship.

And it has never been the same since.  We have done a few things socially with both “friends” and their families but it was never like it once was.  I never felt the support from any of them that I would have expected to find.  It was as though the events over those three days (I include the VBS thing because I believe a lot of hurt feelings were carried over from that, even though I had been assured they hadn’t), had completely dissolved the friendship.  My mind didn’t want to accept this for a very long time.  You just don’t do that to friends!  Friends give each other a chance!  They accept apologies and move on because the friendship is so much more important than the grudge.

That is why after a few years, I had to realize that the reason they so easily cast me aside is that I never truly was their friend.  They never did really care for me or my family.  If you care for someone, you give them a second chance.  Third chance.  FOURTH and FIFTH chances.  They’re your friends.  This is why I kept giving them chances.  Even after we were left out for a Halloween party, even after my “friend” backed out of my baby shower, even after plans were continually canceled on us.  After we were left out or otherwise meant to feel uncomfortable.  I wanted to try to remain friendly with them because we had been (I thought) great friends.  I had had a great time with these people, once upon a time.  I truly cared for them and their families.  Spending time together had always brightened my day.  I wanted to keep that, grow it, and hold onto it.  And I had such a hard time convincing myself it was a sham the whole time.

I am sure, that if one of them were to read this post, they would recoil with indignation and disbelief and this same “confusion” that was peddled in all those emails to me back in August of 2007.  I am sure their only concern would be about how poorly I am trying to make THEM look (as if anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis really knows who they are) (or cares).  They wouldn’t care anything about the fact that myself and my family were hurt just as much by what went down as they were.  Even moreso, I dare say, since I don’t believe they ever really cared about us in the first place.  They only cared about image.  Image is everything.  It took me 2 years to be able to admit that to myself.

I don’t know when or if I’ll ever be fine with the whole thing.  It still smarts to think of it, so I try not to.  And as I mentioned before, many days go by where I am able to put it out of my mind.  But every time I reel back from a social interaction, I know it is because of all this.   I know I need to rise above it.  There is nothing any of them can do to “fix” me, I can only fix myself.

It’s just a shame that they broke me in the first place.

We have too much STUFF.  I know a lot of people out there like STUFF.  Are constantly in search of more STUFF.  And love their STUFF.  We do this to some extent ourselves as no one is perfect.  But STUFF does not make me happy.  And having it laying around the house makes me even less happy.  Whenever we set stuff out at the curb for the donation truck to pick up, I always feel a sensation not unlike a weight being lifted off my shoulders.  It’s freeing, to get rid of stuff.  I love that feeling and I love getting rid of stuff.  I don’t do it near enough.

It’s not just physical STUFF that needs to be cleared out on a regular basis though.  It’s also the intangible STUFF.  The weight that you drag around with you, day in and day out.  You may not even know you’re dragging it around.  And then one day in a fit of frustration, you cast off that weight and are amazed at how instantly better you feel.  Suddenly, you don’t have that STUFF crudding up your consciousness.  You feel better, lighter, happier.

I got rid of some intangible STUFF last week.  And while not all the scraps are gone just yet, I cast off the majority of it and let me tell you, IT IS FABULOUS.

Life is far too short to complicate it with people that you don’t groove with.  Or that don’t groove with you.  And when you’re a people pleaser like I unfortunately tend to be, you want desperately to force that “groove” to happen.  You find yourself bending over backwards to make nice, to do what you think you should do.  To MAKE this person like you.  And, simply put, that’s not always possible.  You can’t make anyone like you.  You can’t force the “groove”.  Trying to only makes you feel progressively worse and worse until your self-worth is about the size of gnat and your frustration level is through the roof.

