Then the whole lateness thing. I had a very good friend who often kept me waiting, once for four or five hours on a Granville Street corner in the winter. The reason I waited for so long was that, when I checked in with her parents, they reassured me that she was on her way and to keep waiting. It must’ve been a hell of a bus ride, as she never made it. But I forgave her and it’s something I always expect for her. But there’s no way I would sever that relationship with her because of her chronic tardiness. I think it’s stupid to throw out someone on the basis of something that only really inconveniences; but another local blogger wrote about this in the last few months and all the comments were about severing any relationship with the chronically late. Wow, people obviously have enough friends if they don’t care to lose someone over this.

Anyhow, my few friends in Japan and Romania have shown themselves to be far more glad to see me than anyone here. I get the feeling that I am just too boring and stupid to be of interest to anyone here. I hope one day I can move to a place where people like me and I can have lots of friends that I can see regularly again.

The topic of your post resonates with me deeply. I’ve been having a lot of drawn out internal (and some involving other people like my friends conversations about the nature of friendship as it relates to my own self-growth. I’ve been finding that the people I reach out to don’t necessarily reach out to me much, and I’m at odds as to how I interpret that. These are people I’ve known for 10+ years, and somehow I’m much closer to my other friends who are in New York and Manitoba. They are also the sort of people that probably would not feel comfortable straight-up telling me what they don’t like about me, which just spirals the self-doubt into ever-expanding circles…

So I’ve decided to stop with that and give my time to those who indicate that they enjoy the value I bring to them, and perhaps put more time into the people who really do seem to get value from the time I spend with them. I also recognize that people bring value in ways that I might not always be looking for – I try not to jump to conclusions. It’s the radio silence – the seeming apathy – that really gets to me, over a long period of time, seeing as there are so many methods of contacting me available.

But it is such a tangled mess. So much of the time I second-guess whether I’ve been blacklisted for something I said or did, and realized that if who I am is not worth someone’s cup of tea, then I move on from the energy sinkhole.