A lot of things have changed in my life in recent history. Least of which have been several friendships.
You could say I really noticed the trend just over a year ago with someone I met on a homebirth message board. She moved to my city, I showed her around our town, hung out with her and her kids and then had to distance myself as she got more and more brainwashed by a "church" (cult) here. It really hurt to do it, but I realized things were getting really bad when I started keeping a mental list of safe conversation topics in my head--I was tired of her trying to convert me so I tried to stay away from controversial topics as much as possible.
As things seem to happen now, in the age of social networking, our friendship met it's end on Facebook. I am sure it started with a video I posted on my profile depicting her Lord and Saviour in what I thought was a very amusing song and dance about Proposition 8, but to her was very offensive. With me, the final nail in the coffin was realizing I was only finding out about her life via status line updates and not at all from her. I started to feel less like a friend and more like a stalker so I quietly deleted her from my friend list and retreated to my corner to try to heal my wounded heart.
A few people have entered and left my life since then. I don't make friends easily and have never had a wide social circle so I am unsure how to deal with this revolving-door of people entering and exiting my life. Every exit is painful and often confusing to me. Am I really that hard to get along with? I wonder. As friendships evolve I am left with many questions that never seem to get answered. In some ways I wonder if I am making the relationships in my life more complicated than they need to be. I am not alone in my feelings. The January issue of Chatelaine magazine had a very interesting and comforting article in it. Here is the link to it, if you want to read it. I can wait.
I am having a harder and harder time dealing with how Facebook has changed how I interact with people. It is pretty easy to see how useful it is when you are talking about far-flung friends and relations, but what about the ones that live across town? I mean the ones that you can call without incurring long-distance phone rates. Why are we using it to talk instead of actually TALKING to people now??? I spend all day at home alone with kids. I crave the sound of an adult voice on the other end of the phone line sometimes. Being a stay at home mom can be a very lonely, isolating occupation and in some ways Facebook makes it better and in other ways Facebook makes it worse. I think that Facebook can make sticky situations even stickier.
It is crazy how I can be so mature and sure of myself in so many aspects of my life, but stuff like this throws me right back to Jr High, when I was so insecure and had no idea what made relationships tick. It has been many, many years since then. What am I missing here?
You could say I really noticed the trend just over a year ago with someone I met on a homebirth message board. She moved to my city, I showed her around our town, hung out with her and her kids and then had to distance myself as she got more and more brainwashed by a "church" (cult) here. It really hurt to do it, but I realized things were getting really bad when I started keeping a mental list of safe conversation topics in my head--I was tired of her trying to convert me so I tried to stay away from controversial topics as much as possible.
As things seem to happen now, in the age of social networking, our friendship met it's end on Facebook. I am sure it started with a video I posted on my profile depicting her Lord and Saviour in what I thought was a very amusing song and dance about Proposition 8, but to her was very offensive. With me, the final nail in the coffin was realizing I was only finding out about her life via status line updates and not at all from her. I started to feel less like a friend and more like a stalker so I quietly deleted her from my friend list and retreated to my corner to try to heal my wounded heart.
A few people have entered and left my life since then. I don't make friends easily and have never had a wide social circle so I am unsure how to deal with this revolving-door of people entering and exiting my life. Every exit is painful and often confusing to me. Am I really that hard to get along with? I wonder. As friendships evolve I am left with many questions that never seem to get answered. In some ways I wonder if I am making the relationships in my life more complicated than they need to be. I am not alone in my feelings. The January issue of Chatelaine magazine had a very interesting and comforting article in it. Here is the link to it, if you want to read it. I can wait.
I am having a harder and harder time dealing with how Facebook has changed how I interact with people. It is pretty easy to see how useful it is when you are talking about far-flung friends and relations, but what about the ones that live across town? I mean the ones that you can call without incurring long-distance phone rates. Why are we using it to talk instead of actually TALKING to people now??? I spend all day at home alone with kids. I crave the sound of an adult voice on the other end of the phone line sometimes. Being a stay at home mom can be a very lonely, isolating occupation and in some ways Facebook makes it better and in other ways Facebook makes it worse. I think that Facebook can make sticky situations even stickier.
It is crazy how I can be so mature and sure of myself in so many aspects of my life, but stuff like this throws me right back to Jr High, when I was so insecure and had no idea what made relationships tick. It has been many, many years since then. What am I missing here?
