Spring Cleaning: Friendships...

Let's Make A Clean Sweep...

Just last week as I was getting ready for work, the C.BS morning news show was discussing spring cleaning. But not the kind that gets our households all fresh, tidy, and organized. They were discussing when and how to get rid of useless friends like an old pair of shoes. They made it sound so methodical and easy when we know that it's easier said than done. Or at least that's the case for me.

I've always been the low key friend. I don't usually initiate friendships and I don't dominate them for the most part either, but it doesn't bother me. I don't particularly have to have a best friend. And I'm not the kind who'll get jealous if there are 3 friends and 2 of them are closer than I am. It's always been said that from the time I was a little kid that I was somewhat of a loner. Not totally though. I would quietly play alone, but if a kid came over and introduced him or herself to me, we'd be friends.

The same thing still happens to me as an adult. I remember my first real job with my current employer. I was so nervous my first day of work just as I was my first day of high school and college. So, I sat alone at my desk. I would say hi and goodbye, but I didn't really initiate any real conversations. I didn't know what to say. But then one day a couple of guys in the office dropped by and initiated a conversation, and from then I started to settle into my job better. Those two people turned out to mean so much to me as they became my mentors since I was young enough to be everyone's daughter in the office. I still care a lot about the one who works at the headquarters with me but in another office. And it hurt so painfully when the other died of a stroke about 9 years ago. Friends like those are priceless. But then there are the others.

There's always a flip side to everything. The flip side of great friendships are the awful ones. And for some reason I seem to get along with men better. With women, there are some who always want to compete and have the last word, which I really don't have time for. But with guys, once we get to an understanding that our friendship is platonic, it seems that I'm better able to discuss almost anything with them. And at the moment, I can't think of any time that I had to get rid of a friendship with a guy.

I rarely cut folks off. I've only done it two times. But sometimes we got to do what we got to do. Check this out. Back when I first moved to the DC area, a guy I knew put me in contact with a sorority sister. I didn't know her, but the guy thought that since all of us weren't from the area, we should all be friends. He cursed like a sailor, but he had a heart of gold. :0 My soror was a little more of a pain. In the beginning of the friendship everything was cool. So I thought. But as her relationship began to sour with her boyfriend, she would talk my ear off for hours about how wrong he was (even when he wasn't). But anytime, I felt like discussing my struggles and strifes in life she'd only have 5 minutes to discuss/solve them so that we could get back to discussing her dramas. The things she couldn't articulate to her boyfriend were directed at me. So I just cut things off when I heard enough of her talk about being jealous of her boyfriend's child from another woman. Perhaps, that was new territory for me at the time when I was in my early 20s. But I maintain my position. No new girlfriend/boyfriend needs to try to keep a parent away from his or her child from a previous relationship. There were some other issues such as having me to drive to all the rough places where the security wasn't so great and the issue of inviting me to social functions with a promise of a ride only to be left. But anywho. I kicked that friendship to the curb.

A few years later, I found myself in another friendship fiasco. I started a new job in a new office. As usual, my friends tend to be a little older than I am for some reason. So, when I met a Christian friend at work, I thought everything was cool. So, I thought again. The friendship started fine. But this person has a problem with her friends being friends with folks she doesn't like. So, if she was being catty with someone I didn't have a problem with, I'd simply walk away. And later, I realized she was jealous of anyone else I spoke well of. Once I revealed that one of our co-workers was a true Christian woman. The true Christian lady wasn't in folks faces perpetrating a front. She demonstrated her ways simply by being fair and not looking down on folks. If you had a problem, she wouldn't make you feel bad. But "The So-Called Friend" was a trip. The moment you'd speak well of someone would be the same time she'd begin to talk trash about them. She'd talk about folks having kids out of wedlock, while she totally forgot that she wasn't married when she conceived her first child. It's a wonder how I could stand those constant contradictions for at least a year. I was fed up. So I broke off the friendship althogether abruptly. I honestly wasn't trying to be mean. I just couldn't take it anymore. I rather be friendless than be hemmed up by someone else's ways.

The two mentioned friendship dropkicks were extreme cases. I'm at a point of trying to remember that there are great friendships that still exist. And I've got to remember that friendships hold a special place in our lives as we cannot be an island unto ourselves. I need to see that on a flash card.