All you can do is cut it away.  Like cutting out a cancerous growth.  Suck the poison right out of your life and toss it aside.  Move on.  All these things are far easier said than done, believe me, I know.   I’ve struggled with this subject for over two years now.  TWO YEARS.  That is ridiculous, people.  But, judging from what I know of myself, that’s not uncommon for me.  I have a hard time letting things go sometimes.  Sometimes those things are old notebooks I scribbled in back in high school or a set of favorite books that are collecting dust on the bookshelves.  And sometimes those things are not things, but people who do nothing but make me feel bad.  The stress of trying to find a way to make them NOT make me feel bad is toxic.  And before long, I ache from the burden of it.  I clench my jaw unconsciously while I sleep.  I tense my muscles to the point of not even noticing that I’m tensing them.  And then when those muscles finally do relax, the pain is extraordinary.  PHYSICAL pain, people.  All from stress.

Now, certainly not all of this stress is attributed to toxic people.  There is a lot of things that go on in my life on a daily basis.  I’m sure anyone reading this is nodding their head and saying to themselves, “You and me both, sister!”  Therefore, I’m sure you can understand taking a look at the things causing your stress upon identifying them, wanting to cut away those things that CAN be cut away.

I can’t cut away my family, of course, and naturally taking care of the little ones every day gives me oodles and oodles of stress.  Knitting, while I do love it, gives me stress at least right now when my customs list is a mile long and I pretty much have to knit every moment I can just to keep up.  But I cannot cut away knitting either because I do love it.

Toxic people can be cut away.  The stress of trying to make it work can be cut away.  Chalk it up to a failure and try to remind yourself that that failure is not entirely your fault.  Don’t look back.  Look ahead.  And revel in how FREE you feel.

It is marvelous.

I think I’ll go find some old junk to bag up and set by the curb.

Even when there’s plenty to complain about (and let’s face it: in blogland, there is always something to complain about), I still know just how lucky I am.  In fact, I think I could be luckier than most.

I’m lucky that all of my kids like to sleep.  On the weekends, we usually don’t see any of them before 9 am.  On weekdays, Liam usually wakes up earlier because Harry gets up earlier to get ready for school.  And since Harry is incapable of being quiet while getting ready, Liam wakes up and is ready to go!  But Evie almost always sleeps until after 9 am on weekdays too.  Bless her heart.

I’m lucky that the little ones are so good with their naps!  Liam doesn’t always sleep but he likes to be up in his room, playing with the toys up there.  Harry isn’t there to rain on his parade and Evie isn’t there to steal his things from under his nose.  And I’m not there to get on his case!  Sometimes he snoozes too, sometimes he doesn’t.  And Evie takes a good 2 hour (sometimes more!) nap too. This gives me some great time in the afternoon to get things done and have a little “me” time!

I’m lucky that my husband has such a steady and secure job.  Working for the state isn’t perfect, but all things considered, it’s pretty darn good.  He has wonderful job security, even when the state is having troubles.  He has wonderful health insurance, at least compared to some peoples’ plans.  He gets plenty of sick and vacation days even if he doesn’t usually spend all of them.  At least we know that if something ever comes up (like when I broke my ankle or when Jackson died) he can easily take time off without worrying about it.

I’m lucky that Kile likes to cook as much as he does and that he doesn’t mind fixing dinner for us every night.  In fact, there are some meals he makes that are on my list of favorite things to eat!  Like cowboy spaghetti or the mustard grilled hamburgers.  And he can blend a mean margarita too.  This man is a jack of all trades.

Speaking of him, I’m lucky that he is such a wonderful father.  There is little more important to Kile than his family.  His kids are his pride and joy and it shows.  He loves spending time with them on the weekends, riding bikes with Harry or playing in the backyard with Liam or swinging Evie around until she squeals with delight.  And these kids love him too.  It’s the most genuine and pure thing and it is just wonderful to be able to witness.  I love that I never have to question leaving the kids with him and that he doesn’t even flinch when it comes time to change a dirty diaper.

I’m lucky that we have a good house to live in and that is belongs to us.  Sure, the housing market has gone kablooie, but we have a nice place to live and it’s filled with nice furniture and things to make our everyday life simpler and nicer.

