Being THAT Friend

Tomorrow I drive back to Albany for surgery.  Surgery is next week, but I have the pleasure of blood draws and whatnot beforehand.  In this post I wrote about how bad things have been coming my way left and right.  Well, my suffering has sucked but it's also been annoying for my friends.  I mean, they deny it, and they probably mean it.  But I hate hate hate the fact that I've basically been troubling them every time something bad happens.

I'm not self-deprecating here and saying I'm a bad friend.  I actually think I'm a fairly good friend.  I try to listen to my friends and their goals and their dreams and blah blah blah you get it.  I try to be mindful of them, I try to regularly talk to them.  I try to encourage them and challenge them (and to decipher when they need challenging vs when they need a break).  I think they probably know that if they want to talk I'm all ears and that if they need me, ain't no mountain high enough.  But this isn't about being a bad friend, it's about feeling like a really, really annoying friend.

(I wrote this post a few weeks back and said that people shouldn't worry so much about burdening their friends so maybe I should don a lead robe, but whatever, VENTING.  Right?)

As I get ready to go back to Albany, I keep updating my friends because they're going out of their way BIG time to help me get this crap done.  And I just hate it.  I mean, I love that I have wonderful friends.  I hate that I need to get help from them again.  I wish that I could just go there and enjoy them and not worry about bugging them.  Again, this is mostly me and not at all them.  

I cannot count the amount of times that my friends have taken off work or left work early or went to work late in the last year to drive me to doctor appointments.

For two or three weeks, my friend Olivia literally shared her bed with me.  (1. Thank God for queen beds.  2. I'm a great co-sleeper.  Olivia, on the other hand, is not.  <3 u Liv.)

And good Lord, if I'm having a bad mental health day (those days are often lately), they get to hear me worry and stress and complain about the same or similar things over and over again.

Basically, I've been more on the receiving end of my friendships and less on the giving side for the last few months.  And it will probably be like that in the coming months.  And I really need to figure out a way to get over that.  If the situation were reversed, I'd be telling my friends to shut up and let me help and to not worry about it.  It's so annoying that the way we feel toward friends isn't usually the way we feel toward ourselves.

Okay, so vent over.  If you read ALL of my posts, you know that I never have a good ending on vent posts.  So, as is tradition, I'll end with something totally unrelated.  How about this scene from Into the Woods?  Hilarious and easily my favorite part of the movie.

Skip to 2:22.  You're welcome.

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Charlotte