Image credit: elenabella.blogspot.com
My friends seem to form a Venn Diagram, and the point at which they all overlap is me. Some also overlap with one another, but not many. Am I self-centered? No. It’s just a fact about my life right now.
I make friends wherever I go. It’s the extrovert in me (though I am technically an Ambivert, but that’s another story). As an extrovert, I have more than one very close friend, and while I love each of them as much as my heart can, it is hard to try and navigate each individual friendship at times. They all have differing needs of time spent together, conversation, silence, common interests, and more.
I begin to understand why true introverts only have one or two friends. It is much simpler to only pour your heart into a few relationships at one time. I am learning that I am simply not built that way. I pour my heart into several friendships, gladly. I cannot help doing so, any more than a waterfall can help pouring itself with joyful, reckless abandon over a precipice.
I “should” set more boundaries. I “should” only pour my energy into those closest to me.
But. I can’t. It’s not in my nature. Sometimes, I wish I could just pick and choose with whom I will be friends, and let the rest go. However, that feels akin to choosing between my own children. And so, I am trying to embrace my extrovert-with-a-strong-introvert-tendency and just be who I am, instead of who everyone thinks I “should” be. I wash my hands of that.
When I am with a friend, I have learned to be with that friend. Not perfectly, but I have stopped worrying any more about what anyone else thinks. I am just the best friend that I know how to be, and have found that my best friends accept me wholesale. It probably looks pretty crazy at times, but it’s my reality.
So, my Venn Diagram. I wish I could draw it. It seems to change a lot, depending on where I’m at. Sometimes, all my friends’ circles are lined up together. Most of the time, they’re not. Sometimes, I’m alone at the center, but never for very long. I enjoy my quiet aloneness. I enjoy my loud, big, gatherings. I enjoy cups of tea sipped on a shared couch, a comfortable silence between us. I enjoy texts and phone calls. Facebook chat conversations.
The little minutes and moments and hours and days I spend with my close friends.
Sometimes, it wears me out, and I go silent for awhile. Then, my need for a kindred spirit rears up, and there they all are: my friends, my sisters, my tribe. Ready and willing to do friendship the way we like it best: our way.
I don’t know why they put up with me, but I am certainly grateful that they do.
Grace & Peace,
Tiffany
The Faery Inn 