I’m lucky that we don’t have very much debt.  Debt always makes me worry, even if there isn’t any trouble paying it back.  You never know what will happen and if a source of income were to suddenly disappear, I would feel awful knowing I had debt that would be difficult to pay back.  Besides the house, virtually everything we own is paid for.  Even our cars!  Which is probably why we’re so reluctant to get a new one.   We’re talking about getting an LED or LCD TV after Christmas.  And I know that if and when we do, we will pay for it with cash.  This is so much easier on my peace of mind!

I’m lucky that I don’t have to work. We don’t necessarily NEED a second income.  Sure there are a few things we have to sacrifice.  But when it comes down to it, we don’t mind missing out on the things we have to sacrifice.  And being able to stay at home with the children, while frustrating at times, is worth it.

I’m lucky for all my friends. Yes, even though they’re online or otherwise so far away.  Maybe it’s not as convenient as having someone a couple blocks away, but knowing that I can get support, someone to chat with and someone to laugh with at a moment’s notice is a wonderful thing indeed. No drama needed here.  Just good old fashioned friendship.

I’m lucky to have three of the most adorable and sweet children on the planet.  Harry is fun to hang out with and very loving to his family members.  Liam is always good for a giggle and is getting smarter by the day.  Evie is so good natured and loves to have a good snuggle first thing in the morning.  There isn’t a single thing I would change about any of them.  They make everything in this world worth living.

And lastly, I’m lucky that I had such a great weekend with my family.  I enjoyed every moment, even though there was that whole thing on Sunday where my social anxiety reared it’s ugly head and made my stomach hurt with the mere thought of spending the day with some fun people.  I’d do it all again and again and again just to get to spend the time with the family.  Lunch at Texas Roadhouse, browsing sidewalk sales at Legends, watching parades in Virginia City… just awesome!

Now that I’ve bragged on myself and my family, what are the things and people that make you lucky?

I’ve been a big time, grade A, first class blog flake lately.

Not exactly news for anyone who has been keeping track of my update schedule over here, to be sure.  But I’ve also been a flake in keeping up at my friends’ blogs.  Now THAT is pretty sad.  This knitting obsession of mine has taken over.  Any spare time is spent knitting.  And while I will often compose pithy and humorous blog posts in my mind while I’m knitting my bazillionth pair of baby pants, composing something in your mind isn’t quite the same as putting the knitting needles aside and typing it up on the laptop.  And Google Reader is literally starting to get cobwebs around the corners.  I used to do the bulk of my blog reading while I was nursing Evie, via my iPhone.  But lately I’ve been sucked into some stupid iPhone games and that is generally what I’m doing when I would normally be reading blogs.

What is my excuse?  I don’t have one.

And I feel bad, because I feel like I’ve missed out on some things with some of the bloggers I consider myself closest to.  What does it say that I just found out like two days ago that Brit’s blog was busted?  Something I could have helped her with, I’m sure, but I was a flake.  So I didn’t.

That’s not cool.

Shoot, I spend more time on Facebook, reading up on people’s statuses than I do reading their blogs.

This has to change.  I don’t want to be “that blogger”.  The one who is completely out of the loop and detached from the community.  I know notgoing to BlogHer this year has affected me this way.  Why bother to connect to the community when I’m not going to BlogHer?  What’s the point?  Of COURSE there is a point.  But when you’re a) lazy and b) occupied elsewhere, well… excuses come easy.

There’s no reason why I can’t keep up my blog and read my favorite blogs though I’m not going to BlogHer.  And there’s no reason I can’t do this while I continue knitting.  I just need to get my act together.

I hate being a slave to stats, but the stats don’t lie.  And they show a significant drop in the last six months.  Again… NOT COOL.  I’m letting people down.  I’ve become BORING.  GAH!

So I gotta knock that off.  Anyone have any helpful suggestions?  Wanna come over here and kick me in the pants?  Anyone? (Is anyone still here?)

This should be easy, seeing as how it’s a Friday and all…

1. The weekend.  The blessed, blessed weekend.  Hallelujah. 
2. The taste of peppermint schanpps in hot cocoa.  
3. Finishing my very first knitting project (pictures to follow tomorrow!)
4. How clean and warm I feel after taking a shower. 
5. Long phone conversations with a good friend.  Thanks, Michelle.