Thine ever, or never.

When I was 16, my dad gave me my own copy of The Select Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I say, "my own" because from the day I discovered it I would always steal his copy (I actually still have his, despite having my own, on my bookshelf). I feel like everything I've ever needed to know in life I could learn, whether by literal interpretation or inference, from Emerson's writings.

Lately I've been feeling a little lost. Not terribly, not "winter"-lost, not quarter-life-crisis lost, just like I'm searching for SOMETHING. Some sort of answer to a question I haven't asked yet. I'm not sure I've ever felt this way before. Usually I know what's wrong. Even if nothing is actually "wrong," I can usually figure out what's causing me to feel that way. When I can't, I do some soul searching. Emerson is definitely a worst case scenario. I haven't found my answer yet, but I stumbled upon another answer in the mean time.

I've been getting emails and text messages from a friend of mine lately. I shouldn't say "friend," as-in: current...more like a once-upon-a-time friend. Long story short (sort of): we were friends, she and her bf rescued a dog that was being abused but the new dog didn't get along with the dog they already had, Bri and I wanted to help by keeping the new dog but our landlord wouldn't allow it, they were having problems in their relationship (the dog was coming between them) and placed the blame on us, stopped calling us, started avoiding us, she and I emailed back and forth which pretty much ended with her more or less saying, "I can't separate our friendship from the dog situation so I can't talk to you anymore." I know that sounds pretty nuts, but it's true. I took the whole thing pretty hard, being that she was the first friend I let into my life in awhile. I totally let my guard down and she turned out to be a mistake. Our last conversation was in March of last year.

The recent emails caught me totally off-guard. She missed me and didn't know where we stood and just wanted to touch base. I told her very honestly how I felt, that she hurt me by ending our friendship over a DOG that was never my responsibility but who I still helped with, that I thought it was pretty ridiculous and I wasn't about to set myself up to be hurt like that again. She wrote back with some nutty things, making up lies ABOUT me, TO me. Things that I supposedly did or said to her that never actually happened. This whole thing took a lot out of me because up until maybe two months ago I was saying to Brian, "I still can't believe what happened with them...how crazy was that?" It still bothered me because up until the "break-up" point, I considered them to be great friends. Part of me wanted to be like, "Sure, all is forgiven, let's be friends again!" but then logic kicked in and said, "You've already seen how she reacts to stressful situations, you don't want to be on the receiving end of that again."

The whole process of meeting new people, opening up to new people, spending the time and energy feeling them out, learning them and deciding where you want things to go, eventually TRUSTING new people...it's so difficult for me. By nature I'm a private person, always have been. Take that, and the fact that I've had a whole lot of what I though to be great, unbreakable friendships turn bad out of nowhere, and you've got someone who is convinced that they don't need friends. There's always that nagging feeling that I might WANT friends, though, despite all the bad experiences I've had.

From Emerson's "Friendship" essay:

"Thus every man passes his life in the search after friendship, and if he should record his true sentiment, he might write a letter like this to each new candidate for his love: ---

Dear Friend,
If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to match my mood with thine, I should never think again of trifles in relation to thy comings and goings. I am not very wise; my moods are quite attainable, and I respect thy genius; it is to me as yet unfathomed; yet dare I not presume in thee a perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a delicious torment. Thine ever, or never."